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link Cleaning some of the Fox off of Van Jones

If you want to know what Jones thinks now, instead of what he thought in his early 20s, read his book: The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems. He’s out to save America’s free-market economy and get its people working. If the conservative movement were smart it would take yes for an answer and claim him as one if its own. But then, it’s not smart. It’s Beck.

If it’s not going to claim him, the right is correct to fear him, though.  He has synthesized the best of environmentalism, progressivism, and capitalism into a program with appeal both broad and intense. It’s particularly notable among young people, but Jones gets acclaim from virtually everyone who’s met him or seen him speak. The more his kind of can-do, entrepreneurial, win-win green solutions spread,  the more modern-day conservatives look like panicked, lumbering dinosaurs.

Link via azspot.

I’ve written a lot about this brilliant thinker and charismatic leader.

September 2, 2009

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link An Environmental Brain Drain to D.C.

During the Bush administration, environmentalists wandered in the wilderness. Now that Washington has suddenly become the promised land, many are leaving their groups and heading to jobs in policy.

I feel like I know half the people cited in the blog post (Van Jones, Cathy Zoi, Jonathan Pershing) — they’re always sending me emails! ;)

April 7, 2009

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Set your DVR for two shows on sustainability this week.

Tonight on the History Channel: Modern Marvels looks at Environmental Tech

Take a look at the innovations designed to hold off a global warming meltdown. Visit giant solar energy towers in Spain, install a rooftop wind turbine and ride in a car that runs on air. Will a daring attempt to remove carbon dioxide from our atmosphere by dumping iron in the ocean really work? Discover how everyone can go green with the flick of a switch.

Wednesday on the Discovery Channel: “Earth: The Sequel” (watch preview above)

A show based on the bestselling book of the same name.  In an email to supporters of Green For All, Van Jones wrote:

Our friends at the Environmental Defense Fund have partnered with the Discovery Channel to bring green energy technologies to life as never before.

Am I really writing to ask you to watch TV on Wednesday?

Yes.  Because this special tells the story that the whole nation needs to know: 

We have an abundance of clean energy alternatives already available to solve the global warming crisis and rebuild a clean, green America.

March 10, 2009

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link (Now) It’s Official: Van Jones Tapped as Green Jobs Adviser

There were rumors Jones was going to be the Administration’s “green jobs czar,” which would have been frankly awesome.  But “special adviser” is pretty cool, too.  Just the fact that this means he will have a national platform is great; there is no more inspiring evangelist for environmental justice.   Get this man on CNN and millions will be singin’ the praises of green jobs and demanding that we green America’s ghettos.

White House House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) chairwoman Nancy Sutley has announced that Van Jones will help direct the Obama administration’s efforts to create new green collar jobs.

The AP is reporting that Jones, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, will be begin work next week as the special adviser for green jobs, enterprise and innovation, with a particular focus on “vulnerable communities.”

March 10, 2009

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“Green Anthem” by Rapper, Activist, and Green For All Academy Fellow, Tem Blessed.

Tem Blessed spoke at the Good Jobs Green Jobs conference; they played this music video to pump up the crowd before Van Jones took the stage.

February 17, 2009

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photo After his knock-out speech at the Good Jobs Green Jobs conference, Van Jones invited the whole Green For All team up on stage.  I had tears in my eyes.  Talk about hope! If you get a chance to hear Van speak, run, don’t walk.

After his knock-out speech at the Good Jobs Green Jobs conference, Van Jones invited the whole Green For All team up on stage.  I had tears in my eyes.  Talk about hope!

If you get a chance to hear Van speak, run, don’t walk.

February 8, 2009

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photo 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!”

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!”

January 10, 2009

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3Qs with Dan Handeen of the University of Minnesota

The building industry has a nasty impact on the planet.  One of the most common building materials, concrete, is alone responsible for 5 to 10 per cent of global CO2 emissions (!!).  Dan Handeen is working to change this.  A Research Fellow at the Center of Sustainable Building Research in the College of Design at the University of Minnesota, Dan holds a Master of Architecture degree from the institution and a long-standing dedication to sustainable design and construction.

One of the projects he’s worked on is the Athena EcoCalculator, an application that allows architects and designers to analyze building materials based on their environmental impact.  Unlike other tools, which categorize materials according to attributes — whether they’re recycled or locally sourced — but say little about their cradle-to-grave impact, the EcoCalculator factors in information through the entire lifespan of materials, from extraction from the earth to transportation to disposal or recycling.  The power of the tool is that it makes a complex set of information accessible and easy-to-use, encouraging and enabling architects to make wise, eco-conscious decisions.

Dan is also an assistant project manager to the University of Minnesota’s Solar Decathlon team.  Students compete in the biannual contest to make a small house that is heated, cooled, and powered entirely on the sun’s energy.

He grew up on Moonstone Farm outside of Montevideo, Minnesota, on land homesteaded by his great-great-grandparents in 1872.  In the 1980s, his parents switched from raising soybeans to grass-fed beef because the latter had less of an impact on the land (“Cooking Naturally at Moonstone Farm”).

1. What was your environmental epiphany?

Growing up on a farm, I was actively exposed to relationships between natural elements, which became my foundation for looking at the world at a holistic level.  Then I took a permaculture course and learned about the role of humans in constructed systems, and how one aspect can have influence the other.  I got into home building for a small company and it was like, Holy crap!  I was seeing all these wasted materials.  It kind of drove me crazy.  And it got me into architecture.  In architecture school, there was a seduction of high tech materials that were going to save us from global warming.  I started to realize that lower tech things are going to save us in the long run.

2. Who or what are you inspired by right now in the green movement?

Van Jones, obviously.  I think he should be Secretary of Energy.  He understands the human relationship component in sustainability.  Janine Benyus, a biomimicry guru.  And people just doing cool stuff in the back yard, like urban chicken farmers.

3. What are three ways you actively reduce your carbon footprint and one way you don’t?

I bike or bus to work.  I compost.  I eat beef only if it’s from my parents’ farm.  On the other hand, I fly a lot for my job.  And I really like shoes.  Tennis shoes — Nike, Adidas, Pumas….

December 9, 2008

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quote
Even if growth in global demand was at zero for the next 22 years, in order to compensate the decline in the existing fields, we need to increase the production by around 45 million barrels per day (bpd), which is the equivalent to bringing four new Saudi Arabias to the markets.
—

Fatih Birol, author of the IEA’s World Energy Outlook which published today. (via dihard)

Most of our foreign oil goes straight into our cars.  So weatherizing our homes and commercial spaces, building a new electric grid, and developing massive-scale renewable energy farms (all good, necessary, economy-boosting actions) won’t quite cut it.  They will reduce our energy use, yes, but that will be mostly coal and natural gas.  If we’re going to tackle our addiction to oil, we need to tackle transportation (and as this 22-year projection makes clear, we have no other choice).

If I were drafting the legistation I would ensure that the bailout of American automakers has a clear price attached: you must produce sustainable cars that go far beyond the 40ish MPG of the Prius.

And then there is our mass transit systems, which have been undermined by legislators for decades.  A federal investment in public transport — perhaps bringing it to the level that the government is currently funding highways, which is four times as much as mass transit — would do a great deal to slash our dependence on oil.

Van Jones writes that as a result of chronic underinvestment in public transport,

fewer than 3 percent of trips are made by public transport. If we increased that number to 10 percent of all trips (to the European level), we could reduce our dependence on oil by more than 40 percent, which is nearly as much oil as we import from Saudia Arabia every year.

November 12, 2008

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…Senator Barack Obama has come out in the past week saying that this clean energy revolution is going to be his main priority. You’re going to see something very interesting happen in American politics. We’ll call it the rise of the green Keynesians, the idea that the government is going to have to play a role in the economy, we’re going to have even more deficit spending to kind of stimulate the economy, to move us through. And when you look at, you know, what should you spend that money on, last time we had a stimulus, we gave out a bunch of checks to people who ran out to Wal-Mart and bought flat-screen TVs, so we stimulated the economy—it was just the Chinese economy, not this one. The smart way to do a stimulus is to invest in infrastructure. And the smart infrastructure that we need right now is infrastructure that gets the price of energy down, that gets us more energy independent.
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Van Jones (via azspot)

As Josh Dorfman said, “Van is the man.”

October 28, 2008

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