Van Jones: 1st impression

I was truly impressed with Van Jones' idea of 'Greening the Ghetto' -combating climate change and bringing jobs to poor neighborhoods at the same time. I could see how he truly cared about the poor people, especially the undereducated teenagers. His ideas were intelligently brigtening too: Establishment of Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, "Stop the Superjail" campaign, a federal revolving loan program,  Clean Energy Jobs Bill etc....  Solving two critical issues seems nearly impossible, but Jones suggests that problems need to be approached holistically, thus believing that combatting global warming is a good way to save people from poverty. However, in my point of view, his ideas are likely to be constrained by the government limited budget. For example, to open up job spaces for the poor, sustainable energy field needs to be sufficiently funded by the governement, and according to Kolbert, it also costs a lot of money for job training. 

I felt he is a really effective public speaker and I could see how he was trying to approach people and move their minds with his words. But I also think he is a little exaggerator too. During his speech at the public library, with an audience of highschool dropouts, he said to them "Somebody's going to make a million dollars figuring out a way to get those solar panels made and deployed in our hoods. I think it should be you." He sounds like the audience of highschool dropouts teens can be one of those millionaires. But to me, I felt like he was actually implicitly telling the audience "find a job and work in a factory that produces sustainable energy technology." I also felt he is leaving the responsibilities to the poor to fight for the climate change by leading them to work in green-collar and use their examples to raise people's awareness about climate change. But actually it is the poor who are mostly getting affected by the climate change, when the government raises the cost of burning fossil fuels, charges a carbon tax or implements cap-and-trade program. His ideas are very original and I highly value all his actions to trigger change, but I still feel skepticism about an individual trying to make a change unless there is an actual healthy movement within government related to combatting the problems of climate change.