The Midwest Goes Green
It’s always nice to see an article dispelling the myth that the entire US greentech industry is located in Southern California. At the rate that our economy is going green, no state can afford to ignore it.
Today, Midwestern states have decided, somewhat belatedly, that their best chance to generate prosperity in the 21st century lies in reversing the economic and environmental damage that the region’s 20th century factories caused in the first place.
No region of the United States better understands the potential wealth generated by commanding new markets and the consequences of failing to compete when they change. The Midwest, after all, invented the production practices, made the steel, supplied the vehicles, and manufactured the parts that produced America’s energy-wasting, drive-through economy of the 20th century.
The result in Michigan, Ohio, and other Midwestern states was a way of life that for six decades consistently made it possible for men and women with and without high school educations to earn wages that kept new cars in the driveway, handsome boats at the marina, and comfortable second homes on lakes and rivers.
Today all of that lies in heaps of wrecked factories, bankrupt companies, and desperate neighborhoods urban and rural scattered across the industrial Great Lakes states. Median incomes in the region are near the lowest in the country. Michigan’s jobless rate, 14.1 percent in June, has been the nation’s highest for two straight years. Ohio has lost 500,000 jobs since 2000, more than half in manufacturing.
