The city has a website, Green Dallas, that brags about programs, policies and initiatives that date back, so the site says, to the devastating drought of the 1950s -- "when the City of Dallas realized it could not take the environment for granted." And in between items about bike plans and LEED certification levels and idling ordinances and compressed natural gas-powered taxis you'll find a reference to how City Hall is "working to coordinate stimulus and formula funds into a
program which can re-educate displaced workers into 'green-collar' jobs and re-unite
neighborhoods which may be fractured by economic or social hardships." Green jobs, in other words.
So, then. To this morning's news from the Brookings Institution, which ranks major metros by who has the most "clean economy jobs." (Defined here as gigs related to one of the five following categories: "renewable energy; energy and resource efficiency; greenhouse gas reduction, environmental management, and recycling; agriculture and natural resource conservation; training and compliance.")
Long story short: The greater Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington area ranks 10 out of the 100 major metropolitan areas surveyed with 38,562 "clean economy jobs," which, says the report, make up 1.3 percent of all jobs in the area. The D-FW-A two-pager, available here, ranks waste management and public mass transit as the top two job-makers in the area -- despite the former having lost 1,302 jobs during the last eight years. And then there's this little factoid: "The estimated median wage in Dallas' clean economy is
$40,105. This compares to $40,330 for all jobs in Dallas."