Van Jones on Greening the Nation | Big Think

Van Jones on Greening the Nation

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Putting people to work in green-collar infrastructural jobs can buoy the economy and provide relief to homeowners, says Van Jones.

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Van Jones:

Van Jones is a social entrepreneur, CNN political contributor and host of The Messy Truth with Van Jones. Famous for his heart-felt election night coverage, Jones showed up as “the voice of reason” for people in red states and blue throughout the volatile 2016 political season. In response to much civil unrest and energy post-election, Jones launched the #Love Army -- a values-based movement that is working for an America where everyone counts.

Jones has founded and led numerous social enterprises engaged in social and environmental justice, including The Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, Color of Change, and The Dream Corps.

Jones is a Yale-educated attorney. He is the author of two New York Times best-selling books, The Green Collar Economy (2008) and Rebuild the Dream (2012). The second book chronicles his journey as an environmental and human rights activist to becoming a White House policy advisor.

He was the main advocate for the Green Jobs Act. Signed into law by George W. Bush in 2007, the Green Jobs Act was the first piece of federal legislation to codify the term “green jobs.” During the Obama Administration, the legislation has resulted in $500 million in national funding for green jobs training.

In 2009, Jones worked as the green jobs advisor to President Barack Obama. In this role, Jones helped to lead the inter-agency process that oversaw the multi-billion dollar investment in skills training and jobs development within the environmental and green energy sectors.

Jones has been honored with numerous awards and spotlighted on several lists of high achievers, including: the World Economic Forum’s “Young Global Leader” designation; Rolling Stone’s 2012 “12 Leaders Who Get Things Done”; TIME’s 2009 “100 Most Influential People in The World”; and the Root's 2014 "The Root 100." In 2017, Van Jones signed a management deal with Roc Nation, becoming the first political commentator & activist in their family. Jones lives in the Los Angeles area with his wife & two children.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Question: What is your prescription for the next president?

Jones: First thing you’ve got to keep in mind is when the new president comes in, the new president are going to walk in with a stack of papers this high, called Executive Orders and sit down literally, right after inauguration and just started signing them and change the economy overnight. Why? Because the president doesn’t have to ask permission for a whole lot of stuff. The president can just declare the Pentagon will XYZPDQ and we’re off for the races. So, if you know, if he wants to put it, if he wants to order solar panels up on the Pentagon, if he wants to order, you know, that extra percent of all the cars will have to be super fuel efficient, you know, that the federal government buy, he has a lot of discretion, a lot of power and can use all that for good. So, there’s… That’s something called the Presidential Commission On Climate, PCAP, Presidential Climate Action Project that is focused on the things the president can do on the first hundred days and make a difference. But, fundamentally, there are two big things the president needs to focus on. One is getting a price on carbon, whether it’s a carbon tax or it’s cap and trade, we’ve got to get the price signals going so the whole world knows that we’re moving off of carbon, and the other thing is this clean energy smart grid. This big, you know, massive program to get clean energy produced and distributed everywhere in the country, so that people can plug in their cars. You know, we shouldn’t be burning anything. We should be able to plug our cars in to a clean energy grid. The next president is to have that as a [keyed] thing going forward. There’s the only thing about that. There are some creative solutions as well. One of my favorite things is in the book is what I call “hooptie for hybrids.” If you’re a young person, you know the word hooptie is a slang term for old gas guzzling car or clunker car, so you know, cash for clunkers or hoopties for hybrids.

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