There's a wave of green euphoria sweeping cyberspace following the announcement that environmental and social justice activist Van Jones will be special adviser on green jobs to the Obama administration.
Here in Australia, we're green with political envy at such a visionary appointment. The United States has Van the Man to advance climate and energy policy initiatives. We've got Kevin, Penny, Peter and Martin – world's best practice climate change laggards, coal-fired power apologists and policy obfuscators. The US will get green jobs and exciting new industries. We'll keep on getting spin-speak policy waffle, framed to protect the interests of political donors. Is there no light on the horizon?
"We want this green wave to lift our boats," Jones told a house committee hearing on jobs and education last month. Presenting a case for new solutions on climate change, peak oil and the failing economy, he argued the US already has the opportunities and infrastructure to create a new green economy. All that's needed is purpose, momentum and a generous shot of government funding.
Here's the new mantra. "We're going to grab it, we're going to grow it and we're going to green it," he said.
Asked recently by "Grist" – the United States green cyber news site - if President Obama had tapped him with an offer to become "a green jobs czar", Jones replied, "I can't imagine what position he would offer me except the janitorial recycling staff, which I'd be happy to be a part of."
But he'd already built a formidable reputation – and an army of Van fans - as a visionary thinker, combining green jobs and social equality . His first book "The Green Collar Economy’", published last year, is a New York Times' best-seller and being compared to Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" as a landmark book that has re-shaped political debate.
"A new coalition can be born and it can be as powerful as the New Deal coalition of the middle of the last century, or the new right coalition that's been destroying the country, of trying to, at the end of the last century," he told "Grist".
"The green-growth alliance – which would include the best of business and progressive labor and community organisations – could stand up to the military-petroleum complex and take the country forward."
Who in the Rudd Government talks with such persuasive eloquence and inspiration about a clean green energy future?
Not energy minister Martin Ferguson who has a vision of clean coal as Australia’s future 'bread and butter'. Not climate change minister Penny Wong, who struggles to articulate the finer points of the government’s draft emissions trading scheme. Not environment minister Peter Garrett, who seems to have been side-lined from the issue.
And certainly not Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who thinks you need to dumb it down for the blue collar crowd by swearing like a bogan and doing a spot of g-dropping when addessing the proles - geez mate, I dunno, coz y'know we’re talkin' about a political shitstorm hittin' the economy.
It’s depressing. President Obama is appointing the nation’s high performers, the best and brightest, to roll out a reform agenda. Instead, we're getting a grab-back of short-term initiatives - incentives to install roof insulation and water tanks - while our sophisticated solar energy technology innovations are being lost offshore.
Our only hope is that these uber-smart US political appointments like Jones and US Energy Secretary Stephen Chu will turn up the heat on goverments, like ours, that are climate change recalcitrants.
Jones is a Yale law school graduate who’s argued the case for a link between racial and economic equality and environmental justice.
"The United States is both the world’s leading polluter and the world’s leading incarcerator. We treat the natural world the same way we treat inner city youth. We act as if there are throw-away resources and throw-away species. And we act as if there are throw-away nations, throw-away neighbourhoods and throw-away children," he wrote in a blog posting.
As his website explains, green-collar jobs pay family wages and provide career opportunities. "A job that does something for the planet, and little to nothing for the people or the economy, is not a green–collar job. The green economy cannot be built with solar sweat shops and Wal-Mart wind farms."
If only we had a glimmer of this kind of creative thinking among the Rudd Government’s environmental policy wonks. And hey - you’ve got to like a bloke who can write so beautifully about the death of his 14 year old cat.