Construction workers in South Boston learn the principles of sustainable construction practices.

“Everybody said ‘green building,’” one hard-hatted worker remarks, “I said, ‘What do you mean? They’re going to paint this green?”

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.”

Wind industry jobs jumped to 85,000 in 2008, a 70% increase from the previous year, according to a report released Tuesday from the American Wind Energy Association. In contrast, the coal industry employs about 81,000 workers. (Those figures are from a 2007 U.S. Department of Energy report but coal employment has remained steady in recent years though it’s down by nearly 50% since 1986.) Wind industry employment includes 13,000 manufacturing jobs concentrated in regions of the country hard hit by the deindustrialization of the past two decades.

Hat tip to Jake Brewer.

Jen Nedeau raises this timely and critical question at Change.org (via IGHIH).  She quotes a Dec. 2008 op-ed by Linda Hirshman in the New York Times:

The bulk of the stimulus program will provide jobs for men, because building projects generate jobs in construction, where women make up only 9 percent of the work force.

It turns out that green jobs are almost entirely male as well, especially in the alternative energy area. A broad study by the United States Conference of Mayors found that half the projected new jobs in any green area are in engineering, a field that is only 12 percent female, or in the heavily male professions of law and consulting; the rest are in such traditional male areas as manufacturing, agriculture and forestry. And like companies that build roads, alternative energy firms also employ construction workers and engineers.

I run an internship program that places City University of New York students with companies, governmental agencies, and nonprofits that are working to improve the energy performance of NYC buildings, and I’m always on the look-out for excellent women candidates. The ones we’ve found are mostly MBA candidates who work on research projects rather than hands-on assignments (the engineering, construction management, and architecture technology students are male by a wide margin).

The sectors of the grey economy that stand the most to gain from a sustainable revolution are the very ones where the gender gap is most pronounced.  My organization convenes meetings of stakeholders from across the sustainable building sector, and they are, if you’ll excuse the phrase, a sausage fest.  Same goes for similar events I regularly attend around the city.

But women make up about 30-40% of the group — and they hold some of the most important positions in the big-player governmental agencies and private companies (one case in point is the relatively new “Sustainability Director” title, now common at major property management firms, which seems to be predominately filled by smart women who strike a balance between environmental altruism and the pursuit of profits.)  Women will play a big role in shaping this new economy — I hope they play a role in building it, as well.