Author Van Jones

Activist and political advisor Van Jones is the author of the highly acclaimed book, "The Green Collar Economy." The book, a New York Times best-seller, and his work helped bring social justice issues to the forefront of the green movement. Honored by Time magazine as one of the Heroes of the Environment, he talks to GreenBiz about his vision for a new, green economy.


Leslie Guevarra: Van Jones, thank you for joining us today.

Van Jones: I'm happy to be here.

LG: What was your inspiration for this book? Was it a single thing, a collection of things, did you have a eureka moment?

VJ: Well, I did have a eureka moment. I've been working in urban communities for a long time, working with kids in trouble trying to reform, police departments and juvenile justice systems, and I just burned out and started going from Oakland to Marin County, where there's a lot of meditation centers, and just discovered a whole new world.,You know, a lot of stuff over there they don't have in Oakland, like salads and, you know, stuff like that. Tofu and hybrid cars, and I said, "Jeez, all this beautiful green stuff, services, products, new industries that are rising, the solar industry. You know, we should have that, some of that stuff in urban America — people who are disadvantaged, poor people in rural America, Appalachia. How do we get this green economy to be expanded to include more people, get it strong enough so it can lift people out of poverty and create jobs for people?" And it was in that inquiry that I wound up writing this book.

LG: Tell us about the urgency factors involved with this. Are there a top three or four key areas that for right now are really critical game changing opportunities?  

Click here to read an excerpt.

VJ: Well, I think so. I think first of all we have to recognize that for a long time we thought about the green economy as you know kind of a niche economy where people who have a little bit of extra money might pay a green premium to have a more eco-friendly product — mainly thinking about it as a place for affluent people to spend money, which is very, very important. I think now we have to expand the concept and also think about how ordinary people can earn money and even how low income people can save money, and that's gonna turn it from a niche economy into the main economy in the United States.

And so in terms of game changing opportunities, the first thing is when people hear the term "green job," they often think about Buck Rogers or George Jetson, you know, some sci-fi job. But the real, probably the most important, tool for greening the economy — the high-tech tool — is a caulk gun and a clipboard to begin to weatherize buildings and retrofit them so that we leak less energy. Well, that's your big carbon reduction opportunity right there. You don't have to come up with any new technologies for that, but you could put a lot of people to work, so here's an opportunity.

This winter's coming up; we know that energy prices might be very, very high, we have all these homes that are leaking energy, people are gonna get hit with $1,000 and $2,000 monthly energy bills that are just gonna be too high for many people. They're gonna have to choose between warm beds and warm meals for their kids. Why don't we create green collar jobs this winter by getting the stimulus package that Nancy Pelosi said she's gonna push through to include a few hundred million dollars to retrofit and weatherize buildings and homes across the country?

That would bring carbon down because drafty buildings create cold people, but they create a hot planet because those  power stations have to work that much harder, burn that much more coal to heat these leaky homes. So you could bring carbon down, you could bring energy bills down, you could bring jobs up, you could bring home values up, and more importantly, if you weatherize enough buildings, you bring down the aggregate demand for energy throughout the economy. That brings down all energy prices. So you could help the poorest people, but you could also help everybody else.

Those are the kinds of practical solutions we could get done starting this winter, where you could put people to work, and while you're weatherizing those homes, put some solar panels up, and you could have a dramatic move in the direction of a green economy.