By Kate Ellis, 1Sky Minnesota organizer, Fresh Energy

Growing up in rural west central Minnesota, there were two main things that were on the mind of everyone my age: 1) How can I devise a plan to move far away from this area (preferably to “the cities”), and 2) How fast can I do it?

It wasn’t necessarily that people wanted to leave, but there just weren’t a lot of good-paying jobs, opportunities for local higher education, or other young people in the area, for that matter. I must admit that I am part of the problem—I moved away from my family farm to the “big city” to pursue a master’s degree and a career. But that doesn’t mean that I’m not keenly interested in figuring out ways to make our rural areas more prosperous and opportunity-filled.

Driving through the cornfields a couple weeks ago on my way to Re-Fest in Austin, Minnesota brought back memories of my early years and renewed in me all over again the desire to revitalize our rural areas.

Re-Fest was put on by a variety of organizations working for environmentally-sustainable options for the southern Minnesota region. Being located in the wind-rich area of the state that they are, a local wind development company was on-site with a full-sized turbine blade and many of their employees.  I spent some time chatting with their wind turbine maintenance team, a group of young men who all looked to be in mid-20s and who were fully suited in elaborate turbine-climbing gear. One technician told me that he grew up in the Austin area and decided to stay put because a local community college was offering a 2-year degree in wind turbine maintenance. He had heard how in-demand and good-paying the jobs were after you graduated.

Now I know there has been lots of talk and hype lately about “green jobs,” but it made me so excited to see green jobs in action and benefiting the local community and economy. It made me wonder how my high school graduating class might have acted differently had these kinds of opportunities been available to us.

Then, not one week later I participated in the national green jobs day of action, sponsored by 1Sky, Green for All, and the WE Campaign. This time the setting was a little different: first a rally at the University of Minnesota with Sierra Student Coalition and MPIRG, and then an event at the Urban League in north Minneapolis sponsored by EJAM. While the setting was different, the enthusiasm for the new green economy was just as vibrant as it was in Austin.

Senator Ellen Anderson spoke passionately about how green job development can spur our economy, while providing educational opportunities and pathways out of poverty for Minnesota’s communities. The crowd gathered there pulsed with excitement and I left those events feeling energized once again at the prospect of economic development, job creation, and environmental protection all rolled into one in this new, green economy.

Now we just need to make sure that our elected officials understand the enthusiasm I have seen across the state and help speed our transition to this promising new economy. Check out the Green Jobs Now website to see how you can get involved!

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 2nd, 2008 at 1:07 pm by Fresh Energy and is filed under Energy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.