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 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.
We cannot ensure that women will be free of discrimination in the workplace and everywhere as long as women are not universally defended under our Constitution. As it stands now, the equal rights of women are subject to interpretation of law. That is a risk our mothers, sisters and daughters cannot afford.
There is no power in the world like that of women ... this most potent constituency we seek to represent, and for their suffrages we sue.
If you would one day renovate yourself, do so from day to day.
If a train doesn’t stop at your station, it’s simply because it’s not your train. Don’t try to flag down the conductor and convince them to stop there, even if their own map says that they should just keep going. You may not realize it, but there’s another train trying to come toward you, unable to get into your station because a train that doesn’t even belong there is being delayed there by your intensity.
What I've seen, and the reactions from 'The Final Quarter' and 'The Australian Dream', is that a lot more people are more willing to share their stories around racism.
CO2 is the exhaling breath of our civilization, literally... Changing that pattern requires a scope, a scale, a speed of change that is beyond what we have done in the past.
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