Van Jones Tapped to Implement Green Jobs Program
I love Barack Obama, environmental activist Van Jones was quoted as saying in a January profile in The New Yorker. I’d pay money just to shine the brother’s
Jul 31, 202018.7K Shares408.4K Views
“I love Barack Obama,” environmental activist Van Jones was quoted as saying in a January profile in The New Yorker. “I’d pay money just to shine the brother’s shoes.”
Now he’ll have the opportunity to do a bit more than that. A spokesman for Green for All, Jones’ green jobs organization, just confirmed to me in an email that Jones will join the administration as “Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise & Innovation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ).”
This weekend, Greendigreported rumors that Jones would be tapped as the “green jobs czar,” but the Green for All spokesman, David Falkenstein, tells me, “Van is joining the admin, but not as a Czar.” Whatever the nomenclature, Jones will be responsible for overseeing the green jobs program on which Obama has pinned his economic policy. He will work under CEQ Chairwoman Nancy Sutley.
According to Falkenstein: “His duties will include: helping to shape and implement job-generating climate policy; working to ensure equal protection and equal opportunity in the administration’s climate and energy proposals; and publicly advocating the administration’s environmental and energy agenda.”
Jones made his name as the founder of Green for All, an Oakland-based organization that seeks to reduce urban poverty by promoting green jobs. He is also the author of the New York Times bestseller “The Green Collar Economy.”
Paula M. Graham
Reviewer
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