Thank yous all around - to legislators and their staff, to advocates, to community leaders and members. Massachusetts has a green jobs bill!

And now we're ready to figure out how to create jobs in multiple green industry sectors, for MA residents with varying skills and in different communities across the state.

This is YOUR invitation to roll up your sleeves and think with others in your community, with employers and with skill training and education organizations. What will work where you are?? Build a local answer to these questions and share it with others. We have much to learn and we already know.

Comment here with your ideas, questions and concerns!

I was a panelist on a Green Jobs panel at the Massachusetts Democratic Convention a couple of weeks ago. I joined a carpenter who works with MA YouthBuild and a woman who works with JYF Networks, a program providing basic education and skill training. The Dems had a green focus this year bringing Van Jones (THE green collar jobs guy and co-founder of Green for All) to speak both at the convention and then as an opener in the afternoon for a series of workshops called the “Greenest Democrats in the Bluest State”. Hats off to convention organizers: what a way to open the conversation up about climate change and the growing green economy by highlighting it at the state convention.

The green jobs movement is thinking about how to grow jobs by growing industries. Take a look at the report just released by Green for All: Green Collar Jobs in America's Cities (http://www.greenforall.org/resources/gcjobsamericascities.pdf). Its a tool to think strategically about green jobs in your community, about growing green jobs for the participants you work with.

 Its not what comes first the chicken or the egg, its policy that comes first. As the report says "its how [we] enact policies and programs to drive investment into targeted green economic activity and increase demand for local green-collar workers"

 In MA there's a lot going on. We've heard from House Speaker DiMasi about his proposal for grants to young green tech companies, local entreprenuers and job training funds (to the tune of $12.5 million).