2019 Town Hall: on Jobs

Amy Klobuchar: Focus on rural & job aspects of green energy transition

KLOBUCHAR: I think that we have to make jobs and employment a major part of this. Let's look at the facts even in today's economy--wind & solar are some of the growing areas for new jobs. In today's economy 99% of the wind [energy generation] is going to be rural. So there's a lot of exciting things that can happen in rural America out of this. So there's a lot of new jobs. So for me, as you are transitioning out of coal--as you are replacing this oil with electric cars and other new technology--you make sure that people that are working in those fossil fuel industries have jobs. So we do worker training--to make sure that we're ready to find jobs that are suiting the skills that they've had that they've built over the years.

Elizabeth Warren: Require green technology be built by American union jobs

WARREN: This is one of the best parts about the Green New Deal. It's not only about setting the targets on green so that we save this planet. It's about a new deal for people who work. It's about worker justice. I have a green manufacturing plan. There is an estimated $17 trillion market for green around the world--what can we do? And I've got a three-part answer to that.

1. Make the big investment in science and research and development, the things we do best here in America.
2. We say to the world, "you can produce whatever we come up with, you can apply it, but whatever is manufactured from it, you have to manufacture right here in the U.S. That will produce an estimated 1.2 million new union manufacturing jobs.
3. There are places where we're going to need to harden our infrastructure. The oceans are rising. We need our workers to have the good, well-paying jobs as part of that.