(MI) The Detroit News – While Michigan struggles with a 12 percent unemployment rate — one of the highest in the nation — great strides are being taken to retrain our work force for the green jobs of the future and get us back to work. And these efforts will have lasting impacts on the quality of our land, air and water.

Driving investment in clean energy technologies will create tens of thousands of high-paying American jobs — jobs that can’t be outsourced. And we need those jobs now more than ever.

Michigan’s recently released Green Jobs Report shows we already have 109,067 green jobs. In fact, green job creation is far outpacing the rest of our economy with more than 350 green firms creating more than 2,500 jobs in our state — an employment expansion of 7.7 percent. Our manufacturing sector is in dire straights, but investing in a clean energy economy, retraining workers and retooling manufacturing plants to enter the green marketplace will get our economy moving forward again while decreasing our nation’s dangerous dependence on carbon-based fuels. More