Mr. Van Jones on Jobs and Social Protection

[Music] I spent the better part of my 20s working with kids who were in trouble uh kids who were in and out of jail and who didn't have a lot of Hope and I just discovered that one job these kids could get was putting up solar panels in California and suddenly I find myself in a situation where we're fighting pollution and poverty at the same time by giving young people who most needed work a chance to do the work that most needed to get done uh repowering America in a clean way and it just transformed the sense of what was possible there was this amazing organization called solar Richmond because we had changed all these laws in California where you could put up solar panels and there were companies that wanted to put up the solar panels there were consumers that wanted to buy the solar panels there was just nobody to put the solar panels up and so solar Richmond uh Richmond's you know can be a tough town but rich with heart and people who wanted to work hard and we discovered these amazing young people who were doing this incredibly valuable work so all of a sudden we get a phone call from Nancy Pelosi's office she wanted us to come to Washington DC and talk about what we were doing and we were just over the moon we we' never been in Washington DC for those purposes before and we're testifying in front of these big committees and Congress members and a guy named George W bush kind of caught the bug that here was something that both sides could get excited about between Pelosi support and W support we got something called the green jobs Act of 2007 smuggled into the energy bill that passed that year and it was the only thing that Nancy Pelosi and George W bush agreed on was that if you're going to put up solar panels you should be training young people to do it and suddenly there's $100 million in Department of Labor to make this dream come [Music] true a lot of people ask what the heck does solar panel installation have to do with people in jail and why is my slogan green jobs not jails cuz that's my big slogan well at a spiritual level everybody count everybody matters we don't have any throwaway resources we don't have any throwa away species we also don't have any throwa away children or neighborhoods either it's all precious it's all sacred and when you realize that suddenly criminal justice making sure you don't throw people away economic Justice making sure you don't throw opportunity away and environmental justice making sure you don't throw the planet away all start to rhyme it all starts to come together and that's why we say green jobs not jails is the pathway to the Future sdg8 which is the green jobs goal is the most precious to me because it's about people and the planet we're a busy species we're going to work the question is are we going to be busy tearing things down are we going to be busy building things back up healing things putting things together in a better way this particular goal points toward that possibility for our species that we can work we can have an economy but the economy can be designed to heal the Earth and bring people together as opposed to destroy the Earth and divide All Nations just 20 years ago the idea of green jobs was just a Daydream among a few of us in the Bay Area now it's a part of the United Nations that lets you know that we're on to something pretty big here and a couple decades is is a blink of the eye for a species as big as ours it's elegant green jobs it's just two syllables but it's a whole prayer for the future that the economy could be good for the Earth and the Earth could be good for the economy I have a great deal of confidence that the best in our species is way bigger than the worst I have a great deal of confidence that our genius for making stuff is better than and bigger than our genius for breaking stuff uh and I think the fact that we're here proves that