This weekend, a friend loaned me her copy of The Green Collar Economy, by Van Jones. She told me he had just been picked up by the Obama administration.
Once I started reading, it dawned on me that he was the same guy who had been profiled in The New Yorker not long ago.
Now, I've been reading a lot of optimistic books and articles that suggest we "turn crisis into opportunity," a phrase I used a lot in the last election. (Thomas Friedman, for instance, is a consistent voice in this arena).
Over the past couple years, I have learned a great deal, broadened my concepts of infrastructure and investment, so that the words are highly charged with possibility and yes, hope. I've always had a propensity to see convergences, and I'm delighted to say that Van Jones's book gives affirmation to my most hopeful beliefs and made the connections between several social problems quite salient.
Yes, we need green collar jobs. But we also need an extremely broad coalition in order to reinvent our economy and restore our planet. In building that broad coalition, we have a chance to address the deepest social injustices of our nation. We can't keep leaving people behind. It's amazing how separate causes can dovetail so well. So well, in fact, that they seem inseparable in retrospect.
We need to fix the planet. We need a prosperous economy. We need real progress. We need to
revise our economic platforms and principles, taking into account the moral aspects already embedded in any economy.
Why not do it all? Now!
Please read his book!
PS--The Economist reports that the entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well, even in a global recession.
*The personalized icon is available on the Green For All web site, which Van Jones founded. It's just fun.
