Van Jones, Green Superstar
November 27, 2008 by greenie
Van Jones is an extraordinary speaker. But more importantly, his soaring speech is grounded firmly in the rock of reality. His grounding comes at least in part from his 10 years at the Ella Baker Center which he cofounded to "document, challenge, and expose human rights abuses." Since then the center has become a highly respected institution in the Bay Area.
His new organization Green For All, "dedicated to building an inclusive green economy strong enough to lift people out of poverty," was launched at the Clinton Global Initiative conference one year ago and has already built a huge following and scored some impressive organizing numbers. He also managed to start a successful organization in response to Hurricane Katrina along with myriad of other accomplishments. He's a whirlwind!
His new book, The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems, is a runaway hit among the greensters and has made it to the New York Times Bestseller List. In it he takes a hard look at the state of the environmental movement and finds it lacking diversity and a holistic vision for the future. His most important message is that we need all hands on deck for the future, including the highly educated and the uneducated, the yuppies and the hipsters and the street kids and the blue collar workers and the unions and, well, everyone.
Jones is already working on the incoming Obama administration to push for a green economic stimulus. From a recent interview:
"Our best economists are saying this is the time to do some deficit spending in a smart way. We just had a silly stimulus where we passed out checks to everyone, who then turned around and went to Wal-Mart and bought flat-screen TVs that stimulated the economy of China. Then we did this $700 billion bailout that didn't stimulate things very well either. Between now and March there will likely be a third stimulus. I think it should be a green stimulus. Don't pass out checks to people."
"The low-hanging fruit is a massive program to retrofit America, to weatherize millions and millions of American buildings to leak less energy. That's not some new space-age technology, that's using the caulk gun; it's what we have now. Starting there, we can take existing technology and an idle workforce and power ourselves through the recession."
We'll be hearing a lot more from Van Jones in the future. Meanwhile, you can hear him for yourself here.
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