Marshall Plan for heartland is badly needed
Every election season, pundits and politicians watch with keen focus the people of Middle America to gauge the heart’s desire of the Heartland. The influence of flyover America matters for those moments in time.
The predictions are dire: without action, job losses of 100,000in the Ohio River Valley region alone in less than 10years.
Then, when the votes are counted and the newly elected leaders are installed, our region and others like it seem to be all but forgotten and virtually unheard.
But some leaders in the upper Appalachian region and the Ohio River Valley are creating some clamor, and federal officials had better listen up.
A nascent movement dubbed the “Marshall Plan for Middle America” needs support — both financial and political from our nation’s capital — to succeed. And succeed it must.
Independent, nonpartisan and data-driven research predicts massive job losses in the coming years from the decline of the fossil-fuel industry. It’s critical to build a barricade before the coming economic tsunami.
A team of mayors from cities in Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Kentucky (including Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto) are pushing this neo-Marshall Plan as an initiative that would seed the growth of climate-friendly industry.
The effort is supported by policy and academic research from the University of Pittsburgh Center for Sustainable Business, the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the Steel Valley Authority, the Heartland Capital Strategies Network and the Enel Foundation.
The predictions are dire: without action, job losses of 100,000 in the Ohio River Valley region alone in less than 10 years.
The backers of this modern-day Marshall Plan — a reference to the tremendous American plan that was forged to rebuild post-World War II Europe — believe that renewable energy development will win out against fossil fuels and that now is the time to get prepared for the fallout of the battle.
Getting ready means getting help from our leaders in Washington.
The proponents of the new
Marshall Plan want to establish block grants to help local governments retrofit vehicle f leets as well as commercial and residential building stock; low-interest loans for zero-carbon energy generation; tax incentives for private production of clean energy equipment and supply chain development; and grants for workforce training, education, research and development of advanced clean energy technology.
Essentially, they want our federal leaders to be shoulder to shoulder with local government and private industry.
In sum, they’re talking about a public-private partnership that reaches from Washington to Pittsburgh and Morgantown, Huntington and Youngstown, Dayton and Columbus, Cincinnati and Louisville.
Without this team approach, communities that have hitched their economic fortune to fossil fuels — communities that already face harsh economic challenges — could collapse as the world reckons with climate change.
The Marshall Plan for Middle America believes $60 billion in federal help could instigate some 270,000 direct and indirect jobs, plus another 140,000 jobs created when those 270,000 employees spend their increased incomes on goods and services.
Hometowns have seen the result of a lack of preparedness. One need only to look to the demise of the steel industry in Pittsburgh to see the job loss, the flight of young people seeking gainful employment, the burden of a three-decade rebuild.
This 21st Century Marshall Plan is a strategy that would help to construct a new energy infrastructure before what we have crumbles to ruin.
Those inside the Beltway must show they’ve got their finger on the pulse of the heartland.