The presidential campaigns and their armies of consultants are well aware that a jittery American public yearns for jobs. Yet there is a dearth of new thinking on how to create solid jobs in the manufacturing sector, here and now. What's being overlooked is the potential for new job creation through environmental protection. We need an active, large-scale job-creation effort akin to a Green WPA.

Job creation and environmental protection are far from irreconcilable, as many assume; in fact, this idea is feasible and practical. Who would have thought "sheet-metal worker" was a green job, dependent on environmental regulation? But in 2002, pollution-abatement and -control programs created, directly and indirectly, roughly 12,000 jobs for sheet-metal workers, according to Management Information Services, a research firm specializing in data on the environmental industry.

Likewise, who would have thought that Indiana, king of the Rust Belt, had a thriving environmental industry? By 2000 it was generating $4.9 billion in sales, $382 million in profits and supporting roughly 110,000 jobs of all kinds, including manufacturing jobs producing high-efficiency heating, ventilation and cooling equipment; cleaner fiber processing; and equipment for pollution-control scrubbers. Therma-Tru, which manufactures in Butler, is one of the largest US manufacturers of insulated, energy-efficient residential doors.

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