Vangelism

What does the green jobs and justice community think about the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act? To get one perspective, Grist caught up with Van Jones, the founder of Green For All, a group that promotes green-jobs policies and environmental justice. Jones, a civil-rights lawyer and the founder and former executive director of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, has become a leading voice for building a green economy.

Green for All pushes for federal action to build an inclusive green economy. Would Lieberman-Warner do that?

Lieberman-Warner is a good step in the right direction. I think most of us like it, but we don't love it yet.

Here's the good thing about Lieberman-Warner: It would put $60 billion toward green-collar job training, and that's very important, to make sure our community colleges, our tribal colleges, our historically black colleges and universities, our labor unions have the money they need to train people to make this transition [to a green economy] work.

How would you like to see the legislation improved?

I still think that the emissions-reduction targets are too low, and I think there are some assumptions in Lieberman-Warner that radically underestimate the ingenuity, innovation, and inventiveness of the American people. I just think it's too cautious. And at the end of the day, you're saying to 2,100 companies, "Cut your emissions by 2 percent per year." We're not a 2 percent country. That's not who we are. Raising the standards, raising the ambition, will pull so much innovation and entrepreneurship out of the country that it literally will be like a green economic renaissance for the country. I think that there's this fear that if you raise the standards too much, you're going to hurt the economy. I think actually it's when you raise the standards that you help the economy, because you unleash the innovation to beat global warming and kick-start the economy.