Van Jones, Obama’s New Green Jobs Adviser

Over the past few days there’s been a lot of rumors and speculation about Van Jones possibly joining President Obama’s cabinet as ‘Green Jobs Czar’. It was finally confirmed yesterday that while ‘Green Jobs Czar’ is a bit of an overstatement, Jones wil indeed be serving as Obama’s green jobs adviser.

From Google:

Author and activist Van Jones will be a special adviser for green jobs, enterprise and innovation in the Obama administration.

Nancy Sutley, chairwoman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said in a release Monday that Jones will start work next week to help direct the administration’s efforts to create jobs and help the environment. Sutley said Jones will work on “vulnerable communities.”

Jones, who is perhaps the nation’s most high-profile advocate of green jobs, is the founder of Green for All and author of the book ‘The Green Collar Economy’. Grist caught up with him at the Democratic National Convention last August to ask whether he’d be interested in becoming a part of the Obama administration as green jobs czar or something similar, to which he responded “I can’t imagine what position he would offer me except the janitorial recycling staff, which I’d be happy to be a part of.”

Of course, Jones was being modest. He’s a natural choice for such a position, bringing with him years of experience organizing and advocating for green jobs training programs, particularly in poverty-stricken urban areas. When President Obama won the election last November, bringing Jones on staff was one of the first things we asked him to do. We’re confident that Jones has what it takes to help Obama lead this country into a new green collar economy.

Link [Grist] + [Google]

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