This is a guest post by Field Correspondent Catherine Farmer, sophomore at East Chapel Hill High School in North Carolina. 

I recently read an article from the Wall Street Journal titled “Generation Jobless: For Those Under 24, A Portrait in Crisis”. It’s a great article, and it brought up a very valid point: unemployment for recent college graduates is rising as the economy stays in a slump. As someone who is going to be off to college in a few years and also as someone who will be entering the “real world” of jobs and business in a few years after that, this article made me think: what do we need to do to fix this problem?

Obviously, our country needs new jobs created, and in the opinion of many, the best way to do that would be to move towards what is commonly referred to as a green economy. As the United Nations Environment Programme eloquently put it, a green economy is one that results in “improved human well-being and social equity, while significantly reducing environmental risks and ecological sacrifices.” Basically, it’s a win-win situation: we work towards fixing climate change issues while adding many new jobs. Unemployment rates drop, and the planet is impacted in a very positive way.

A green economy isn’t an impractical theory: the US Green Building Council (if you’ve ever seen LEED certification on a building, they’re the ones behind it) predicts that green building will add or help 7.9 million jobs and contribute $554 million to the US gross domestic product. The great part? Green building is just one job in an entire field of careers that are just starting to become available or will become available in the near future. Think of all the job opportunities that may open up: careers in renewable energy, eco-friendly city planning, low-carbon transportation…the list goes on and on.

We all know that our economy isn’t doing that great right now. According to the Wall Street Journal article, the economy is causing 16.7% of people under the age 24 of to have major trouble finding jobs. Even if you don’t know someone affected by that statistic, chances are you’ll know someone who can’t find a job soon. Unfortunately, that’s the way things are going to be – unless we change something. As a country, and on an individual level as well, we can start looking for “greener” ways to do things. In my opinion the best thing to to would be to get two important tasks done at once: lower the unemployment rate while simultaneously lowering carbon emissions.