Photo: Anastasiia Sapon
"I don't believe we have any throwaway children. I don't believe we have any throwaway neighborhoods or nations and we certainly don't have any throwaway species or resources. It's all sacred and yet it's not being treated that way." -Van Jones
On Tuesday, November 13, 2018, the College of Natural Resources welcomed Van Jones as the speaker for the bi-annual Horace M. Albright Lecture in Conservation. Jones shared ideas on what can we do about the disproportionate impact of climate change on low-income communities.
Jones is president and founder of Dream Corps, a nonprofit social justice accelerator. Jones has led a number of other justice enterprises, including The Ella Baker Center for Human Rights and Color of Change. A Yale-educated attorney, he has written three New York Times Bestsellers: The Green Collar Economy, Rebuild the Dream, and most recently, Beyond the Messy Truth: How We Came apart, How We Come Together. In 2009, Jones served as the green jobs advisor to the Obama White House. Host of The Van Jones Show, he is a CNN correspondent and regular guest on political talk shows.
Jon Jarvis, executive director of the Institute for Parks, People, and Biodiversity, attended the lecture and noted: "Van Jones channeled the spirit of Horace Albright, calling on attendees to take action and responsibility for our planet. Jones reminded us—and has demonstrated with his own work—that every action to restore our climate is a job for someone."
Throughout his lecture, Jones emphasized the importance of community and collaboration to achieve social and environmental progess. "These ecological solutions are bigger than just the way that environmentalists talk about them. The ecological revolution is key to the social revolution, which is key to the democratic expansion. It's all the same, it's one process."