The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems by Van Jones

Release date: 2008 / 197 pages

Synopsis (from back cover): Provocative, personal, and inspirational, The Green Collar Economy is not a dire warning but rather a substantive and viable plan for solving the biggest issues facing the country — the faililng economy and our devastated environment. From a distance, it appears that these two problems are separate, but when we look closer, the connection becomes unmistakable.

First line: “First, the bad news: the pain at the gas pump is just the beginning.”

Review:  I found this book courtesy of Ideal Bite, a daily newsletter I receive about practical, easy ways to be more environmentally aware and friendly in my every day life.  A few weeks ago the newsletter announced they were starting a book club and this was the first title selected.  Since I love my daily Bite, I thought I would give the book – and the book club – a try.  I try to stayed informed regarding the environment – have read and reviewed Friedman’s Hot, Flat and Crowded and Pollan’s In Defense of Food – but do tend to read these works with a  pressure in my chest and sense of fear. 

That the environment needs to be our focus – practically, ethically, economically – is self-evident.  However, I am fortunate to have a diverse collection of friends and family members, politically as well as ethically, and many still do not believe or comprehend the current environmental crisis, so I do feel a responsibility to be well-informed whenever the topic arises.

This work — while not as comprehensive as Friedman’s (it is one-third of the length after all) or quite as readable as Pollan’s — does an excellent job integrating the connections between the environmental crisis in the world, the socio-economic disparity in our country, and the opportunity our government and citizens have to solve both issues.  Jones uses Hurricane Katrina as a unifying metaphor for how these issues have converged – how global warming contributed to the force of the hurricane, how the neglected infrastructure of our country exacerbated the devastation, and how a political climate of neglecting and even ignoring our neighbors resulted in a tragedy still hard to fathom years later.

Fortunately, Jones uses this tragedy as a blueprint for how to avoid future situations and raise our country out of its current malaise. 

 The forward begins by comparing our current fears of turning from finite, dirty, expensive fuels to renewable, clean, free fuels to how, 200 years ago, Britain hesitated to abolish the slave trade out of a fear of a “financial apocalypse:”

 As “slavery’s abolition exposed the debilitating inefficiencies associated with zero-cost labor, creativity and productivity surged, launching the industrial revolution and inaugurating an era of the greatest wealth production in human history… Today, we don’t need to abolish carbon as an energy source in order to see its inefficiencies starkly or understand that the addiction to it is the principal drag on American capitalism… The practice of borrowing a billion dollars each day to buy foreign oil has caused the American dollar to implode…Carbon dependence has eroded our economic power, destroyed our moral authority, diminished our international influence and prestige, endangered our national security, and damaged our health and landscapes.  It is subverting everything we value.”

Jones’s thesis for salvaging our economy can be summarized in the following problem-solution equation:

“Our economy is powered almost exclusively by fossil fuels, a nonrenewable resource.  That means the supplies are limited – by definition… The solution for the economy is simple: deliberately cut demand for energy and intelligently increase its supply.  Those two steps will bring supply and demand back into balance, stabilizing energy costs and eventually lowering them.  When energy prices settle and come down, all prices settle and come down – and we can begin to grow the economy again… It is true that we cannot drill and burn out way out of our present economic and energy problems.  We can, however, invent and invest our way out.” (2-4) 

Jones’s belief is that our economic (and environmental) salvation can be achieved through Green-collar jobs: “a family-supporting, career-track job that directly contributes to preserving or enhancing environmental quality… Today, green-collar workers are installing solar panels, retrofitting buildings to make them more efficient, refining waste oil into biodiesel, erecting wind farms, repairing hybrid cars, building green rooftops, planting trees, constructing transit lines, and so much more” (12-13).

Now, while Jones admits that “most of the economic power we need to green the Earth is still in the hands of people with a ‘pillage and pave’ mentality” (61), he also provides many examples of major cities (Milwaukee, Chicago, Los Angeles) and entire states (South Dakota, Pennsylvania, California), who recognize the economic advantage of ethically and environmentally sound businesses and are benefitting already.  In my own life, my husband and I recently spoke to a builder in Colorado and expressed our desire for using renewable energy (specifically solar and geothermal energy) and the builder replied, “That’s basically standard around here.”  Hallelujah!

So, for my readers who, like me, do not need yet another frightening history lesson is why using finite, dirty, expensive fuel is…  bad…  then let me recommend this book as a lesson in hope and as an example of how many, many countries and even segments of our own country are finally getting it.

For example, Jones discusses countries like Sweden, Iceland, Brazil and Costa Rica who are ahead of the environmental curve, ethically as well as economically, and whose economies have exploded ever since they recognized how beneficial energy independence is.  He also provides a nice history lesson of Americans who have understood why trashing one’s home is not a good idea – from indigenous people to Thoreau and Emerson to Teddy Roosevelt to 1970’s regulations to our most recent attempts.  In fact, did you know that at the end of the ‘70’s the White House actually had solar panels installed on the roof?  I didn’t! 

So, while I did read this with a tight throat and sense of impending doom at times, I ended with a small sense of hope.

And the book club experience was quite fun, too!  Since the organization is focused on the environment — and not on evaluating the work’s merits — the discussion was different and quite a bit more focused than book club discussions tend to be.  I must admit, I sure learned a lot about the environment!

By the way, at the end of his work, Jones provides a great resource list – here’s a selection:

• www.greenforall.org – up-to-date information on currently pending legislation
• www.greenforall.org/files/Green%20Jobs%20Pledge%20Packet.pdf for the Green Jobs Pledge
• www.cows.org – interesting initiative going on in Milwaukee
• www.greencommunitiesonline.org

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