Expanding the Green Movement

HARLEY SOLTES / THE SEATTLE TIMES
Omandi Moikobu is a new technician at the Green Car Co. service center in Kirkland, where he is training to repair electric, hybrid and diesel-powered vehicles. Moikobu began working at Green Car through an internship program at South Seattle Community College.

Overwhelmingly white, the green movement is reaching for the rainbow
By Paula Bock for The Seattle Times

"What's a nice black guy like me doing in a movement like this?"

Van Jones strides the stage at the Langston Hughes Performing Arts Center, a charismatic lawyer who grew up in rural Tennessee, graduated from Yale Law, and founded the Ella Baker Center for jobs and justice in Oakland.

In Jones' eyes, the first wave of environmentalism, led by Teddy Roosevelt and John Muir, focused on preserving the nation's natural beauty in parks. The second wave, led by Rachel Carson of "Silent Spring," concentrated on federal regulation of toxics. The third wave, he says, is about investment. Initially, that meant individual consumer choice: hybrid cars, organic food, energy-efficient light bulbs. Now, it's evolved into major public spending and community-wide action.

Jones' grand vision? Think New Deal and civil-rights movement combined with a clean-green industrial revolution. The nation needs to train masses of "green-collar" workers to conduct energy audits, weatherize and retrofit buildings, install solar panels and maintain hybrid vehicles, wind farms and bio-fuel factories. The icing? Wiring buildings and installing solar panels can't be outsourced.

"Brother," Jones says, "put down that hand gun and pick up this caulk gun."

Read the full article here.

Good Jobs, Green Jobs: A National Green Jobs Conference is happening later this week in Pittsburgh. The event will launch a nationwide dialogue about moving our country rapidly toward leadership in promoting the benefits of a new green economy.