Newly elected U.S. Representative Kathy Dahlkemper, Democrat, from the 3rd district in Pennsylvania, discusses landscape architecture, green jobs, and running a carbon-neutral campaign.
Representative Dahlkemper, who used to be a co-owner of a small landscape architecture firm with her husband, a landscape architect, says her work has prepared her for Congress: “In terms of being a co-owner of a small landscape architecture firm, I think one of the things it does is help you to look pro-actively, maybe instead of reactively, because so much of landscape architecture is really strategic planning. It’s having that vision. Landscape architects are architects of the future. I think of all those different aspects of landscape architecture. I think I can use those in Congress to move things forward. “
Representative Dahlkemper supports expanding green jobs, but wonders whether the U.S. educational system is providing the right skills for people to take advantage of these opportunities. “There is a lot of green technology that is going to create jobs. It’s going to expand what we envision when we think of green collar jobs. We’re going to have construction jobs focused on retro-fitting for energy efficiency. You call them green jobs. How far you can expand that definition out? I guess this is the question. We need to make sure our students coming out of school are ready for the jobs of the future. That’s going to be a big component to this. Are we teaching our students at the high school level, technical school level, and collegiate level what needs to be taught?”
On running a carbon-neutral campaign, Dahlkemper says: “We calculated the mileage we drove, the energy of the computers we used within the campaign, the energy from the events that we had. We used a formula then came up with the amount of carbon emissions. We were contributing that amount to try to make our campaign carbon neutral. We purchased carbon off-sets.”
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