LG: Would you amplify on your thoughts about social equity and the green collar economy?  

VJ: Well, I think that's the next big step. I mean the good thing is that we have had people who had both the material means and the moral commitment to jumpstart a lot of these green products and services and technologies. So the early adopters, I think, we have to be very thankful to. But now the big question is, how do we include more people?

We don't want to wind up with a situation where we have just the green economy essentially locked into this kind of eco-niche or, you know, in the worst-case scenario wind up with something like eco-Apartheid, which I talked about in the book, where you can have a whole society with ecological haves and ecological have nots. You know, some people with healthy organic food and clean air and clean water and hybrid cars and everything you can imagine.  Then other people still struggling and gasping and coughing in the fumes of the last century's pollution-based economy, with bad food, no jobs and a toxic environment.

We want to make sure as we build this green economy, and as we green the existing economy, we use it as an opportunity to declare some new values, which would say in our green economy that we're building, we don't have any throw-away resources, we don't have any throw-away species, but we also don't have any throw-away people.  We don't have any throw-away neighborhoods or nations.  Those communities that were locked out of the benefits of the last century's pollution-based economy should be locked into the new clean and green economy.  We should build a green wave, but we ought to make sure that green wave lifts all boats, and that means making sure that the work and the wealth and the health benefits of this transition get to as many people as possible.

We want young guys who are standing on street corners to be able to get jobs installing solar panels or weatherizing homes or helping to manufacture wind turbines.  We want our rural workers in communities that are struggling and suffering to be able to be put back to work with wind farms and smart biofuels, and we want to make sure that old Rosie the Riveter comes back -  not to make tanks, but maybe to make these new technologies that can - you know, fabricating solar panels, etc., things that will actually make us more energy secure, make resource wars less likely.

So there's an opportunity for us I think to put America back to work, to bring people into the labor market and into jobs and entrepreneurial opportunities that have not been there before, to tell young people, "Hey, we want you to become not just the workers, but also the owners, the inventors, the investors."  We're talking about green careers into a growing part of the economy.  I think that's very, very important for us to do as a country.

LG: Van, are there some certain action points that we need to take care of right now to move us from here to there?

VJ: Well, you know I think that there are. The main thing is to go from having a movement that primarily focuses on changing light bulbs, as important as that is, to changing laws. And you know literally, in our communities there are opportunities for our utility companies, our mayors, our community colleges to begin getting together to figure out smart ways to finance mass projects for weatherization - again, weatherizing buildings by blowing in insulation - you know, green insulation, not the old toxic stuff we used to use - replacing the glass that is rattling around in there and letting energy out, replacing those old, inefficient boilers - that's what we call weatherization retrofit - and then also renewable solar panels and those kinds of things. There's opportunity for, even at the local level before Congress acts, to begin to get local utilities and community colleges and mayors and city councils working to get this agenda jump started. It's great for the earth because you're cutting carbon immediately. You aren't waiting for technological breakthroughs in burning coal or whatever.