Biographical Sketch

Eco-visionary, human rights attorney, and founder of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, Van Jones is one of the most creative and unifying progressive leaders in the United States. Today human society faces three grave perils: widening social inequality, radical environmental destruction and deepening despair. From the heart of urban America, new voices are rising -- proposing creative and holistic solutions for this triple-crisis. One such voice belongs to Van Jones. Based on a decade of front-line activism, Jones offers comprehensive solutions and inspirational models. His visionary proposals answer the call for expanded opportunity, ecological sustainability and renewed hope. Van is a passionate advocate for the environment and for responsible business. He has served on numerous governing boards, including: Rainforest Action Network, WITNESS, Bioneers, the New Apollo Project and the Social Venture Network. Van's efforts have earned him many honors, including the Reebok International Human Rights Award, the Ashoka Fellowship, and the Rockefeller Foundation "Next Generation Leadership" Fellowship.

Matt Sinclair introducing Van Jones:

3 reasons we felt Van would be a perfect speaker for this conference: 1) sustainability champions need to be skilled at cross-cultural communication, to bring groups together that have not talked to each other before. Van has been doing this successfully, connecting congressional leaders, environmental & social justice leaders, mayors, and grassroots leaders. 2) Van models sustainability by practicing what we teach. His respect and reverence for his elders, acknowledging their wisdom, has earned their respect and opened them to new ideas. Van is very generous with his time with students. 3) We can’t and won’t have campuses or society that survives and thrives unless we work towards a synergistic solution that embodies the “triple bottom line” with environmental sustainability, economic sustainability, and social justice. Van’s new book, the Green Collar Economy, is on the NY Times Bestseller list. Get your book clubs reading it!

Notes from Van Jones' speech (add your own, or add comments)

• If y’all aint happy this week, somethings wrong!
• I had two speeches I had to choose between for today. One of them was “someday, don’t worry.” I don’t have to give that speech!
• Those of you who are blessed to be educators now have a dual role: you always have to teach history of ideas, scientific discovery, politics, literature. Now you have the obligation to make history. These are historic times. The actions we take in this country in the next 1-2 years will be analyzed, discussed, debated, and evaluated for hundreds of years. No sector of society will be immune to the consequences of the choices we make now.
• This is no time to worry about what your handbook says, or what your chancellor says, or what your fellow faculty will say. This is the time to worry about what your grandchildren will say about what you did to rescue and redeem democracy, western civilization, and our planet.
• President-elect Obama only had to win on Tuesday. We have to win every day, week after week and month after month until we get the job done.
• The economic floor has disappeared under the American economy. This financial crisis continues. The mortgage crisis wiped out more African American wealth than has been accumulated since the 1960’s. We are now back to 1950’s levels in terms of African-American wealth. There if fear, pain, and anguish.
• As a result of that breakdown, people marched into voting booths and produced a breakthrough.
• The floor is gone, but a young man from Illinois has taken the ceiling away. Whether we fly or sink is up to us.
• How can we avoid the fall and begin to fly? Why were we falling in the first place? Was everything fine 8 years ago? America was no paradise in 1989 or 1999. Three things contributed to us falling in the first place:
• 1) the long-term economic philosophy on which our society is based has a flaw in it. The flawed assumption is that we have an awful lot of nature and very few people. The fallacies are built in to the economic model, which produced ideas of inexhaustible resources. Externalities—just throw the pollution away—show me the externalities now, where we have an awful lot of people and shockingly little nature. We have accounting systems that don’t account for what counts. Carbon is off the books.
• 2) The most recent fashion and fad in economic policy, the fundamental flaw of the last 30 years, the neoliberal paradigm, is a bill of goods that said we could forever run the U.S. economy based on consumption, and not production. We sent all the production away and have been running the economy based on malls and Wal-Mart. After 9/11 tax breaks were given to the rich and poor people were told to shop. It is a fallacy that you can run on economy based on consumption. Worse, we were taught we could run the economy based on debt, not thrift. Whoever you are, if your grandparents saw your credit card reports they would whup you! We were taught that we could base the economy based on destruction instead of environmental restoration. If you disagreed with this, you were labeled a socialist. We have tried to run an economy based on credit cards, and it is so fragile that a small breeze blew the economy down. America spends, and China saves. It is an unsustainable relationship to base our relationship with Asia on us spending and them lending. I don’t want people in Asia to leave their villages to live in a crowded city and make crap for us. I have a better vision. We can be partners to help each other to grow local, sustainable, green economies. This green agenda is a good agenda for jobs here and everywhere. We can be global partners in this global green new deal.
• 3) People have bad ideas all the time—that isn’t going to destroy the universe if you have good leadership, but we had a third problem—a political problem that launched a process of distraction from the issues. The wrong politics vis a vis our highest values.
• It’s easy to put Barack Obama on a pedestal, but he did not create the pro-democracy movement that created his opportunity. It was YOU (some of you) in 1999 that knew that the kids in Seattle were on to something. It was YOU who knew, after 9/11 that the march to war would end in disaster. It was YOU who said what about what you told me as a child, when you made me put my hand on my heart and talk about liberty and justice for all. Who said “what does America the Beautiful” have to do with clear-cutting and a ‘drill baby drill’ philosophy.” You have kept the candle lit in the darkest period in our country’s history, where we almost lost our democracy through fear mongering and authoritarianism. THEN a young man, who was willing, and who had some wisdom and courage saw you and wrote a book called “The Audacity of Hope.” Yes, there had to be a leader and a spokesperson, but there had to be a movement, there had to be a context. Now you get to go from praying for the country to being part of the dynamic that will save the country. You get to write the next page.
• The good news is that there are three very simple policy items that will make this period the greatest in the history of human civilization. Students will be excited and eager to know what to do: be part of the next Focus the Nation! Help them achieve three world-historic changes. These simple, dramatic nation-changing initiatives are things that President-elect Obama has already committed himself to.
• 1) Put a price on carbon. That’s a game changer; a back breaker. Right now we don’t make the polluters pay—we pay the polluters. The government is on the side of the problem-makers. Big Oil gets triple subsidy—big tax breaks, the U.S. military policing their supply lines around the world (30% of the Pentagon’s budget—you could take that money and create sustainable, secure energy for our country), and they get to pollute for free. If you litter you will get at least a $25 fine, while these companies can spew C02 by the megaton for free. What about the problem solvers, such as solar? They have had to beg and plea to get extensions on their tax extensions. It had to be snuck in to the bailout package—a big bailout for the banks, and a little bailout for the planet.
• People argue that it will “destroy the economy,” and hurt the poor. “We can’t tax polluters—it will increase prices that will be passed along to the poor.” I didn’t know they cared! Never have they supported a bill to help poor people before, and suddenly they seem so interested in helping the poor!
• This will be the big fight, the climatic battle of human civilization. Stop paying the polluters! Make the polluters pay! Use that money to cushion the blow for the poor. Don’t give them a check, give them a job! Give them entrepreneurial opportunities. Help them green their neighborhoods.
• Our energy workers are heroes. Coal workers have sacrificed their lungs and their health to power America to this point. There are 150,000 of them in this country. They should be able to retire with dignity and honor, not forced to work for Wal-Mart. We want a just transition for them; we have no quarrel with them. But we need to stop supporting the companies with the triple subsidies.
• 2) Retrofit America. This is low-hanging fruit. It can be done right now. Weatherize. Make our homes and buildings more energy efficient. We need to weatherize millions of buildings. With off-the-shelf technology you can make buildings 30% more efficient. You can blow in insulation, double pane the glass, close drafts. You can create jobs in doing this. You can replace old water heaters and cut people’s energy bills. You put people to work, you lower energy bills, and you increase home values. The construction workers may not be able to build anything for a while, but they can rebuild everything. If you retrofit America it will pay for itself in savings.
• 3) We have a Saudi Arabia of wind in this country, and a Saudi Arabia of solar. We just need to connect our centers of energy production with the areas of energy use. A new power grid of green energy. We have done this before! We used to have a country that you couldn’t drive across. In the name of national security the interstate highway system was created. The minute the country was connected there were incalculable economic benefits. It was such a good idea we did it again—we came up with the internet! Again it was done in the name of national security. Now the challenge is not moving people and bodies, or data and information around the country. Now the challenge is to move clean energy electrons around the country. Don’t tell me America can’t do that! We need a breakthrough in energy transmission. We need a breakthrough in energy storage. In the 10 years it would take to “drill baby drill” you could get this done. It’s our turn now! The people who said we could bomb and torture our way to peace have had their turn—it’s our turn now! The people who told us we could drill and burn our way into energy security have had their turn. If we invest, invent, and include in sustainable energy we can solve our energy crisis and solve poverty and unemployment. It’s our turn to put this country back to work, to have a green growth agenda.