Team Green – why teenagers could save the world

The most abiding and incurable aspect of the recession remains the 100,000’s of thousands of unemployed teenagers. As the government announces schemes to absorb them into training and ‘work creation ‘ programmes, I return to a theme I have blogged about in the past. The solution is staring government in the face.

You don’t need a ‘Climate Change Conference’ in Copenhagen to tell you that Britain remains one of the most inefficient and carbon emitting economies in the industrialised world – it’s just that people don’t notice because China and the US are so much worse.

Our inefficiency is rooted in our collective failure both to discover the scale of badly insulated housing, commercial, and industrial buildings in the country – and the will to do anything about it.

This is why I am thinking about how government could set up a programme that is not designed to employ young people, but is designed to inspire the nation to green its housing and commercial building stock.

The ‘GreenUK’ project would divide the country into its local authority constituent parts and then establish teams – ‘Green Teams’ of young people to make an inventory of every building in the country and its insulation needs.

Each team would be led by a more experienced team leader. There would be data bases established to manage the statistics from the operation.

A second wave of Green Teams, trained for the purpose, would be established to insulate the buildings on the basis of the needs established by the first wave of green teams.

Insulation is not a complex job – depending mainly on loft lagging and cavity wall injection.

It doesn’t take a genius to recognise that huge swathes of young unemployed could be asked to volunteer at minimum wage rates to undertake the work. The project would have to have the feel of saving ‘saving the planet’, ‘saving the nation’. It would require dedicated and inspiring leadership. The media would have to put its shoulder to the wheel.

But if the threat to the planet is as we are told it is by the Copenhageners and the threat to the futures of young people already on the dole queues is so great – combining both to green Britain by 2020 is a deliverable solution on both fronts.

It would also prove socio-economically cheaper than attempting to green Britain any other way, or employ the young any other way.

‘GreenUK’ – ‘Team Green’ . You KNOW it makes sense!