Inspiration for a Green Economy
Van Jones’ new book proposes concrete solutions for today’s economic and environmental problems.By Cameron Cook
November 3, 2008
Stock market busts have become a near daily occurrence, with trillion-dollar drops in mere hours. In September, America lost over 150,000 jobs and with them the livelihoods of countless families. Cities and citizens are straining under the weight of fuel prices and rising health care costs from increased pollution. But just because things look bleak right now doesn’t mean there isn’t hope for the future. Environmental activist Van Jones’ new book, The Green-Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems, provides an in-depth and cohesive strategy for how America can emerge from the fog of carbon emissions and an ever-lagging economy to provide clean and green livelihoods for millions, boost our economy, and save our planet.
Coming out in the midst of the current financial crises and a dramatic election season, the book’s timing and placement is poignant. Jones presents applicable solutions to the economic and environmental problems we face today. The inspirational book systematically approaches what and how a green economy would help alleviate our economic and environmental messes. Jones declares that we need a “Green New Deal,” a set of programs to reinvigorate our infrastructure, our industries, and our communities.
Jones is an environmentalist and founder of Green for All, an organization that seeks to create and promote a green economy through job training and entrepreneurial assistance, and has worked tirelessly to promote the issues of environmental justice and civil rights. Working with the Center for American Progress as a senior fellow, and as the co-founder of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, Jones has become a de facto authority on the intersection of environmental justice and civil rights issues.
The Green New Deal, as Jones terms it, would include, “Permanent and reliable tax breaks [for green companies], putting exponentially more research money on the table, making polluters pay for carbon emissions, and providing green employers with a well-trained, green-collar workforce.” Jones advocates a broad set of programs that would include creating a cap-and-trade market for carbon emissions, investing in infrastructure such as a new energy grid and expanded public transportation, increasing production of renewable energy, increasing vehicle efficiency, and promoting sustainable food communities. He also proposes a controversial policy to eliminate fossil fuel subsidies, which he says would “strip away the $250 billion a year” we need to fund clean-energy initiatives.
Van Jones, Executive Director of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, in Oakland (Flickr user mari-posa).Few can argue that oil companies are in need of subsidies when, according to the New York Times, “Exxon Mobil earned more than $1,287 of profit for every second of 2007.” This election cycle alone, Exxon Mobil has spent over a million dollars to ensure they friendly votes on Capitol Hill and keep subsidies intact. Subsidies are often used to promote growth in industries that have not yet come of age or ones that are currently not profitable, but the government sees them as necessary for growth. The oil companies are far from meeting any of these guidelines, and the new green-economy companies fit such a description perfectly. Even though some oil companies are advertising themselves as green, like BP and its “Beyond Petrol” commercials, these companies are doing little beyond protecting the status quo.
As seen with ethanol, the government has already started to subsidize alternative fuels, but the ultimate effects of ethanol as a fuel or other biodiesels are debatable. Ethanol, which is most often derived from corn, is often times less efficient than gasoline. In an economy where agriculture staples have skyrocketed in recent years and have caused riots around the world, we cannot continue to subsidize feed corn for a scientifically poor yet politically popular alternative.
While the federal government would likely be the biggest partner in a Green New Deal, Jones does not believe that our economic and environmental well-being rests solely upon its shoulders. Instead, Jones proposes that aside from the government, the Green New Deal would be pushed forward by five groups: labor, social justice activists, environmentalists, students, and most interestingly, faith organizations.
Jones realizes that many liberals or progressives question faith organizations in the era of the Christian right, to which he notes that, “One key fact seems to escape their notice. The champions of the civil rights struggle didn’t come marching out of shopping centers in the South. Or libraries. Or high-school gymnasiums. They came marching out of churches.” Aptly acknowledging the likely reaction many (including this reviewer) would have, this serves to not only repudiate many who brush aside religion as a myth, but to also draw connection between the civil rights movement and the current wave of the environmental movement.
More generally, Jones’ list of the main partners of what he deems the “Green Growth Alliance” is important because it includes people from all parts and persuasions in our country. This, as Jones reiterates throughout the book, is key to making our oft-mentioned goal of energy independence a reality. For just like so many other movements in our nation’s history, from women’s suffrage to many civil rights issues, it has taken a coalition of people from varying backgrounds to make change happen.
Lastly, Jones notes that if "we stand for change, we can spark a popular movement with power, influence, magic, and genius. We won’t just have the movement we have always wanted. We will have the country we have always wanted—and the world for which our hearts have longed.” One can’t help but notice that Jones writes this book not as some frustrated know-it-all looking down at the masses, but as someone who genuinely believes that we can do this. Jones presents an argument with short and simple prerequisites: consciousness that our economy and our planet are in trouble. If those are met, The Green-Collar Economy serves to inextricably link those issues’ fates together—along with those of Americans and others around the world.
Cameron Cook is an Events Intern at Campus Progress. He’s an American Studies major at The University of California–Santa Cruz.
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