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November/December 2007 Living Now
Green-Collar Jobs: The Next Step Forward

by Cathy McGuire

As the green economy grows, we can help more than just the environment. Sustainable businesses can lift people out of poverty by providing green-collar jobs.

Van Jones, a champion of green jobs, has a challenge for every American: "Kids have to climb the ladder [out of poverty] but we adults have to make sure the ladder is there."

Jones, who is president of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in Oakland, Calif., has testified before Congress that a national transition towards large-scale use of clean energy technology would not only reduce heat-trapping pollution, but also would create thousands of American jobs and provide underserved communities a green pathway out of poverty.

A Yale-educated attorney, Jones knows first hand the power of a helping hand - he got his college scholarship because his twin sister insisted that the college admit him as well as her. He has spent the rest of his life working to repay that gift by helping others.

Jones got into Yale law school on his own efforts, and was immediately struck by the discrepancy between the wealthy Yalies and the local kids. Many students were doing drugs, but Yale offered "recovery" programs without even affecting the students' grades (let alone criminal charges), whereas the local kids - mostly black - could land in jail for decades. He vowed to find a way to shift that imbalance, to help these kids to find a way out of the ghetto.

For the past 10 years, Jones has worked through the Ella Baker Center to promote social justice in the San Francisco Bay area. As he took on these challenges, he realized that two large problems, the environment and poverty, could be alleviated with one new idea: green-collar jobs for America's poor.

"As much work as it's going take to 'green up' America," Jones says, "there is no reason there won't be a job for anyone who wants it."

The goal is to ensure that this green economy is strong enough to lift people out of poverty. His passion and commitment paid off when he was invited to a meeting with now-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, and presented his idea to her. He was stunned when she called him forward at the subsequent press conference and invited him to explain his green jobs idea. And she championed the passing of the Green Jobs Act (H.R. 2847) through the House in August. The bill is awaiting final approval before being signed into law.

Jones also has achieved miraculous results in Oakland: Last June, the Oakland City Council unanimously voted to fund the Green Jobs Corps at $250,000, despite having "at least 10 factions â?? with only eight members," according to Jones.

According to Jones, there have been three waves of environmentalism, leading to today's green movement. First, conservation began with Teddy Roosevelt and John Muir (at least for white Americans, as he points out - Native Americans had been doing it for centuries.)

The second wave of regulation started when Rachel Carson published Silent Spring in 1963. This led to many government-created changes, but those changes often just pushed pollution into poor areas of the country. Because of this passing of the pollution buck, Jones says that people of color are skeptical of what they see as elite white concern for their own environments. When the wealthy talk about environmental crises, they are often talking about polar bears and penguins, while the poor are talking about their children's asthma or Hurricane Katrina, Jones says.

Jones promotes the third wave of environmentalism: investment in solutions. Rather than focusing purely on the problem, he suggests seeing the potential that technology and training have to help unite the country behind the necessary changes. If we train the next generation of workers to install solar panels, build wind turbines and replant forests, we will also have created the next generation of sustainable engineers who can help us pull the country -- and the world -- back from the brink of ecological collapse.

By joining the social justice and ecology movements, we can create a healthy environment for living and living well.

Visit the Ella Baker Center at www.ellabakercenter.org to support the Green Jobs act. Jones spoke recently at the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) conference. Visit www.noetic.org.