Mother Jones magazine's Q&A with Van Jones

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Q&A: Van Jones

The author of The Green Collar Economy and founder of Green For All on gray capitalism and why we're a long way from a green bubble.

—By Jesse Finfrock



Mother Jones: Can you briefly explain what "environmental justice" means to you?

Van Jones: Environmental justice is the movement to ensure that no community suffers disproportionate environmental burdens or goes without enjoying fair environmental benefits.

MJ: What's the relationship between environmental justice and sustainability?

VJ: Well, the only reason that we have the unsustainable accounting that we have right now is because incinerators, dumping grounds, and sacrifice zones were put where poor people live. It would never have been allowed if you had to put all the incinerators and nasty stuff in rich people's neighborhoods; we'd have had a sustainable economy a long time ago. We'd have had a clean and green economy a long time ago. It's the environmental racism that allowed the powerful people in society to turn a blind eye for decades to the downsides of the industrial system that got us to this point. So there's a direct relationship between environmental racism and the lack of sustainability of society as a whole. We were the canaries in the coal mines, crying for relief. Now finally the consequences are affecting everyone, with global warming and everything else. The other thing is that the environmental justice agenda is also changing. Before, it was much stronger on demanding equal protection from environmental bad. Now we are also demanding equal opportunity and equal access to environmental good. We don't want to be first and worst with all the toxins and all the negative effects of global warming, and then benefit last and least from all the breakthroughs in solar, wind energy, organic food, all the positives. We want an equal share, an equitable share, of the work wealth and the benefits of the transition to a green economy.

MJ: How do green-jobs initiatives fit into this picture?

VJ: Senators don't install solar panels. 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.

MJ: There's been some criticism that the green-jobs movement is overhyped.

VJ: It's easy for people to say that, but it's a movement that's two years old. There are movements for education reform that are 30 years old and don't have a single victory. I guess they're probably overhyped too. On the one hand, the green-jobs movement has been overhyped if people think that we're somehow going to have a green utopia, and everybody in America's going to have a job putting up a solar panel everyday, and that day will be a week from next Thursday. I mean, that's overhyped. But the reality is that there are either going to be a whole lot more green jobs or we're going to have a dead planet. It's become kind of fashionable to pooh-pooh it. I've never seen a movement two years old expected to have already changed the country. The civil rights movement took several decades. The women's rights movement took several decades. Other environmental movements are taking several decades. We need to give the green-jobs movement at least a chance to turn green before we declare it dead. ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2008/10/qa-van-jones