Mass layoffs make headlines, but new jobs arrive quietly. Not many people know that about 750,000 Americans already work in what can called "green jobs." They make energy-efficient products, produce renewable power and invent cleaner technologies, among other things.

Green jobs were the focus of the inaugural meeting of the Obama administration's Middle Class Task Force in Philadelphia last month. Vice President Joe Biden highlighted the arrival of thousands of jobs already being created by a fast growing clean-energy economy -- well paid, made-in-America jobs.

And that's just the beginning: President Barack Obama and Congress can and should create millions more green jobs by passing and signing climate-change legislation that includes a cap-and-invest system to regulate carbon emissions and investments to grow clean energy technologies that will repower, refuel and rebuild our economy.

A $150-billion green investment program that targets energy efficiency, mass transit and renewable energy would create about 3 million jobs, according estimates from the Political Economic Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. A green investment program is a classic win-win-win, generating new jobs, stimulating the slumping economy and addressing the threat of global warming, all at once.

We know firsthand here in Pennsylvania that investments in energy efficiency and clean-energy technologies have the ability to reboot our ailing economy. Thanks to the state's renewable energy policies and ground-breaking partnerships between business and labor, Pennsylvania is becoming a leader in attracting investments in clean-energy technologies.

In early 2005, Gamesa, a Spanish wind-technology corporation, located its first North American plant just outside Pittsburgh. The company has since expanded its Pennsylvania presence to include a Philadelphia headquarters and a second plant in Fairless Hills. Gamesa has invested more than $200 million and sustained 1,000 well-paid, career-track, green jobs in the state since January 2005 despite market swings due to the recent global credit crisis.

It was no coincidence that Gamesa chose to locate its facilities in Pennsylvania. State and local government officials, workforce-development groups and organized labor set the stage with a ready market and resources to attract the company's investments. Pennsylvania's landmark state policy requiring 18 percent of the state's electricity to come from renewable sources by 2021 was a major factor in creating a favorable economic environment for the wind turbines that Gamesa produces.

Key to Gamesa's success in Pennsylvania has been its innovative partnership with the United Steelworkers of America. We are proud to be at the forefront of America's new energy economy, creating sustainable power and family-sustaining jobs with benefits.

Our successful partnership in the state rebuts what, until recently, had been the conventional wisdom that enacting strong environmental standards would require economic sacrifices. Together, Gamesa and the United Steelworkers have proven that policies to curb CO2 emissions and invest in clean energy can help turn Pennsylvania, a state once plagued by economic demise and plant closings, into a national model of how to rebuild our economy and create high-paying, secure jobs for the future.

Dozens of other companies are ready to follow the path we've blazed in Pennsylvania. Only modest government subsidies are needed to accelerate the growth of renewables here in Pennsylvania and across the county, and the size of these subsidies pale in comparison to what other fossil- and nuclear-fuel sources have received traditionally from public sector programs over the past 50 years.

But not just any green investment program will do. To create as many jobs as possible and stimulate the economy quickly, economists recommend investments in energy-efficiency retrofits, public transportation, "smart grid" electrical transmission systems, renewable wind power, solar power and non-food biomass fuels.

To ensure that the next generation of energy production puts Americans back to work and does not leave our nation again dependent on foreign dictators for our fuel needs, it is critical that we grow these industries with American workers and components.

A bill that caps carbons emissions and simultaneously invests in a green economic-recovery program would strengthen the U.S. economy in the short run and lay the groundwork for long-term sustainable growth for the rising, working middle class. It would cut our national energy bill, create untold numbers of jobs and make significant strides towards fighting global warming.