In the past decade, Michigan – once home to the U.S. auto industry – has lost half its blue-collar, well-paying jobs as first Ford, then Chrysler and GM, saw U.S. auto sales tank on rising imports and cheaper cars.

Then, beginning March of this year, the unthinkable happened. What had previously been an American icon, GM/Chrysler, faced bankruptcy and the kind of restructuring that has seen even more jobs exported overseas. With those jobs also went all the related manufacturing activities that produced parts and accessories for the auto market. Estimates suggest that, for every job lost at GM, five more were lost in peripheral industries.

Michigan's official unemployment rate subsequently hit 15.2 percent in June, though Andy Levin of Michigan’s Dept. of Energy, Labor and Economic Growth says it is closer to 22.5 percent. The national average is 9.5 percent. Many have fallen through the unemployment cracks, even though three federal extensions now provide a full 79 weeks (1.5 years) of compensation.

Now, thanks to Michigan’s No Worker Left Behind program, launched in 2007, 80,000 workers have so far been retrained, many of them under the Green Jobs Initiative. In fact, according to a May 2009 Green Jobs report, the state now supports 109,067 green jobs, 96,767 having a direct impact on the new green energy economy and the balance representing support jobs. This puts Michigan’s green job category at 3 percent of overall employment.

No Worker Left Behind provides scholarships and tuition funding for unemployed Michigan residents, or those earning less than $40,000 dollars a year. A newer initiative, proposed by President Barack Obama, hopes to extend the program, and the funding, to by $12 billion to aid those unemployed who are still left behind.

Many of these green jobs are in solar energy, and at Henry Ford Community College in Dearborn, laid-off auto workers are retraining to install and maintain photovoltaic (PV) solar panels. The curriculum is one of several the college has instituted as part of its new alternative energy technology platform, and a perfect storm of circumstance – GM’s failure, falling solar panel prices, the potential for Peak Oil in a decade, and a president’s commitment to renewable energy and renewable energy jobs – appears to have reached a conflux whose effect can’t yet be statistically calculated, but may the perfect driver for America’s green energy future.

A prime example would be Ken Stahovec, 46, who – after 23 years as a design and project engineer for various auto suppliers and manufacturers – is now working toward an associate degree in renewable energy technology.

Of course, until the economy catches up, there are still far too many workers for the available green jobs, even though solar energy is proving a winner in the Upper Midwest, where cooler temperatures overall help prevent PV and thin film systems against thermal degradation.

The fortunate thing is that America has been here before, both before and after WW II, and dealt with the problem. A new WPA, based on the model instituted by former President Roosevelt in 1939 but aimed at renewable energy, could readily bridge the gap. Now all that remains (to make solar and other renewables a viable part of the nation’s energy mix) is to remind politicians that jobs come even before carbon emission regulations and bank bailouts.