Green-jobs activist to serve Obama administration

Environmental activist and author Van Jones, one of the first to recognize the power of a "green collar" job corps as a tool for social justice, has been tapped by the Obama administration to serve as special adviser for green jobs, enterprise, and innovation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ).

Under his new post, which he'll start Monday, Jones will shape and advance the administration's energy and climate initiatives "with a specific interest in improvements and opportunities for vulnerable communities," said Nancy Sutley, chair of the CEQ, in a statement Tuesday.

Van Jones, founder of Green For All, on Monday will start a new post as special adviser for green jobs, enterprise, and innovation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

(Credit: Green For All)

The Yale-trained attorney from Tennessee made a name for himself in the San Francisco Bay Area through his work on youth-violence prevention and police- and youth-justice reform with the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, which he co-founded 11 years ago in Oakland, Calif.

More recently, however, he's been catapulted to the national stage by his push to get national funding for green jobs training. He also launched Green For All, an organization dedicated to building an inclusive green economy strong enough to lift people out of poverty. And his recent book, "The Green Collar Economy," made The New York Times best-seller list for nonfiction hardcover books.

His hope is that low-income, minority communities will be able to share in the potential fortunes of the emerging clean-tech economy.

"We need to be very sure we are not replicating the mistakes from the dot-com days when we set ourselves up for a digital divide," he told CNET News in a 2007 interview. "We should work very hard to avoid having an ecodivide where we have ecological haves and ecological have-nots."

"There's an opportunity here to take a photovoltaic panel and use that not only to push down the amount of carbon in the atmosphere, but also begin to push people up out of poverty," he continued in the interview. "I think it would be very smart for Silicon Valley to think about these technologies as social uplift, job-creating technologies as well as global warming solutions."

Taking the reins at Green For All will be Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins, the former executive officer at the South Bay AFL-CIO Labor Council.

Former CNET News staff writer Elsa Wenzel contributed to this report

[Manhattan2]

From decades of research we have found the being green blurs ones judgment. It is through Science that the answers will come. Those that think GREEN and only green cannot see through the trees. We have the only energy solution that is both efficient and what some would call Green. A Solar Transfer will be the answer that the United States and other countries will need to explore to reach oil Independence and a viable environmentally safe solution. Tell President Barack Obama he needs some skeptics, some scientists, and some help from "The Manhattan 2 Project". The Power to reason will be what drives the solution. We promise we are on the right track. Being green is not always the only answer. There are shades of green and limits to known science. Explore and you will find the answer. We did!

[dbargen]

And you think the man even thinks to look past his ideologies to reality? Wishful thinking there. Just be prepared for at least 4 years of skyrocketing prices for fuel and electricity, and economic depths yet-to-be-plunged.

Energy is a commodity we all need and use in our country. By purposefully forcing its providers to use "solutions" that are in no way effective, require large up-front costs that have to be pushed to its users, and backing it with the faux morality of "greenness," (sorry, but truly informed people can see that its nothing more than a hoax), you're going to drive what the economic downturn housing crisis started (a la Fannie&FreddieMac) into an economic plunge. Anyone see a new Dark Age coming?- only this time it's the mock religion of greenies (it takes fake, not facts to swallow that whole), instead of real religion that's denouncing science those hundreds of years ago.

Just thank your founding fathers for instituting things like checks and balances into our Constitution instead of having a king. By 2010, all the PR BS in the world shouldn't be able to put a veil over the real forces behind the recession, and voters can change over the reigns of power in the House and bring this demagogue in check. That is, as long as they aren't bribed with all of that "stimulus" money that's being held in waiting until, surprise surprise, just in time for elections.

Here's to hoping people wake up.

[kazwire]

Van Jones is one of the reasons why I started my green jobs site Hirejam.com becaseu I wanted to help people find renewable energy positions.

Kevin Lockett
www.hirejam.com