Greening the Ghetto is Elizabeth Kolbert's profile of Van Jones, an African American advocate of seriously addressing climate change, in a recent issue of The New Yorker. Jones wants programs that will help inner-city youth at the same time as they remedy global warming.What Jones wants is "that kid on the street corner putting down his handgun, picking up a caulk gun." That is, he wants disaffected ghetto youths to be first in line for the new "green collar" jobs America is about to create: "weatherizing buildings, installing solar panels, and constructing mass-transit systems."
Done right, Jones is saying, the Green Revolution in America can be a twofer: it can get us on track with sustainable energy use, and it can reinvigorate our inner cities! What's not to like?!?
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