Van Jones: "I'm Bad! I'm Slick!"

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Solar Skills: Jones, in Richmond, California, with newly trained solar-panel installers Kenyon Roy and Angela Greene | photograph by Chris Mcpherson

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Oakland environmental activist Van Jones and his message of hope. | photograph by Chris Mcpherson

As he looked into this emerging economy, Jones realized how quickly its demands would outstrip the supply of skilled labor. In 2007, investment in clean-technology companies in North America reached $4 billion, up 38% from 2006. Twenty-five states now have renewable-energy standards for utilities, requiring them to obtain a minimum percentage of their power from renewable sources. In California, there already aren't enough solar installers to keep up with demand. Wind-energy producers are having a hard time finding trained turbine technicians, says Bruce Hamilton, director of operations at PPM Energy, a subsidiary of ScottishPower with more than a dozen wind farms in operation or under construction around the country: "There's going to be a fight for labor."

Getting in on the ground floor of a growth industry is classic antipoverty strategy, says Jones. But jobs in sustainable industries also come with built-in advantages. Retrofitting buildings and constructing wind farms is not the kind of work that can be outsourced, he explains, and "during this time of economic transition," green-collar-jobs training gives people from disadvantaged backgrounds a competitive edge in the marketplace. "Say a bunch of guys in the carpenter's union don't know how to work with bamboo. Well, here are some young people who have been trained to work with bamboo. Suddenly, rather than them being in the back of the line for the less-skilled blue-collar jobs, these kids have the advantage."

"We dream of rust-belt cities blossoming as silicon valleys of green capital ... of dying blue-collar towns blooming as green-collar meccas."

"A MESSAGE OF HOPE"

Jones has a newfangled rap, but behind the exterior, he is an old-style activist -- a political animal who is looking to government to fund his revolution. Jones attacks conventional environmental appeals -- bemoaning the plight of polar bears and other "charismatic megafauna," as he puts it -- because they don't speak to poor urban dwellers who have more pressing needs, like scraping together bus fare or keeping their kids out of gangs. The fossil-fuel industry has taken advantage of the green lobby's weaknesses, Jones says, derailing clean-energy incentives by spinning them as essentially "green taxes" on the poor. He points to the 2006 defeat of California's Proposition 87 as an example. "It was a wonderful clean-energy ballot initiative to tax oil companies to fund clean energy," he explains. "Yet despite Hollywood and Silicon Valley spending $40 million to pass it, despite Bill Clinton and Al Gore campaigning all over the state, the thing failed. The polluters were able to destroy working-class support because the law wasn't positioned as something that would benefit lower-income people. They said the cost would be passed on -- you wouldn't be able to afford gas or heat your house." The only way out of that bind, he says, is to make green policy not a burden to working families but a boon. And the way to do that is with jobs.

Jones's cramped office at Ella Baker, in a ramshackle gray building in North Oakland, is littered with speaking invitations -- Harvard, the Kellogg Foundation. He spoke at Davos earlier this year. He has won a string of prizes, among them the international Ashoka Fellowship. While I was visiting, four MBA students from Presidio School of Management in San Francisco dropped by to discuss partnering on a green-enterprise zone project in Oakland. Jones offers "a message of hope," one of the students told me.

With his new $1 billion Green for All initiative, Jones, who named his 3-year-old son, Cabral, after an African freedom fighter, aims to replicate on a national level the coalition of government, industry, labor, and community-activist groups responsible for passing the Oakland jobs-corps legislation. He has brought on Jeremy Hays, former national organizing director of the Apollo Alliance, the country's most powerful clean-energy lobbying group, and Jason Walsh, a former policy director for the Workforce Alliance, a national job-training organization. Next up: a new social-networking Web site intended to spur a grassroots movement.

In many ways, his timing couldn't be better. Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have made the phrase "green collar" a regular part of their campaign pitches. The candidates talk about growing the green economy and retraining blue-collar workers. Their emphasis is not exactly his -- they don't stress how those opportunities can lift people out of poverty -- but that doesn't mean the end result wouldn't be the same.

Michele McGeoy is the founder of Solar Richmond, a local nonprofit that trains solar installers. Jones's advocacy, she says, has not only sent donors her way, but the promise of federal funding from the Green Jobs Act has inspired the city to increase support for her nonprofit. A former software executive, McGeoy used to work with low-income youth addressing the digital divide. "This is different," she says, citing 30% annual growth in the photovoltaic market. "We really need the workers."

In Jones's office, alongside all the speaking invitations are Superman logos and action figures -- dozens of them. They're in his car, too, and all around his house. Sometimes he feels like Clark Kent, he says, and needs to strap on a cape to get the job done. To an outside observer, the big S's might also indicate supersize hubris. But then, maybe that's what he needs.

Linda Baker is based in Portland, Oregon. She also writes for The New York Times and Salon.