I wanted to alert you all to the just-published The Green Collar Economy–
How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems by Van Jones.
As Time Magazine puts it:
“Van Jones does not look like your typical environmentalist. He doesn’t wear Birkenstocks. He’s African-American in a movement that tends to be overwhelmingly white. His background is in civil-rights activism — specifically prison reform — a cause he champions in Oakland, Calif. But Jones, the head of the non-profit Green For All and the author of the new book The Green-Collar Economy, could represent the future of environmentalism in America and a way for the movement to survive and even thrive through the coming recession…
“[Jones] argues that environmentalism won’t just be about the environment anymore. Instead, it will drive fundamental changes in the way we do business and the jobs we create — that’s what he means by a green-collar economy. Over the years, manufacturing and other blue-collar jobs have been gradually outsourced from the U.S. That has hit the working class especially hard, in both cities and rural areas, because decent-paying blue-collar employment is what pulls people out of poverty and into the middle class. At the same time, it’s the working class that has also borne the brunt of the high energy prices that result from America’s dependence on foreign oil. As the recession darkens, that double bind is likely to worsen.
“The answer, Jones writes in his book, is the creation of green-collar jobs that provide working-class employment, shield America from rising fossil fuel prices and stem carbon emissions. These are not the high-tech, high-education “George Jetson” jobs, as Jones puts it, that were created by the Internet and biotech booms. Green-collar jobs include manufacturing solar panels, insulating green homes, servicing wind turbines. These are jobs that can be filled by blue-collar workers who need jobs — and they help the environment to boot. “You can put the country back to work with green solutions that are good for the Earth,” says Jones.”