A month ago, July unemployment, at 5.7 percent, was the highest in four years. The August numbers just came in, and they're even worse - 6.1 percent unemployment, the highest in five years.

But as I wrote last month, there is a solution: the green economy. Jobs related to new energy technologies are the one area of the market that is growing, and at a rapid pace.

A new book by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution - And How it Can Renew America, makes the same point. I saw Friedman interviewed on Meet the Press on Sunday. He said that in his recent trip to China, he told those resisting clean energy to go ahead and choke themselves with coal. Because while they're doing that, the U.S. can develop the clean energy technologies that China will then need to buy from us to clean up the mess.

Friedman says that whoever wins the clean energy race will be the new economic power in the world, and he's right. For more, check out the book by EDF president Fred Krupp, Earth: The Sequel.

This post is by Sheryl Canter, an online writer and editorial manager at Environmental Defense Fund.