Green Options » green collar economy

Welcome To Planet Forward: From Your Lens To The White House Gates

Frank Sesno — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 18:38:03 +0000

Editor’s Note: This post is a guest contribution by Frank Sesno, Emmy-award winning journalist and former CNN Bureau Chief. ”Planet Forward” is an innovative, viewer-driven program driven by the power of ideas, as citizens make their case for what they think about the nation’s energy future. The show debuts TONIGHT (8pm), in a primetime PBS special. See Frank Sesno’s last post for CleanTechnica here.

What we’re hearing at Planet Forward is rumbles of a revolution.

Some expressions are serious, some are humorous. There are essays and poems and songs. But in almost all cases, if we take this stuff at face value, we’re hearing calls for an overthrow of the old ways we drive, work, travel, get around.

A revolution in technology and green jobs to reduce carbon emissions, deal with climate change and improve our security. A revolution in the energy marketplace to knock the oil-igarchs around the world down a notch. Coincidentally, this is the bottom line of Barack Obama’s hugely ambitious energy program. And it’s what citizens and experts alike weigh in on here at Planet Forward.

This is a place where everyone has the chance to make their case about how we use energy, where our future energy should be, and how we should think about the issue. We’ve heard from scientists and students, CEO’s and cab drivers, defenders of coal and oil as well as advocates of wind and solar. We’ve even got a few politicians making their case! It’s an orchestra of voices.

What makes Planet Forward different is that we connect some of the best ideas – rated by the online community and reviewed by our Planet Forward editorial staff –directly to decision-makers. Some go straight to the White House. We do all this in a prime-time television special on PBS and through follow-on webisodes here at planetforward.org. What’s most striking is how seriously the experts take the ideas and experiences of people out in the ‘real world.’ As they should.

This isn’t the usual television fare – which is either policy wonks talking to themselves or high-decibel hosts shouting at the rest of us. We wanted to do it differently. So we invited President Obama’s top adviser on energy and climate change, Carol Browner, literally to sit down with some Planet Forward contributors who submitted particularly provocative or creative ideas. She tells them what she thinks about their proposals, takes their questions, and considers what she’d take back to the White House as a result of the conversation.

And we’re going to keep the discussion going. We’ve got a web sequel in the works. Submit your video or written essay by May 15th and it’ll be in the running for review and comment by another top White House adviser, Van Jones, the highly acclaimed author of The Green Collar Economy and now Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality. We’ll put the exchange online – where you can see it, comment on it and share it with your social network.

We invite you to comment on the videos already posted. Raise questions, debate the merits.

This energy haul isn’t going to be easy. There is a lot new under the sun (and in the wind) but it’s still very expensive, diffuse and in its infancy. We’re going to be living with coal and oil and gas and nuclear power for a long time. Some of them may have a rebirth as we develop new technologies for them. Which are the winners and which are the losers – and at what cost — are among the questions we confront and must now try to answer.

Planet Forward is a chance for you to tell the world, and maybe the White House, what you’d do.

Van Jones is officially confirmed as the Obama Administration’s Green Czar

Reenita Malhotra — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 00:40:27 +0000

Van Jones and Gavin Newsom at the San Francisco signing of “Green Collar Economy”

OFFICIAL UPDATE 3/10 : The White House has officially confirmed Van Jones as “Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation” at the White House’s Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ).

Nancy Sutley, Chairwoman of the CEQ, welcomed her new senior adviser:

“Van Jones has been a strong voice for green jobs and we look forward to having him work with departments and agencies to advance the President’s agenda of creating 21st century jobs that improve energy efficiency and utilize renewable resources. Jones will also help to shape and advance the Administration’s energy and climate initiatives with a specific interest in improvements and opportunities for vulnerable communities.”
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Reading Between the Lines on Obama’s Inauguration Speech: What Does It Mean for the Green Economy?

Scott Cooney — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 21:40:46 +0000

George W. Bush sat just a few feet behind Barack Obama during the new President’s Inauguration address, delivered on a frigid yet sunny Washington, D.C. day. The former President appeared warmly dressed but must have felt a distinct chill in the stern repudiation he was publicly receiving, however eloquently Mr. Obama delivered it. CNN’s camera showed Bush, wearing his best poker face, flinch ever so slightly when Mr. Obama suggested, “We will restore science to its rightful place.”

It was not difficult to rebut the former President and his policies. Indeed, many might attribute the Democrats’ sweeping victories last November to Bush’s final approval rating, which was worse than any outgoing President in history (22%, CBS/NYT Poll). Obama chastised the former President’s policies, in no uncertain terms, on the Economy (”Homes have been lost; jobs shed; businesses shuttered”), Civil Liberties (”we [Americans] reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals”), Education (”our schools fail too many”), Foreign Policy (”each day brings further evidence that the way we use energy strengthen our adversaries…”), and the Environment (”…and threaten our planet.”). He criticized Bush’s leadership (”a sapping of confidence across our land”), and his claim during the 2000 campaign to be a “uniter, not a divider” (”we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics”).

But what about looking forward? Obama asked that when future generations look back,

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Top 10 Ecopreneurs of 2008

Reenita Malhotra — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 07:46:50 +0000

2008 has been a year signifying economic depression culminating in the worst holiday retail season in years. However it has also been a year of entrepreneurs burgeoning a variety of exciting new green businesses. Ecopreneurist has covered many of them over the course of the year. Here is a review of our favorite Ecopreneurs of 2008.

1. Van Jones - Pioneer of the Green Collar Economy

Van Jones is undoubtedly the Ecopreneur of the Year. He has spoken out against our unsustainable economic model that is based on consumption not production, run on debt vs. savings and thrift, and environmental destruction vs. preservation. But he has also shifted the rhetoric to one of hope by building a new economy with clean energy power centers and a clean enemy corps.

Read Jennifer’s post Van Jones’ Ecopreneurial Vision for the full story.

2. Derek McLeish - Transforming Carbon Emissions into Fuel

Carbon Sciences’s CEO Derek McLeish tells us that his company is the developer of a breakthrough technology to transform CO2 into the basic fuel building blocks required to produce gasoline, diesel fuel, jet fuel and other portable fuels.

Reenita gives you the full story in her post A Breakthrough Technology to Transform CO2 into Fuel

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Van Jones Profile: How To Build A Green Collar Economy

Reenita Malhotra — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 01:30:11 +0000

This post contains additional media. Click here to view the full post.

I hope that you had the opportunity to read Jennifer Kaplan’s recent post “Van Jones’ Ecopreneurial Vision.” Talk about a man who is working to inspire a nation!

Van Jones has recently surfaced in America’s Shift to Green Living as a strong advocate for the Green Collar Economy. He is the founding president of Green For All, a U.S. organization that promotes green-collar jobs and opportunities for the disadvantaged. He is also the author of The Green Collar Economy, which has been endorsed by Nancy Pelosi, Tom Daschle and Al Gore.

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Van Jones’ Green Collar Manifesto

Timothy B. Hurst — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 16:59:22 +0000

Few people have been able to inspire the kind of critical thinking and political action considered a necessary component of “success” in the modern environmental movement. But if you were to make a list of those few, Van Jones would definitely be on it.

The environmental movement has never spoken with one voice and that will likely remain the case for the foreseeable future. That said, the environmental movement shouldn’t speak with one voice, it should speak with a diversity of them, and Van Jones’ new book, The Green Collar Economy—published by Harper One and released on October 7—does just that.

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Why Van Jones should be Obama’s Secretary of Prosperity

David Anderson — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 20:59:39 +0000

In his new book to be released next week, Van Jones lays out a sensible roadmap to solve our long-term economic problems. How? By making sustainability the centerpiece of a national renewal. And, if we justify spending hundreds of billions on an economic solution no one completely understands, why can’t we make it an even greater priority to create a sustainable economy that will last us the next thousand years or more?

Let me start with the obvious: these are some wild times. Since this whole financial mess began to unfold, we’ve learned a lot about what’s possible. Although I knew how much we’ve borrowed to pay for the Iraq war, I never really understood that we could just up and borrow upwards of a trillion dollars in one fell swoop. Ever since I became aware of the possibility, I’ve been telling people that Obama should hit back. “$700B? Why not borrow a trillion and solve our energy dependence, and fix health care to boot?” Of course, that was before the bailout bill failed in the House.

As we face the potential for a new depression, along with the potential stresses caused by global climate change, possibly the greatest immediate need we have is for people to show us Americans the difference between what we know the present looks like and what we know is possible.

Faced with a national hopelessness during the (first?) Great Depression, FDR was masterful at connecting our greatest problems to our greatest opportunities in speeches like his 1933 inaugural address:

Our greatest primary task is to put people to work. This is no unsolvable problem if we face it wisely and courageously. It can be accompanied in part by direct recruiting by the government itself, treating the task as we would treat the emergency of a war, but at the same time, through this employment, accomplishing greatly needed projects to stimulate and reorganize the use of our national resources.

Barack Obama has been almost FDR-like at inspiring people to believe at a gut level that in the face of a new depression, a national renewal is possible. However, it’s people on the ground like Van Jones who light the way for exactly how it could happen.

Which is why I’m advocating a campaign to draft Jones into the (hopefully) coming Obama Cabinet, ideally as the new “Secretary of Prosperity.” Hillary Clinton proposed a ‘Poverty Czar’ earlier this year, but I think that’s terrible framing; someone in that position should be creating solutions, not ruling over problems. Ever since I’ve talked about the potential to draft someone like Jones into a bold new position, people have told me that a Secretary of Prosperity could never happen. My response?

Who cares? Just adding Van’s perspective to the conversation about the need to take bold leadership of the great problems of our time would be a great accomplishment.

Over the last couple years, I’ve watched Jones relentlessly turn years of experience pursuing social justice and shared prosperity into a credible case for the win-win-win green collar economy of the future. I’m a huge fan of solving problems that occur in patterns by addressing their underlying roots, and that’s what his ‘green collar’ approach does.

Let’s look at the variables. We have a society with quickening energy and economic insecurity, and flagging international leadership. We have inner cities and rural communities in need of jobs. We have a capital base in need of sustainable returns. And we don’t take no for an answer when we rally around a national imperative. All we need is for someone to take the lead and inspire us to connect the dots.

The “Green Collar Economy” may sound like a grandiose, unachievable vision, especially in a financial situation where capital for any purpose is and will be increasingly hard to come by. But Jones knows how to put these issues in perspective:

There’s no way to get changes big enough to solve these problems without creating pathways out of poverty for millions of new green-collar workers. The renewable economy is more labor-intensive, less capital-intensive; therefore, there should be a net increase in jobs (1).

BONUS CHALLENGE

Jones’ new book is a start, but I’d also like to issue an open challenge to Netizens to start a grassroots campaign to ‘Draft Van.’ I will give the DraftVan.org domain to anyone who wants to take the project on, and have started a Facebook group for people who might be interested to congregate and brainstorm. Do America a favor and get this post out there as widely as possible in the hopes that someone who’s looking for a way to make a difference will take up my challenge. Let’s bring the renewable economy into the national conversation. Trust me, most people don’t even realize that it’s possible.

More background on Van

Image copyright Comedy Central

We invite you to comment on the videos already posted. Raise questions, debate the merits.

Planet Forward is a chance for you to tell the world, and maybe the White House, what you’d do.