The White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) announced Monday that Van Jones has been appointed its Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation. Jones is the best-selling author of The Green Collar Economy and the founder of "Green For All," a national organization that promotes environmentally friendly jobs to help lift people out of poverty. According to CEQ Chair Nancy Sutley, Jones will "help to shape the administration's energy and climate initiatives, with special emphasis on improvements and economic opportunities in vulnerable communities"--a fitting task, since energy, climate and economic opportunity were themes for Jones long before his recent appointment.
"I love Barack Obama," Jones told The New Yorker's Elizabeth Kolbert when she interviewed him for a January profile,
and it's hard not to see some striking parallels between the president
and his administration's new Green Jobs advisor. Not only is Jones an
exceptional orator with an extensive background in community
organizing, but his work has been propelled by a similar marriage of
pragmatism and optimism. When I met Jones at a lecture he delivered in
Connecticut in the spring of 2006--a political moment when
environmental justice advocates were largely absent from the nation's
corridors of power--Jones argued that people of diverse backgrounds
and political persuasions could be rallied around the cause of green
collar jobs so long as its advocates shed a "politics of opposition"
for a "politics of proposition." "It is miserable," he said, "if you
are defined by the thing you are fighting against because you haven't
come up with things you are fighting for."
Under the Obama administration, the things Jones has been fighting for
have become priorities at the highest levels of government. The first
meeting of Vice-President Joe Biden's Middle Class Task Force focused on
how the creation of "green jobs" can help fuel the nation's economic
recovery and bolster the middle class. The President's stimulus package
includes
$5 billion for low income weatherization projects, $11 billion for
smart grid investments and $500 million to help train workers for
"green jobs."
Critics
point out that generating green jobs is not always efficient and that
determining which jobs should fall into this category can be fraught
with complications. Some skeptics also suggest that projects such as
highway expansion could counteract the benefits of the green
initiatives in the stimulus.
But it's easy to see why the
administration would tap Jones to offer environmental advice at a time
of exceptional economic anxiety. His work is notable for its holistic
approach to the cause of environmental sustainability, raising
awareness that the communities most hurt by unsustainable
practices are often the poorest. Jones has long argued that jobs in
mass-transit construction, weatherization and solar panel installation
should go to those facing chronic unemployment. "The green economy
should not be just about reclaiming thrown-away stuff," he writes in The Green Collar Economy. "It should be about reclaiming thrown-away communities."
Jones, who does not need Senate confirmation, will start his new job on Monday.
