Book review/The Green Collar Economy
The Green Collar Economy
By Van Jones
HarperCollins Publishers
Hardcover $25.95
“When many people hear the term ‘green’ today, they still automatically think the message is probably for a fancy, eco-elite set – and not for themselves. And as long as that remains true, the green movement will remain too anemic politically and too alien culturally to rescue the country.” –Van Jones
By BILL DUNCAN
The News-Review
If you think Van Jones is just another environmental nut expressing his views in his new book, subtitled “How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems,” then I suggest you skip all of his message and just read his closing remarks in the last chapter. In those three paragraphs, he provides America with the sound reason why we must turn things around.
“So I will close with the words and example of the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill as Adolf Hitler’s monstrous shadow fell over the capitals of Europe. The prospects for democracy and human civilization had never looked bleaker. The United States was refusing to fight. All other allies had fallen and Britain stood alone against
the terror. Most observers doubted the British could last one week against Hitler’s murderous onslaught.
“But Churchill dared to position his lonely and isolated island nation as freedom’s last barricade. On his first day in office, Churchill assigned himself the mission of blocking the advance of the fearsome Nazi death machine. He announced to Parliament and the world: ‘I take up my task in buoyancy and hope. I feel sure that our cause will not suffer to fail among men. I feel entitled at this juncture, in this time, to claim to say, come then, let’s go forward together with our united strength.’ His defiance and determination helped turn the tide of world affairs. And so it was that, against all odds and after great and horrendous suffering, the champions of democracy prevailed.
“That generation – the so called greatest generation – looked out and saw two futures: one with a blood-soaked Hitler ruling the world and another with the fascist threat forever eliminated. They decided to go out and do whatever it took to win that better future for the coming generations. Today we are living in the world won by the sacrifice of that generation.”
Van Jones, who has been in the economic trenches for most of his life, believes the current generation is at that same crossroad as Churchill’s generation, looking out on two futures: One with rising temperatures, rising oceans and rising violence on a hot and strip-mine planet and another with expanding organic harvests, growing solar arrays and deepening global partnerships, on a green and thriving Earth.
He puts forth and enlightening challenge — that only with the ingenuity and innovation of the human equation can we return to sanity on Earth. He believes with that same defiance and determination of Churchill that the human race can reverse the course of self-destruction.
Van Jones, who is the founder and president of Green for All, has literally written the blueprint for a national, if not international, policy to restore the planet. He believes that recovery lies within reach and it will come through turning the blue collar society green.
His outline for survival is to use that global warming threat to the advantage of a green collar economy.
To do less than that would be to continue to drown in our reliance on fossil fuels, instead of finding clean, renewable energy which he called “the linchpin of the green economy.”
From his analysis, the United States could well become that “last barricade” against a crumbling Earth.
(Bill Duncan can be reached at bduncan@nrtoday.com or by writing to P.O. Box 812, Roseburg, OR 97470.)