Van Jones Quotes

People of conscience in our leadership in Washington have been scared off by the right and the fossil fuel lobbies. They won't even use the term "sustainability" or "climate change" in an energy bill, which is ludicrous on its face. It completely ignores the elephant in the room that we're all dealing with. The average American doesn't even believe climate change is real, they think it's all a hoax.

I think [George W.] Bush has done nothing right about global warming.

The shift to a cleaner energy economy wont happen overnight, and it will require tough choices along the way. But the debate is settled. Climate change is a fact.

Ultimate success for a carbon tax would mean so complete a shift to renewable energy that the tax would stop raising much revenue at all.

I certainly would like to see the war on coal come to an end.

The oilsands will be phased out by 2030 or 2035.

At a time when leadership on climate protection and clean energy are more vital than ever, Portland and Oregon must step up and lead.

What Donald Trump is doing is serving the polluters and serving a narrow group of ideological interests. That's not leadership. That's abdication of responsibility, and this step does not make America first. It makes America last.

I think the world on the other side of fossil fuel is more local - the logic of sun and wind is diffuse and spread out, not concentrated like the logic of coal and oil.

If climate change issues are not adequately addressed—if we keep running those nice energy subsidies, if the price on carbon is not adequately set, if policymakers don’t have it on their radar screens—then financial stability in the medium and long-term is clearly at stake.

Fighting climate change isn't just an obligation we owe to future generations. It's also an opportunity to improve public health - and drive economic growth - in the here and now.

I think you have you to give people the facts [about global warming], and then you have to tell them, this is not like drinking Castor Oil. There is a, an economically exciting way for us to create a whole new generation of American jobs without costing them an enormous amount of money or forcing them to change their lifestyle.

We're going to need that kind of movement, because the fossil fuel industry is a sprawling adversary - at work everywhere, its tentacles in everybody's politics, invulnerable, I think, to direct frontal assault, but probably more brittle than it guesses if we come at it from all sides.

While we've doubled renewable energy, it was only a tiny portion of the energy portfolio to start with. But what we did was totally take the lid off fossil fuel extractions in every way imaginable. On the day following [Barack] Obama's trip to the Louisiana floods, you know, we had, I think, another 25 million acres that went on sale in the Gulf for further extraction.

My view on global warming is that it's a gigantic financial scam to funnel money to these countries that think they ostensibly are going to use to improve conditions in their country, environmentally and so on, but officials use - I guess apparently Tiger Woods did - to hire hookers, ride around in limos and in cases of some of these diplomats and some of these countries buy cocaine.

I would caution my Republican friends that [Obama has] three years to go, and in that three years the American people are going to want to see some progress and not just claims that this guy is out of office and we're going to do everything to destroy him or that somehow he is a 'socialist' taking over the country. Have we so lost our faith in this country that we think one person, one man can be can suddenly change our entire system? That's kind of absurd.

I'm about to embark on what may be as important as an initiative as anything I do as President, trying to nudge the world in the direction of doing something serious about climate change.

Environmentalists and clean energy champions should stop telling people that we are working for "sustainability," which nobody understands.

We need a lot of thinking and ideas. We need all the innovators, particularly with the new sustainable technologies - how do we get them to affordability so that people can generate clean energy?

Some good news. Finally, President Bush is going to do something about global warming. He became alarmed when another chunk of ice fell off his mother.

Why aren't we investing more in alternate tech? The Saudi Arabians are, Scottish Power is. I was just there. Could it be that we're counting on the oil going on forever and ever and ever and us having all of it and getting very rich?

Will we confront climate change in time or will we let fossil fuel companies determine our fate? This is a fight we can't afford to lose, and that's what keeps me moving forward.

I do think that saving the economy was a pretty big deal. We did a lot of stuff early that ended up having an impact. I believe that the work we've done in moving our energy future in a cleaner direction is going to stick even if some of the individual steps that we took are reversed by future administrations. I think that it's embedded itself in the economy.

There's more and more recognition that a carbon economy is dangerous to us economically. And there is increasing recognition that renewable fuels have economic value as well as obvious value for our health and our well-being and our survival. In fact, as you know, the economic revolution in renewable fuels has been impressive. It really had not been anticipated.

The potential for alternative energy sources, mainly solar and wind power, to completely replace coal and gas for utility generation globally is, I think, certain. The question is only whether it takes 30 years or 70 years.