Van Jones

Van Jones on Clean Energy Jobs from “humble hard-working energy efficiency”

The Center for American Progress Action fund had a recent event on clean energy jobs keynoted by Van Jones, who is not the President’s “green-jobs czar,” but “the green-jobs handyman.” Besides being the administration’s point person on clean energy jobs, he is the best speaker on the subject — because he studies rhetoric and persuasive […]

Obama’s green achievements at 100 days

Seventy-nine percent of Americans think President Barack Obama will do a good job protecting the country’s environment, according to the latest Gallup poll on the topic, released on Earth Day. That includes 95 percent of Democrats, 75 percent of independents and – most surprisingly — 65 percent of Republicans. At 100 days, what has he […]

Van Jones: Talk to Eric Mathis About Green Jobs in Appalachia

Dear Van Jones: You need to travel to Mingo County, West Virginia and meet Eric Mathis, a scrappy young economist in the Appalachian coalfields, who is putting together one of the most dynamic green jobs consortiums in the country. Their underfunded but clear-eyed, desperately needed and brilliant project–JOBS, or Just Open Businesses That Are Sustainable–is […]

A finger to ineffectual Democrat talkers, and a thumbs up to a possible alternative

This week the Middle Finger Flag gets waved at the Democrats. Yeah, that’s right, the whole lot of ’em. Recently Obama released a budget proposal that included a carbon cap-and-trade plan that would auction — rather than give away to polluting companies — 100 percent of the pollution credits. This is exactly what every policy […]

Van Jones talks to Grist about his new job as Obama’s green jobs guru

It’s official: Van Jones is joining the Obama administration to be the voice of green jobs in the White House. “I’m honored and proud and humbled,” Jones told Grist on Tuesday, after the appointment became official. “Some of these ideas, we were kicking around in Oakland and the Bay Area for a long time; to […]

Rumor has it Obama will tap Van Jones as his green jobs czar

Word around the blogs is that Van Jones has been tapped to serve as a “green jobs czar” in the Obama administration. We’re still trying to confirm, and we’ll have more soon on this potential new role for someone who’s been a household name here at Grist. [UPDATE: A well-placed source confirms that Jones has […]

I write book reviews and talk on the radio

Because too much Roberts is never enough:

What seems like a million years ago (I'll never get used to paper media schedules), I wrote a review of Van Jones' new book The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems for In These Times. It's up now, with the somewhat unfortunate headline "It's Not Easy Becoming Green." (Note to eco-headline writers: no more Kermit references; no more inconvenient-anything references; no more "green is the new X.") Of course you'll want to read every scintillating word, but the basic thrust is, Van Jones in person is an unbelievable dynamo who's reshaping the political landscape in extraordinary ways; Van Jones in his book is rather flat and prosaic. With a few exceptions, it's difficult to hear the former's voice in the latter.

In other Roberts news, I appeared on the Liberal Oasis radio show while I was in D.C., discussing prospects for green legislation in coming years. My mellifluous tones and perspicacious insights are available via a variety of electronic delivery options: iTunes / XML feed / MP3. You should subscribe to the podcast -- host Bill Scher is a top notch thinker and communicator.

Observations and reflections from a House hearing on stimulus, efficiency, and green jobs

On Thursday I attended a hearing of the House global warming select committee on stimulus, efficiency, and green jobs. You can find a list of attendees, their full written testimony, and some pictures on the committee website.

Just a few observations.

First, and this will shock no one, Van Jones is a marvel. (It is not normal for Congressional testimony to solicit applause.) To take one example from today: I have labored through thousands of words on Grist to try to explain why the most common economic models fail to fully account for the benefits of efficiency investments. In doing so I have bored even myself and built great, airy rhetorical castles that only masochists would want to explore.

Here's what Jones said at the hearing: "Get the math right: don't just count what you spend, count what you save."

Um ... dammit. Why didn't I think of putting it that way? I could have trimmed 14,000 words down to 14.

Here's his opening statement, if you're interested:

Must-read: Van Jones and the English language

I'm a big fan of people who are persuasive advocates for clean energy -- and an even bigger fan of those who keep trying to improve their language skills.

And that brings me to Van Jones, founder of Green for All, an organization promoting green-collar jobs and opportunities for the disadvantaged (and a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress). He is the subject of a must-read New Yorker profile by Elizabeth Kolbert, "Greening the Ghetto: Can a remedy serve for both global warming and poverty?"

This is the part that got my attention:

He spends a lot of time listening to speeches -- the way most people download Coltrane or Mozart, he's got Churchill and Martin Luther King on his iPod.

"Ronald Reagan I admire greatly," he once told me. "You look at what he gets away with in a speech -- unbelievable. He's able to take fairly complex prose and convey it in such a natural and conversational way that the beauty of the language and the power of the language are there, but you stay comfortable. That's very hard to do."

Precisely. We are constantly being told people have the "gift of gab" as if it is something you were born with. Facility with persuasive language is a skill that is developed and improved through practice and study.

Lincoln didn't become our most eloquent president through happenstance. He consciously decided to educate himself in rhetoric. Indeed, much as Van Jones listens to Churchill and Martin Luther King Jr., Lincoln studied, listen to, memorized, and recited the works of the greatest master of rhetoric in the English language -- William Shakespeare.

Churchill himself studied the art of rhetoric and the figures of speech all his life and at the age of 23 wrote a brilliant, unpublished essay, "The Scaffolding of Rhetoric," that explains: