--- title: Q&A with Van Jones | TIME description: Van Jones, author of the new book The Green-Collar Economy, could represent the future of environmentalism in America canonical: https://time.com/video/0KNXTUWA/ og:title: Q&A with Van Jones og:description: Van Jones, author of the new book The Green-Collar Economy, could represent the future of environmentalism in America og:url: https://time.com/video/0KNXTUWA/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/0KNXTUWA/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Q&A with Van Jones twitter:description: Van Jones, author of the new book The Green-Collar Economy, could represent the future of environmentalism in America twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/0KNXTUWA/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # Q&A with Van Jones > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: Q&A with Van Jones [Watch (HLS stream): Q&A with Van Jones](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/0KNXTUWA.m3u8) (5:29)  _Published 2008-11-07. Van Jones, author of the new book The Green-Collar Economy, could represent the future of environmentalism in America_ --- Jul 27, 2023 1:03 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [TIME100 Talks: A Conversation With Van Jones and Andra Day ](/video/6e7xy1WT/) ### TIME100 Talks: A Conversation With Van Jones and Andra Day [Leading by Disrupton: Lee Daniels Moderated by Van Jones](/video/KcwwxvBZ/) ### Leading by Disrupton: Lee Daniels Moderated by Van Jones [Kira Orange Jones on the Future of Innovation](/video/xPzskySs/) ### Kira Orange Jones on the Future of Innovation --- ## Transcript >> I'm Bryan Walsh and we're here with Van Jones for doing an interview for going green on Time. com. Van, you just came out with a book The Green Collar Economy. What is that? What's a-- What's a green collar job? >> Well, a green collar job is essentially a blue collar job that's been upgraded to better respect the environment. Those jobs would be installing solar panels, manufacturing wind turbines. You could put the truck back to work. >> Uh huh. >> Not making SUVs and destroy the world, but making wind turbines that can actually save the world. Empower your way through this recession with green solutions, they're not just good for the Earth but also good for the economy. >> So is it an environmental message or is it an economic message or is it a little bit of both? >> Yeah. It's a little bit of both. In fact, I think that-- what we really need is a green, economic, stimulus package. Let's have the federal government say, " We're gonna help cities and states retrofit and weatherize millions and millions of buildings ." That would bring down energy prices. It will also bring down carbon emissions. But more importantly, it would bring up home values and it would bring up jobs. So the solutions for the economy and the solutions for the environment increasingly will be the same thing. We-- Instead of having our economy based on credit cards and destroying the environment, we can have an economy based on production and restoring the environment. That's the way for it. That's the green collar economy. >> You work in Oakland. I mean, do people there got this message or they still think of the environment as something that, you know, the guys who are in-- working stocks across the bay can worry about? >> We talk about work, wealth, and health-- the big three for all working ordinary Americans. Work, wealth, and health. They want jobs. They want the ability to have careers and earn money. They become entrepreneurs themselves. They want healthy families. Well, guess what, organic food gives you that. It can cost [ unk ] but if we have farmers' markets and community gardens, we can get to that. Weatherizing homes, retrofitting homes, they don't leak so much energy. That's money back in your pocket. You're getting carbon out of the air, which is great, but you're also putting money back in your pocket. We've gotta start talking about green solutions as solutions to everyday problems as well as the [ unk ] problems. People have personal crises that need to be resolved. At the time, we deal with these [ unk ] crises. >> How do you make sure the people can look ahead and not just be concerned on that bottomline, you know, going to the gas station and not paying 100 dollars to fill up the car? >> If you think people were screaming-- and they were-- about gas prices this summer, wait till people start getting their home heating bills this winter. You can park your car. You can't park your house. You're gonna have people having to choose between, you know, warm meals and warm beds for their kids. And there are only green solutions for that. The only-- You can't drill and burn your way out of that problem. But you can weatherize and retrofit. You can blow in insulation. You can put people to work, tightening up the envelope. So if your energy bill goes up thirty percent but you're thirty percent more efficient, your [ unk ] harmless. That is a green solution for ordinary people, and it gets better. If you weatherize and energy- retrofit millions of homes, the overall demand for energy goes down in the economy, which means all prices come down, which means even if your house didn't get weatherized, yours-- your bill will still go down as enough efficiency starts to take hold in the economy. These are practical steps that bring up jobs, bring up home values, bring down carbon, bring down energy prices, that we need to say, " These are green solutions ." And if we can showcase those kinds of solutions to the American people-- so you associate " green" not with having to pay a green premium or green tax and pay more for future generations, but actually paying less to make things better for themselves right now, I think we can grow this coalition. >> Are you concerned at all that given the [ unk ] crisis we could have a situation where as a country so worried about what's gonna happen tomorrow that we can't think five, ten, fifteen years down the line? >> Borrow and spend from the government, bubble and bail out in the private sector, drill and spill environment policies have failed us. This could be a breakdown but it could be a breakthrough. The labor demand to retrofit a nation is so large that we could actually pull people into the workforce and give them the tools and the training and the technology to reboot this economy. >> I think a lot of people in the environmental movement are feeling that you're hoping against an impossible problem. How do you remain optimistic and hopeful for the future? >> Well, you gotta-- you gotta understand, you know, people ask me, " How do I remain optimistic and hopeful ?" But I spent ten years working on prison reforms, okay? So you know, now I'm working on stuff where, you know, Silicon Valley's engaged, they're coming up with good answers. You got presidential candidates talking about it. The whole world understands the problem. This is-- I'm like, " Hey, you know, I was able to make a difference, you know, in prison. We dropped the youth prison population account in California about thirty percent working with partners ." You know-- and that was a lonely fight. I love this fight. If you got your eyes on the horizon and can see the kind of country we can have-- green, thriving, people working together, cooperating with the world, sharing technologies, coming up with the next-- you know-- big breakthroughs, and the only thing we gotta do is give up all the nasty oil and coal? >> Uh huh. >> I mean, that's such a win- win that, you know, we don't have to fight any wars to have solar panels. And it's such a win- win that, you know, I can work on this for a very long time. 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