Van Jones
Van Jones
Anthony Kapel "Van" Jonesis an American political activist, commentator, author and attorney. He is a cofounder of several nonprofit organizations including the Dream Corps, a “social justice accelerator” which presently operates three advocacy initiatives: #cut50, #YesWeCode and Green for All. He is the author of two New York Times bestselling books, The Green Collar Economy and Rebuild The Dream. He has served as President Barack Obama’s Special Advisor for Green Jobs, as a distinguished visiting fellow at Princeton University, and...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth20 September 1968
CityJackson, TN
CountryUnited States of America
I used to be called the "Green Jack Kemp" because of my promotion of entrepreneurial and work-based solutions for poor people.
I've never launched any initiative or campaign that people thought was a slam dunk.
Environmentalists and clean energy champions should stop telling people that we are working for "sustainability," which nobody understands.
Though the rampant racial injustices throughout the criminal justice system were offensive to me and to millions of other people, I've never drawn a tight circle around the black community to define the limits of my moral concern. But that narrative tends to get imposed on you, if you're an African-American activist.
The dirty energy crowd can be offset only by the power of the rising clean energy sector and the American people, aroused across party lines.
Too often we think about the green economy as an elite market niche, one in which affluent people spend more money to consume greener and cleaner products.
We tend to overlook the fact that a mature clean energy economy in fact will give an opportunity to ordinary people to earn more money as clean energy workers/entrepreneurs - and save more money, through conservation and energy efficiency.
I don't like to comment on a specific local issue because there are plenty of people already working on the problem who know a lot more about it than I do.
People in red states and blue states can agree that if we can fight pollution and poverty at the same time, letting people work their way out of poverty without undermining community health, we have a moral obligation to do so.
People forget: solar panels don't put themselves up. Wind turbines don't manufacture themselves. Businesses don't retrofit themselves to waste less energy and water, nor do homes weatherize themselves.
To green our country, regular people will have to put on hard hats and work boots, roll up their sleeves - and get to work.
In other words: we can fight pollution and poverty at the same time, with the same method. We can beat global warming and the global recession at the same time, with the same method. We can do this by putting people to work re-powering America with clean energy.
We should tell people we are working to protect our country. We are working to make America stronger for the long run.
To make sure we aren't training people for jobs that don't exist, the government should provide companies with loans or loan guarantees. And the government should also directly employ people to do things like coastal restoration, land restoration, reforestation and similar programs that absorb carbon and protect America's beauty.