Super Eco

Photo credit: Richard Hume, Experience Life magazine

Van Jones, author of The Green Collar Economy and founder of Green for All has been appointed to the job of special adviser for green jobs, enterprise and innovation in the Obama administration. There is speculation that his role in the President's Council on Environmental Quality will be "green jobs czar," but the Wall Street Journal reports that Jones' new job entails "helping to shape and implement job-generating climate policy; working to ensure equal protection and equal opportunity in the administration’s climate and energy proposals; and publicly advocating the administration’s environmental and energy agenda."

The economic stimulus budget includes $500 million for green jobs development and Jones has a vision for how that money could be well spent. Jones is a spokesman for the growing "environmental justice" movement and "greening the ghetto" has been a primary focus of his work for several years. Asked about green jobs by Mother Jones (no relation), Van Jones said,

You have to have the right policies, but it's also a lot of just physical labor to retrofit a whole country. There's going to be a lot of jobs weatherizing buildings, putting up solar panels, manufacturing parts for wind turbines and wind towers. All that's work, and we want to make sure that the green economy is an equal-opportunity, diverse economy that can lift millions of people out of poverty. We don't want it to be an ecoapartheid economy where the vast majority of the owners and workers and consumers and beneficiaries of the green economy are all one race.

It looks like Van Jones, appropriately enough, has landed one of the first green collar jobs to be created by the Obama administration. Van Jones has become part of the new leadership that is creating the Green American Dream.