Will the new environmental leaders fight for eco-equity in this new "green economy" they are birthing?
Interpretation
The quote questions whether emerging environmental leaders will prioritize fairness and equity in the new green economy.
Van Jones emphasizes the importance of not only creating a sustainable green economy but also ensuring that it is equitable. He raises a critical question about whether the new leaders in the environmental movement will advocate for eco-equity, implying that environmental initiatives should benefit all sectors of society rather than leaving marginalized communities behind.
In practice
In a speech at an environmental summit, one could reference this quote to emphasize the need for fairness in sustainability efforts.
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.
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.
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.
Everything we make pollutes. The most responsible thing we can do is to make each product as well as we know how so it lasts as long as possible.
For the record, I am sticking with my claim that the simultaneous degradation of air quality, water quality, water supply, food safety, soil quality, and other environment-related variables is the main challenge to China's continued development.
Hydraulic fracturing requires massive amounts of water. Disposing of the toxic wastewater, as well as accidental spills, can contaminate drinking water and harm human health.
I think history shows that countries have to have some kind of a threshold level of economic success before they begin to have the means and the will to focus on the environment.
We subsidize the disposal of waste in all its myriad forms β from landfills, to Superfund cleanups, to deep-well injection, to storage of nuclear waste. In the process, we encourage an economy where 80 percent of what we consume gets thrown away after one use.
I wish America would spend even half as much time complaining about plastics in our oceans as we do about actresses' plastic surgery.
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