Van Jones Quotes

[Barack Obama] done some good things, he's done a couple of bad things. He's obsessed with this all of the above energy policy and... lots and lots of drilling in the States, so he's been weak on it.

Even those who don't believe in climate change believe we should develop renewable energy. Americans get it: it's time. This is not controversial. It's actually right in the wheelhouse of American business.

My house is solar powered. I tell Republicans, 'You can hate the subsidies - I hate the subsidies, too - but you can't hate solar panels.'

We want a plan for a clean energy future...an end to global warming...Moms know about sustainable energy. After all, mother love is an unending supply and it keeps kids healthy.

I voted against the climate-change legislation. Not that I don't believe we should move to a clean-energy economy, and it can be good for South Dakota's economy to do so, but it was started out as a very partisan bill in the committee.

What we've got is the wholesale embrace of fracking domestically, internationally and for export. And this couldn't be further from what we really need to do to address climate change.

I was distressed by the poor quality of the debate surrounding energy. I was also noticing so much green wash from politicians and big business. I was tired of the debate - the extremism, the nimbyism, the hair shirt. We need a constructive conversation about energy, not a Punch and Judy show. I just wanted to try to reboot the whole debate.

We’re not going to run out of wind.

Our economic future and our energy future are one in the same, and it's a future America can't shrink from. We must shape it, just as we've always done. We have to protect our planet from the threat of climate change and ensure that workers have the skills to compete for good middle-class jobs.

We have been developing an ever closer relationship with China on climate change for many years which has led to collaboration on carbon trading, offshore wind development, on low-carbon buildings, on nuclear energy, and on carbon capture and storage - to name just some of the ways in which we're working together.

No clean energy development is complete without extensive environmental protections, and I've been proud to work in a bipartisan fashion with my colleagues in Congress to protect our most precious natural resources.

One of the great things about technological innovation is that we haven't found out a way to make it partisan yet, and so we can actually bring Republicans and Democrats together to use innovative technologies to generate a cleaner environment, and we don't need excessive regulations to do it.

War and, apparently, hurricanes are very good for the oil business. But I've got to believe at a certain point, as a nation, we're going to go in a different direction toward an increased sense of personal responsibility, a lowering of each individual's carbon footprint and a real collaborative effort to help sustain our planet.

Getting enough energy to satisfy the needs of the developing world without bringing on an eco-disaster is not going to be easy. It will require a marriage of science and technology with good international policy, something that is always hard to bring off. We need to get it right this time.

By speeding the transition to cleaner energy, we can improve the lives of billions of people, while also reducing the risks we face from a changing climate.

All scientists who've looked at it know we have to phase away from burning fossil fuels. That means we've got to put a lot of effort into alternate energy technologies, but we're still subsidizing fossil fuels and not subsidizing most of the alternatives. It's not going to be an easy transition.

The dirty energy crowd can be offset only by the power of the rising clean energy sector and the American people, aroused across party lines.

I'd like to see a little more action on the energy side of things. I've been pushing for some kind of a carbon tax for years, and it seems to me we've had lots of opportunities to do it.

We know how to get all of the energy we need without using dirty or dangerous fuel sources. It is no longer a question of whether we can - but of whether we will

We've introduced the New Apollo Energy Act, which is, I think, safe to say the most comprehensive and aggressive bill that has been introduced in Congress because it does have the scale, scope, and ambition of the original Apollo Project, and it attacks the problem in every way you can imagine. There's no silver bullet here, but there are lots of opportunities.

As a member of both the energy and environment committees, I am constantly astounded by how many of my colleagues prefer to focus on what the government can do for the nuclear or coal industries rather than why the government should support clean and sustainable energy.

Solar power, wind power, the way forward is to collaborate with nature - it's the only way we are going to get to the other end of the 21st century.

Do you know what my favorite renewable fuel is? An ecosystem for innovation.

In reality, Republicans have long been at war with clean energy. They have ridiculed investments in solar and wind power, bashed energy-efficiency standards, attacked state moves to promote renewable energy and championed laws that would enshrine taxpayer subsidies for fossil fuels while stripping them from wind and solar.

By increasing the use of renewable fuels such as ethanol and bio-diesel, and providing the Department of Energy with a budget to create more energy efficiency options, agriculture can be the backbone of our energy supply as well.