Here is another bit of encouraging news. I have seen Van speak on several occasions and each time he has been inspiring, optimistic and practical. Another great addition to the Obama team. The President would have a hard time finding a more dedicated, intelligent person than Van Jones to work on environmental justice and sustainability issues.
Van Jones will join the Obama administration, but not as any sort of czar.
The green jobs promoter will join the White House Council on Environmental Quality, his current outfit said today, as a "special adviser for green jobs."
According to Green For All, the Oakland-based green jobs advocacy group Mr. Jones founded, 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."
That first job description is key. Since the campaign, President Obama has touted the job-creation potential of his clean-energy initiative. Now, the focus seems to be on making sure that the administration's overall climate policy—including a cap-and-trade bill to curb greenhouse-gas emissions—will create more jobs than it endangers.
Tweaking the climate bill that way is politically very important. One of the administration's biggest challenges in passing a comprehensive cap-and-trade bill is convincing members of Congress, especially Democrats in Rust Belt states, that cap-and-trade's likely negative impact on manufacturing will be offset somehow through new "green jobs."
Of course, plenty of economists are still skeptical about the idea of two-for-one policy making, such as shaping climate policy from a jobs-creation perspective. Harvard University's Robert Stavins is one of the most vocal critics:
Addressing the worst economic recession in generations calls for the most effective economic stimulus package that can be devised, not a stimulus package that is diminished in effectiveness through excessive bells and whistles meant to address a myriad of other (legitimate) social concerns. And, likewise, getting serious about global climate change will require the enactment and implementation of meaningful, dedicated climate policies, most likely a comprehensive national CO2 cap-and-trade system. These are two serious but different policy problems, and they call for two serious, carefully-crafted policy responses.
So President Obama has created one green job, just by hiring Van Jones. Can he create more before the clamor for jobs of any color becomes deafening?
UPDATE: The WSJ's Stephen Power spoke briefly with Mr. Jones today and reports:
In a five-minute telephone interview Tuesday, Mr. Jones said he wasn't prepared to describe his duties in detail but that the focus of his new job would be "creating new policies going forward and trying to make sure as we design new policies that we build in smart ideas."
He said he doesn't expect to advise the administration's appointees at the Department of Energy on how to dispense roughly $40 billion allocated to it for various stimulus projects under the recently passed economic recovery legislation. The agency has "great people already working on that," he said.
Asked to respond to critics who say that the transition from cheap fossil fuels will result in job losses or lower wages, Mr. Jones said "There's a debate among economists about what's true, but I think there's not much more jobs to be had in the coal mines." Asked whether he considered nuclear power a "green" source of energy, Mr. Jones said, "I'm not going to comment on that."
Eli Mervine
www.gaiadevelopment.com
eli@gaiadevelopment.com
