Van Jones: The New Al Gore
It's almost hard to believe that environmentalism is where it is today. There's no doubt that it's received a full facelift after being wrestled from the hippy culture of the 1970s, even down to rebranding "environmentalism" as "green". I don't think anyone could have ever predicted that giant corporations like Walmart would even entertain talk of changing what they sell and how they do business.
So it's a kind of unfortunate irony that, while capitalists are starting to make the connection between going green and making green, there's a growing rift between the working class and "environmental elites". What started as a left wing movement is now in a position of having to win over the political left.
Which is why the work Van Jones is doing is so important. In an interview with The Sun, he talks about the need to find solutions that solve global problems, without forcing people into the impossible dilemma of feeding themselves or cutting their carbon emissions:
It used to be that, to people working for racial justice, the environment was a side issue. The same was true of those working for the environment: racial justice was an add-on. That approach won’t work anymore. Social problems are driving ecological problems, which are feeding back into social problems. You have to deal with both at the same time. If you try to fix poverty with suburban sprawl and pollution-based economic development, you are going to sink the environment. But if you preserve the environment by outlawing development, you then strand poor people and displace workers. They’re not going to starve to death so that you can have trees. They are going to fight for their survival. You have got to come up with economic development that honors the real constraints of the natural world. All roads lead to the same solution: a green-collar-jobs agenda that puts people to work reengineering our production, waste, energy, and water processes.
"Green collar jobs" sums it up perfectly: an economy with new opportunities and new technologies that solve environmental problems, while improving the lives of people and their families.
Bonus quote:
That is the primary lesson of Katrina: In a flood, there is no room for an ideology that says, “Let your neighbor sink or swim.” We need a philosophy that says, “We are all in this together.” We are now entering an age of disasters, an age of storms, an age of perils. Rugged individualism isn’t going to cut it.
[Via No Impact Man]
