Greening the Ghetto

by Elizabeth Kolbert

This is an excellent article about Van Jones, the driving force behind the organization Green For All, which is working to provide the underprivileged with training for jobs in the Green economy. His idea is a great one. Government spending on infrastructure projects is going to have to increase to get the economy working again. Instead of just building bridges and roads, he suggests that the money be spent on retro-fitting the existing infrastructure to make better use of environmentally friendly technology and efficiency standards. To add to the economic cure, he wants some of these jobs to go to people in poor communities, thereby killing many birds with a few stones.

Kolbert profiles Jones as a very interesting individual with a long history in the American social justice community, who has more recently taken up the environment as his cause. As with all of Kolbert's pieces on the environment, the quality of the reporting is excellent.