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.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of creating an energy economy that embodies values of inclusion and equality.
Van Jones highlights the opportunity we have to shape a new energy economy that not only addresses environmental concerns but also prioritizes social values like inclusion, diversity, and equal opportunity. It calls for a collective effort to ensure that the transition to sustainable energy benefits all members of society, promoting equity in economic growth and opportunities.
In practice
In a speech on renewable energy policy, one might quote Van Jones to emphasize the need for equitable practices.
The surest path to safe streets and peaceful communities is not more police and prisons, but ecologically sounds economic development. And that same path can lift us to a new, green economy - one with the power to lift people out of poverty while respecting and repairing the environment.
Government-mandated and -subsidized ethanol from corn will go down in history as the "Iraq War" of environmental solutions: ill-considered, costly, and disastrous.
Will the new environmental leaders fight for eco-equity in this new "green economy" they are birthing?
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.
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.
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 personβs 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.
What I possess I would gladly retain. Change amuses the mind, yet scarcely profits.
When women thrive, economies thrive.
Sharing an idea you care about is a generous way to change your world for the better.
Changes and progress very rarely are gifts from above. They come out of struggles from below.
When people are ready to, they change. They never do it before then, and sometimes they die before they get around to it. You can't make them change if they don't want to, just like when they do want to, you can't stop them.
But the whole point of the Sixties was that you had to take people as they were. If you came in with us you left your class, and colour, and religion behind, that was what the Sixties was all about.
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