Van Jones Quotes
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Sometimes we overemphasize the political system. There are other ways to make a difference. There's technology, there's media, there's business.
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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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We've have to heed our Biblical obligation to be good stewards of the Earth after leaving the Garden of Eden.
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The human family has invaluable friends and irreplaceable allies in the plant and animal worlds. We cannot continue to tug at the web of life without tearing a hole in the very fabric of our earthly existence - and eventually falling through that hole ourselves.
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Will the new environmental leaders fight for eco-equity in this new "green economy" they are birthing?
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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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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.
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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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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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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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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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We need a more diversified portfolio of change-making tools so that we don't just get so freaked out by whatever's happening in the political corner.
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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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The laws of spiritual physics will not allow you to lead somebody that you don't love, that you don't care about, that you resent, that you look down on. That's why the Republicans can't lead black people. And that's why Democrats increasingly can't lead these straight, white, male demons that we hate so much.
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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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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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Ninth generation American, ma'am, and I'm the first one in my family born with all my rights. I'm a ninth generation American. And so we have not escaped because I went to Yale all the problems of this country.
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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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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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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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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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I consider myself to be sort of a progressive Afrofuturist that is deeply committed to social justice.
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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.
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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.