Van Jones People Quotations

I used to be called the "Green Jack Kemp" because of my promotion of entrepreneurial and work-based solutions for poor people.

I've never launched any initiative or campaign that people thought was a slam dunk.

Environmentalists and clean energy champions should stop telling people that we are working for "sustainability," which nobody understands.

Though the rampant racial injustices throughout the criminal justice system were offensive to me and to millions of other people, I've never drawn a tight circle around the black community to define the limits of my moral concern. But that narrative tends to get imposed on you, if you're an African-American activist.

The dirty energy crowd can be offset only by the power of the rising clean energy sector and the American people, aroused across party lines.

Too often we think about the green economy as an elite market niche, one in which affluent people spend more money to consume greener and cleaner products.

We tend to overlook the fact that a mature clean energy economy in fact will give an opportunity to ordinary people to earn more money as clean energy workers/entrepreneurs - and save more money, through conservation and energy efficiency.

I don't like to comment on a specific local issue because there are plenty of people already working on the problem who know a lot more about it than I do.

People in red states and blue states can agree that if we can fight pollution and poverty at the same time, letting people work their way out of poverty without undermining community health, we have a moral obligation to do so.

People forget: solar panels don't put themselves up. Wind turbines don't manufacture themselves. Businesses don't retrofit themselves to waste less energy and water, nor do homes weatherize themselves.

To green our country, regular people will have to put on hard hats and work boots, roll up their sleeves - and get to work.

In other words: we can fight pollution and poverty at the same time, with the same method. We can beat global warming and the global recession at the same time, with the same method. We can do this by putting people to work re-powering America with clean energy.

We should tell people we are working to protect our country. We are working to make America stronger for the long run.

To make sure we aren't training people for jobs that don't exist, the government should provide companies with loans or loan guarantees. And the government should also directly employ people to do things like coastal restoration, land restoration, reforestation and similar programs that absorb carbon and protect America's beauty.

Former brownfields, depressed urban areas, and hard-hit rural towns blossom as eco-industrial parks, green enterprise zones, and eco-villages. Farmers' markets, community co-ops, and mobile markets get fresh, organic produce to the people who can't afford to shop at health-food stores.

In the fourth quadrant (lower right), working-class people are motivated to take on green-collar jobs and start green businesses.

People in red states and blue states can agree that we are a nation blessed with extraordinary natural wealth and beauty, which we would be foolish to waste; therefore conservation and efficiency are values we all can share.

People in red states and blue states can agree that clean air is better than dirty air; therefore we should use clean energy where we can.

Apparently, the fossil-fuel industry's strategy is to convince the American people that we should just burn all the way through the last of our oil and coal reserves.

Let's stop wasting billions of dollars on prisons, which send people home who are too often less capable and more damaged than when they went in. We would have safer neighborhoods if we spent the same money on true rehabilitation, job training, employment and entrepreneurship.

Americans need to see people who are honestly trying to learn from each other, even as we make our own points powerfully and fight for our own values and policies.

The surest path to safe streets and peaceful communities is not more police and prisons, but ecologically sounds economic development. And that same path can lift us to a new, green economy - one with the power to lift people out of poverty while respecting and repairing the environment.

To change our laws and culture, the green movement must attract and include the majority of all people, not just the majority of affluent people.

The green economy should not just be about reclaiming throw-away stuff. It should be about reclaiming thrown-away communities. It should not just be about recycling things to give them a second life. We should also be gathering up people and giving them a second chance.

To shift America (and the world) to a cleaner energy economy, millions of people will have to go to work in new industries. This necessary shift opens up tremendous new opportunities for work and wealth creation.

It's in that convergence of spiritual people becoming active and active people becoming spiritual that the hope of humanity now rests.