14 DAY TRIAL // President Obama's choice for a green jobs, enterprise and innovation advisor has been widely applauded, as Van Jones, the founder of Oakland, California-based national Green for All organization, is a famous activist for civil rights and an acclaimed author. He has published The New York Times best-seller book, “The Green Collar Economy,” and strongly advocates the “blending” of green jobs into economic predictions for the future. In all, one could say that Obama is surrounding himself with decent people.
The new advisor will “help to shape and advance the administration’s energy and climate initiatives with a specific interest in improvements and opportunities for vulnerable communities,” the Chairwoman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, Nancy Sutley, has recently said in a statement. According to the announcement made on Tuesday, Jones will also assist President Obama in his efforts to create more green jobs and protect the environment from abusive exploitation by large companies.
“In Newark, N.J., local government, business and labor are pioneering a public-private partnership to get everyday people quality jobs doing green retrofits on low-income seniors' homes, keeping them warm and saving them money. In Pennsylvania, urban farming is producing cheap, clean biofuels while wind-power giant Gamesa is providing hundreds of green manufacturing jobs to the state,” Jones writes on the newswine website, at the behest of MSNBC.
“In Seattle, the county's Opportunity Greenway helps young, court-involved adults (ages 16 to 21) get their lives on track with paid internships in one of three high-wage, high-demand green career tracks: transportation, energy, and natural resources,” he adds. “If we nurture them, they can grow into a large-scale green economy, strong enough to solve the ecological crisis and lift millions of people out of poverty,” the advisor tells of such programs.
“It's true that people are not lining up for these kinds of improvements – yet. But that's not because these improvements don't make financial sense. It's because of structural hurdles, like a lack of initial capital (even though that money eventually comes back in savings) or split incentives (who pays, the landlord or the tenant?). A well-designed government program can remove these structural hurdles while providing ample avenues for private investment, and encouraging the creation of quality private-sector jobs,” Van Jones concludes.