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| Photo Credit: 2 Miles |
Claire McEachern
In a relaxed and calm voice, mixed with hints of jest, Van Jones greeted the assembled crowd by saying, "I may be preaching to the green choir, but I want to brag a little bit…"
From the Bainbridge Graduate Institute’s recent MBA recipients, to the local green industry veterans, such as Energy Trust, the Sustainable Industries Economic Forum (held June 13th, 2012, in Portland, OR) brought together a keenly interested and progressive audience. Every eye and ear was poised, anxiously awaiting a story of success. One could almost hear the mental buzz of global news, tweets, timeline updates, blog posts, and RSS feeds spooning out messages of doom and gloom into our collective sub-conscious.
Let us not forget to mention that Mr. Jones was also there to promote his new book: Rebuilding the Dream.
He began by reminding us how representatives in DC use the term “job killers” for environmentalists. But the statistics from the past several years show a very different reality. According to Brookings Institute, the green economy has created over 2.4 million jobs and includes the fastest growing sectors. This is in despite of a bad economy and a politically “stuck” world.
Curious then, that there still remains division within the United States and around the world on whether or not to fully embrace and integrate the green economy. How does this division persist when even the most skeptical among us have recently been heard to say, “The weather wasn’t quite like this before…”
