Florence Williams is a contributing editor at Outside Magazine. She also frequently writes on science and the environment for the New York Times, OnEarth, High Country News and other publications. A former Ted Scripps Fellow at the University of Colorado, she lives in Colorado with her family.

Veterans Green Jobs was the brainchild of Brett KenCairn, a Wyomingbred community organizer who worked to retrain loggers in the Pacific Northwest after the spotted-owl controversy and then worked with Native Americans on sustainable-forestry projects in Arizona and New Mexico. Now based in Boulder, he saw linking veterans and green jobs as solving two big problems: underemployed vets and an existing workforce too small to tackle global warming. “If we don’t figure out how to mobilize a new workforce at a dramatic scale, our chances of averting climate change are virtually nil,” says KenCairn, who never fought a war but whose father served in Vietnam. “We need to retrofit every building in our built environment. Veterans represent one of the best workforce assets because they’re already
ready for rapid training and deployment.”

…..  Both Reppenhagen and KenCairn expect the military may just be the bridge America needs to popularize the green economy. “The link to average Americans is missing right now,” says Reppenhagen. It’s one thing to want to be a hippie in Boulder and hug a tree; it’s a whole other level to be a veteran and say, ‘Hey I’m coming home from [a] war fighting for oil.’ I think the culture clash could be decreased by realizing there’s something seriously patriotic about energy independence.”