Van Jones Quotes

Now, here's a good question: should serious people focus on global political instability - terrorism, failing states, nuclear weapons - or should we focus on global climate instability - droughts, floods, extreme weather? Here's the correct answer: yes, both, because climate disruption will make every other national security problem worse.

Ocean's remarkable stories, depth of commitment, and eloquent communication make him a fantastic resource for conferences, universities, and indeed everyone who wants a potent dose of grounded inspiration.

Each and every one of us should stop playing small and license ourselves to become one of the giants of the new century. We will need champions by the truckload.

I don't put myself above anyone, and I have as many shortcomings as any non-believer. I just choose to turn to a higher power to help me gain wisdom and, I hope, improve over time.

We pull out of the ground death, we burn death in our power plants, and then we act shocked when we get death in the form of oil spills and global warming.

Now it's the age for the translator. It's the age for the bridge builder. It's the age for Velcro. It's the age for Lego. It's the age for combining what we already have into what we need.

Government-mandated and -subsidized ethanol from corn will go down in history as the "Iraq War" of environmental solutions: ill-considered, costly, and disastrous.

You've never seen a Columbine done by a black child. Never. They always say, 'We can't believe it happened here. We can't believe it's these suburban white kids.' It's only them!

If the road to social transformation can be paved only by saints who never make mistakes, the road will NEVER be built.

To change our laws and culture, the green movement must attract and include the majority of all people, not just the majority of affluent people.

I cannot in good conscience ask my colleagues to expend precious time and energy defending or explaining my past. We need all hands on deck, fighting for the future.

I am sharing my faith with my sons. I pray, meditate and read devotionally. But let me be clear: I am a "person of faith" not because I am a saint, but because I am a sinner.

Well, we in America are about to break up with oil. Why not break up with poverty and discrimination too?

"Big" government? Who wants that? I just want effective government. That means America's government needs to be big in some places, small in others and non-existent in others.

Our point of view is, lets not be so elitist that we can't honor good, hard, dignified, ennobling work: people working with their hands, building things, putting up solar panels, weatherizing homes, working on organic agriculture, building wind farms. We don't have robots in society, so somebody has to do that work. Lets make sure that the people who can use that work get a chance to do it. I see that as a first step toward bigger and better things.

A family-friendly "eco-populism" can mobilize and unite millions who, at this point, would be turned off by a more extreme set of demands. The momentum will build, through these early efforts, for more comprehensive solutions.

The green economy should not just be about reclaiming throw-away stuff. It should be about reclaiming thrown-away communities. It should not just be about recycling things to give them a second life. We should also be gathering up people and giving them a second chance.

In the fourth quadrant (lower right), working-class people are motivated to take on green-collar jobs and start green businesses.

Dr. King didn't get famous giving a speech that said,"I have a complaint."

The time has come to move beyond eco-elitism to eco- populism . Ecopopulism ... To change our laws and culture , the green movement justice , political solutions and social change.

When you take the people who most need work and connect them with the work that most needs doing, you save. You save that young person's life, you save a whole bunch of money, and you save the soul of this country when you invest and give people a chance, give people hope, give people opportunity.

Will the new environmental leaders fight for eco-equity in this new "green economy" they are birthing?

If we keep pulling death from the ground, we will reap death from the skies.

If we stand for change, we can spark a popular movement with power, influence, magic and genius.

Rather than continuing to base our economy on a finite supply of dead things, we can base it on sources that are practically infinite and eternal: the sun, the moon, and the Earth's inner fire.

By kicking its carbon addiction, America will increase its national wealth and generate millions of jobs that can't be outsourced.

Former brownfields, depressed urban areas, and hard-hit rural towns blossom as eco-industrial parks, green enterprise zones, and eco-villages. Farmers' markets, community co-ops, and mobile markets get fresh, organic produce to the people who can't afford to shop at health-food stores.

Any successful long-term strategy will require that the green wave fully and passionately embrace the principles of eco-equity.

Apparently, the fossil-fuel industry's strategy is to convince the American people that we should just burn all the way through the last of our oil and coal reserves.

That's one component: rather than creating job-training pipelines that put these kids at the back of the line for the last century's pollution-based jobs, we need to be creating opportunities for them to be at the front of the line for the new clean and green jobs.

All the big ideas for getting us onto a lower carbon trajectory involve a lot of people doing a lot of work, and that's been missing from the conversation. This is a great time to go to the next step and ask, well, who's going to do the work? Who's going to invest in the new technologies? What are ways to get communities wealth, improved health, and expanded job opportunities out of this improved transition?

I don't think an authentic stand comes from your head. I think an authentic stand comes from your heart. If your child is sick, right? Something happens in you to make a miracle, to make a miracle. It has nothing to do with the facts. And that's all that's required is your child my child your grandchild, your child's child's child – they're in peril. And if you start thinking about it, you'll sit down. But if you feel it you'll stand up!

That's the amazing thing about this thing. It's that it's when you stand up you license other people to stand up. Now you standing up by yourself don't make a dad-gum bit of difference in the rational world. You're just one fool standing up. But if you've ever seen a standing ovation? It starts with one fool standing up. And then pretty soon the whole stadium is standing up. And it's a different moment!

I'm willing to forgo the cheap satisfaction of the radical pose for the deep satisfaction of radical ends.

Stop using your phones and laptops as toys and use them to start a revolution.

We're going to be in an economic slowdown for a couple of years. So to take three months, four months, six months to spend this money the right way-we're not going to get a chance to spend a trillion dollars again! Ever. So let's do it the right way.

Come, then, let us go forward together with our united strength - and win a better future for generations to come.

We have the chance to build this new energy economy in ways that reflect our deepest values of inclusion, diversity, and equal opportunity for everyone.

Now is not the time to shrink from the challenge of saving our only home in the universe. Now is not the time to pull into ourselves, retreating into either survivalist or escapist mode. To the contrary, this is the time for titans, not turtles. Now is the time to open our arms, expand our horizons, and dream big. Big problems require big solutions.

A green economy begins to replace some of the clunking and chugging of ugly machines with the wise effort of beautiful, skilled people. That means more jobs.

Barack Obama volunteered to be the Captain of the Titanic AFTER it hit the iceberg

We seem to forget that everything that is good for the environment is a job. Solar panels don't put themselves up. Wind turbines don't manufacture themselves. Houses don't retrofit themselves and put in their own new boilers and furnaces and better-fitting windows and doors. Advanced biofuel crops don't plant themselves. Community gardens don't tend themselves. Farmers' markets don't run themselves. Every single thing that is good for the environment is actually a job, a contract, or an entrepreneurial opportunity.

Let us all say together: "We want to build a green economy strong enough to life people out of poverty. We want to create green pathways out of poverty and into great careers for America's children. We want this 'green wave' to life all boats. This country can save the polar bears and poor kids too.

It's in that convergence of spiritual people becoming active and active people becoming spiritual that the hope of humanity now rests.

The bombs the government drops in Iraq are the bombs that blew up in New York City.

The Whitehouse is talking different because we are walking different

Now we stand at our own crossroads, looking out upon two futures: one with rising temperatures, rising oceans, and rising violence on a hot and strip-mined planet and another with expanding organic harvests, growing solar arrays, and deepening global partnerships on a green and thriving Earth.

Let's stop wasting billions of dollars on prisons, which send people home who are too often less capable and more damaged than when they went in. We would have safer neighborhoods if we spent the same money on true rehabilitation, job training, employment and entrepreneurship.

In a democracy, you won't always get to have your way. But you should always get to have your say.

America should be leading the world in green and clean solutions, and human rights. We shouldn't be leading the world in wars and incarceration rates and pollution. We can be a better country. I think we're going to be a better country.

That we could live in a country with no rules for the rich, no rights for the poor, and no middle class to speak of, is wrong; it's a crime against the next generation and we've got to do something about it.

We should use the transition to a better energy strategy as an opportunity to create a better economy and a better country all around.

Most people walking around in a mall or on a college campus are carrying on them better technology than the entire U.S. government had when it put a man on the moon. Each one of us is a walking technological superpower.

The time has come for a public-private community partnership to fix this country and put it back to work.

Even if we can solve the carbon problem for coal, it is still a non-renewable resource. At some point, coal supplies will drop.

We need to send hundreds of millions of dollars down to our public high schools, vocational colleges, and community colleges to begin training people in the green-collar work of the future - things like solar-panel installation, retrofitting buildings that are leaking energy, wastewater reclamation, organic food, materials reuse and recycling.

No one is above the law, and no one is beneath the law.

If you look at my career over the past twenty years, I've always been trying to look around corners for low-income communities of color.

I'm excited about our rising generation.