No Love Affair with Lieberman-Warner: Van Jones Speaks Out

We like it...but we don’t love it.

That’s Van Jones, green jobs crusader and founder of Green for All, with a very diplomatic response to a CNN question about Lieberman-Warner. The full interview is above.

So, why no love for the biggest climate bill to hit the Senate floor? Van Jones, in a single sentence:

It underestimates the inventiveness and the innovation of the American people.

Count me convinced.

Van Jones explains that the bill would force only about 2100 companies in America to cut their emissions by a piddly two percent a year.

For Jones, an activist hell-bent on turning climate action into an economic renaissance and a meal ticket out of poverty for low-income America, that’s not exactly the standard that’s needed.

Like putting a band-aid on a bullet hole.

Meanwhile, the Van Jones dream:

If we’re going to beat global warming, we’re going to have to weatherize millions of buildings so they don’t leak so much energy. That’s millions of new jobs. We’re going to have to solarize the country….That’s thousands of new contracts, millions of new jobs.

Simple:

If we can connect this work that most needs to be done to the people that most need work, we can fight global warming and poverty at the same time.

Makes sense, right?

Now, have a look at the work of T. Boone Pickens, oil tycoon turned wind power investor, for a real-world example of how that vision can be realized -- all over America.

The new venture by Pickens, called Pampa Wind, would generate an estimated 1,500 jobs during the construction phase in the Texas Panhandle and 720 during a typical year of operation. That's according to an economic impact study of the project.

Further, personal income in the five counties of the project investment zone would rise by $68.7 million per year during the construction phase, and $120 million during operation.

Now, imagine Pampa Wind projects cropping up all over the nation -- and all the green collar jobs that would flow from the investments.

And keep that image in mind when you see, or hear, the latest toxic ad campaigns of the coal industry and its lobbyists.

They're designed to kill Lieberman-Warner by disseminating untruths about how all climate action would devastate the US economy.

Lies.

And here are some useful talking points to combat them, put together by Dan Weiss at the Center for American Progress.

• ‹ previous
• up
• next ›