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Treehuggers proclaim the threat of environmental catastrophe with rapturous religiosity. The eyes of Valley capitalists bulge at the windfall that awaits who can find a renewable energy solution cheaper than fossil fuels. But East Bay community activist Van Jones is preaching the sermon of jobs, and that's what will win the popular and political will to build the kind of modern, clean-energy infrastructure California and the rest of the country so desperately need. Says Jones:

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.

But that raises the question of whether these "green-collar" workers will enjoy the benefits their "blue-collar" grandparents did. And what will happen when they've tiled all available roofs with photovoltaic cells?

After all, the Valley free-enterprise culture is rabidly antilabor — why pay a competitive salary and offer health benefits when illegal immigrants will landscape your Sand Hill Road office grounds for a subsistence wage? The reason that those union carpenters of yesteryear could afford to become homeowners, take vacations, and bring their kids to the hospital wasn't because management just handed them collective bargaining agreements, forty-hour work weeks and health benefits.

Jones is right in pointing out that construction and installation work aren't like the manufacturing jobs that could easily migrate abroad, leaving American inner cities in tatters. But while a green building boom could last for a generation or two, it won't help the aging unemployed today. And it will eventually leave inner-city communities high and dry once again — unless it's accompanied by fundamental structural changes in social policy.

I admit, it's easy to get seduced by Jones's optimistic rhetoric, and easier still since he's a proven success in terms of getting money for job training programs for Oakland residents. Like Jones, I like to poke at the pretensions of "lifestyle environmentalists" in the "eco-elite," so I'm willing to keep listening. But history still makes me tend toward skepticism that cleantech will guarantee sustainable urban economies — and downright cynical when it comes to believing whatever new jobs are created will go to the communities that need them most. (Photo from Van Jones)