Van Jones Quotes
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I do feel kind of like I have a split identity in that there's Van Jones, who has this big public role and tries to inspire millions of people to do new stuff together. And then there's just me: a pretty quiet, shy, retiring person.
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I think it would be good to get somebody a job. Right now we're in a bubble of green rhetoric and a bowl of actual green investment and job creation. So my goal for next year is to move from inspiration to implementation on this stuff.
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To green our country, regular people will have to put on hard hats and work boots, roll up their sleeves - and get to work.
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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.
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Even if we can solve the carbon problem for coal, it is still a non-renewable resource. At some point, coal supplies will drop.
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We need a national renewable energy goal. Such a goal, sometimes called a renewable energy standard (RES), would spell out what percentage of our power America plans to get from renewable sources.
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With the Democrats, they see themselves, we see ourselves as the party of the working folks, the striving, you know, the good. But, without anybody acknowledging it, there is now this little camp of folks who come across as very elitist, that look down on red state voters, who think that Republicans are dumb people.
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People can tell if you don't like 'em. African Americans can tell we're not welcome in the Republican Party no matter how many times they say we are. All the signals that it's a party that tolerates anti-black racism is very clear.
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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.
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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.
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The problem isn't that the green jobs aren't sexy enough. It's that they're not plentiful enough. A young person looking for a job isn't looking just for a sexy job, they're looking for any job.
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Government-mandated and -subsidized ethanol from corn will go down in history as the "Iraq War" of environmental solutions: ill-considered, costly, and disastrous.
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I think there's going to be a tug of war in this country over who are the real patriots because at a time of national crisis, economic collapse and calamity, ecological peril and social dislocation, the American people deserve to be a partner to the American government.
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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.
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There are some cities that are doing good stuff, but there aren't enough of them. If you don't fight for what you want, then you deserve what you get. And in politics, if you don't ask, you don't get at all.
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I consider myself to be sort of a progressive Afrofuturist that is deeply committed to social justice.
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America should be leading the world in green and clean solutions, and human rights. We shouldn't be leading the world in wars and incarceration rates and pollution. We can be a better country. I think we're going to be a better country.
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God chooses community sometimes to bear an unfair burden to force us to rise to the next level of consciousness and understanding.
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Now, here's a good question: should serious people focus on global political instability - terrorism, failing states, nuclear weapons - or should we focus on global climate instability - droughts, floods, extreme weather? Here's the correct answer: yes, both, because climate disruption will make every other national security problem worse.
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There is, unfortunately, too large a number of people who are just outright bigots in America. They're nowhere near a majority. They're a small number. But there are people who are in the Alt-Right who are just straight up bigots.
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I'm not going to let Donald Trump take away from our community, something that Fannie Lou Hamer shed blood to give us. Something that Ella Jo Baker braved conditions in the South and sweatshops in Harlem to give us.
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I'm saying you should have the right not only to be an energy consumer but an energy producer. Follow the money to understand why my message keeps getting drowned out. Big oil and big coal are terrified by the green jobs message.
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I want to be remembered as one of the great innovators among social justice advocates of the 21st Century.
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The problem that we have in America now is, some people only see the positive stuff and wave off the toxic stuff, and some people only see the toxic stuff and wave off the positive stuff. You can't have an honest conversation.