New Yorker environmental writer Elizabeth Kolbert’s profile of Van Jones is well worth reading: “Greening the Ghetto: Can a remedy serve for both global warming and poverty?”

I found the account of his beginnings and growth as an activist — in just ten short years — to be particularly interesting.  He was greatly influenced by Julia Butterfly Hill, the young woman who spent two years in a California redwood to protect it from being cut down.

“We fit together like pieces of a puzzle,” said Hill, who, after saving the tree, founded a nonprofit group called Circle of Life. “I brought the piece that we are not separate from this planet. His piece was we need to uplift everyone. We were committed to seeing how those pieces fit together.” First, the two spoke together in private; then they began to appear together publicly. Sometimes, when Hill was invited to lecture at a college campus, she would ask Jones to come along.

“We could see underneath all of it was the idea of disposability,” Jones told me. “The idea that you’ve got disposable people, a disposable planet. We would just kind of go around and talk about this. People would listen and they would come to one conclusion: they must be sleeping together. We weren’t, but it was the only thing anybody got out of it. It was very frustrating.”

I also enjoyed an anecdote about how the rallying cry of “green jobs” came to Congress.  In early 2007, Jones was one of 40 environmental activists who Nancy Pelosi invited to a roundtable discussion in San Francisco to discuss approaches to climate change.  When she asked if there were any more questions before adjourning,

Jones raised his hand. “I said, ‘My question is: Will you say four words at the press conference?’ And she just kind of looked at me. So of course at this point everybody in the room started to lean away from me.

“I said, ‘If you say these four words, I guarantee you that you’ll keep the Democratic majority in the House for the next twenty years. If you say these four words, you’ll expand the coalition around global warming in a way that nobody even thinks is possible. If you say these four words, you’ll give help and hope to people who haven’t had any for a long time.’ Finally, she said, ‘Well, what are the four words?’ I said, ‘Clean Energy Jobs Bill.’ ”

A little while later, at the press conference, Pelosi called Jones up to the microphone. “We’ll say it together,” she said. “Clean Energy Jobs Bill!”