Kupfer: Among the current crop of political leaders, do you see any you think can own up to our country’s misdeeds and move us forward?

Jones: I don’t think that, in the near term, a politician who wants the country to repent for its sins, past or present, will get very far. We need to be tough on our problems without being tough on America. It is a complicated dance for any reform movement: how to point out the shortcomings — and even the crimes — of the system and still inspire people to change the system rather than shoot the messenger. Some environmentalists and progressives want people to sign a contract that says America is messed up. I think more people want to sign a contract that says America is a great country, but we could be even greater. I can’t go home to Tennessee and tell people they are living in a terrible country. I think the late 1960s was really the last time the politics of shame, blame, and confrontation had any mass appeal. I am interested in the meat-and-potatoes, kitchen-table politics that uplifts people who need a break and offers them power, dignity, and solutions.

Kupfer: You seem to be a bridge builder. You’re known for connecting different sectors. Is that a conscious strategy?

Jones: I don’t wake up in the morning thinking, How can I get groups together? I’m just looking for solutions to problems, and there is no way to solve the problems we face with the black people over here, and the lesbians over there, and the labor unions off by themselves. Global warming, the impacts of economic globalization on the U.S. working class, confrontations with Islamic fundamentalism — none of these can be resolved by any one constituency, even a powerful constituency like big business. The only way to solve these problems is to bring everyone together.

It used to be that, to people working for racial justice, the environment was a side issue. The same was true of those working for the environment: racial justice was an add-on. That approach won’t work anymore. Social problems are driving ecological problems, which are feeding back into social problems. You have to deal with both at the same time. If you try to fix poverty with suburban sprawl and pollution-based economic development, you are going to sink the environment. But if you preserve the environment by outlawing development, you then strand poor people and displace workers. They’re not going to starve to death so that you can have trees. They are going to fight for their survival. You have got to come up with economic development that honors the real constraints of the natural world. All roads lead to the same solution: a green-collar-jobs agenda that puts people to work reengineering our production, waste, energy, and water processes.

Kupfer: Do you identify yourself primarily as an environmentalist or a social-justice activist?

Jones: Right now I fall between the two categories. People on the social-justice side think, Van is a green person, and people on the environmental side think, Van is a social-justice person. Those categories are going to fall away. I believe there will come a day when there will be no such thing as a “green building”; there will just be buildings. And what is now “green technology” will become just the way things are done.

We are in a transition phase of our history. Suicidal, industrial capitalism is in a slow-motion collapse — we just hope it collapses faster than the environment — and a greener, ecologically wiser form of capitalism is emerging. The danger is that the Al Gores of the world believe technology, consumer education, and voter education by themselves will solve this problem. They will not. They are important, but without strong government programs that put millions of people to work, the transition will prove to be too difficult. When we move to protect the environment, there will be economic shocks, and the Left will be voted out of office and replaced with even more-reactionary elements than we have in the White House right now. Yes, there will be environmental benefits later, but you have to offer people some benefits right now, to keep them invested in this process and show them that you care. Otherwise people who can’t afford to buy a hybrid or shop at Whole Foods feel left out and lectured to. And they will be happy to walk across the street and work for Chevron or Shell.

Kupfer: As you travel around speaking to different groups, do you see more unity on the Left?

Jones: Ever since Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated in 1968, I think people on the Left have longed for a leader who would divide the Right and unite progressives. Well, that leader has emerged, and his name is George W. Bush. President Bush has divided the Right and united the Left in a way no other political leader has for a generation. Over the past five years I’ve seen more and more progressives willing to work together, listen to each other, and put aside their differences. The Iraq War, global warming, and the fragility of the economy have opened the eyes of people who were narrowly focused on their own issues and constituencies. Now they are looking at these problems anew, and looking around for friends instead of enemies. People on the Left have tended to define themselves by who their enemies are and what they refuse to do. Now we are beginning to define ourselves by who our allies are and what we are willing to do.

When the Democrats won back Congress in November 2006, it was the end of six years of one-party authoritarian rule by the Republicans — six years in which our leaders managed to squander the budget surplus, create a massive deficit, destroy Iraq, and play chicken with China on global warming. None of the Democrats we elected in 2006 was that great, but the worst of the Republicans are out of power in the House and Senate, and the Left has the opportunity to make real gains and progress. I do not know how well we are going to do. If we cling to the last century’s answers, progressives are not going to get anywhere. We’ve seen that Soviet-style industrial socialism has horrible ecological consequences, the same as Western-style industrial capitalism. Any industrial model — socialist, capitalist, or otherwise — is not sustainable. The question we are wrestling with now is not “Who owns the means of production?” but “What will be the means of production?”

Kupfer: Do you think the Democrats’ success in 2006 has to do with a generational shift, as more younger people are stepping up to the plate and older conservatives are dying off?

Jones: No, the Republicans simply didn’t play their hand well with Iraq or global warming or Katrina. The Far Right took over the whole Republican Party and ran it into the ground — and ran the country into the ground. Now they are about to run the planet into the ground. All of this has repelled independents and young people who haven’t made up their minds about party affiliation.

So no, I don’t think demographics alone can explain what we’re seeing, and I definitely don’t think any Democratic strategy can take credit for it. The Left stayed in its circular firing squad throughout this whole period. The Republicans simply became victims of classic imperial overreach. We shouldn’t pat ourselves on the back for their misfortune. They blew it. Now we have to figure out how to take advantage of that.

Kupfer: Do you feel there is an inherent contradiction between a free-market economy and a sustainable society?

Jones: There probably is. It would be arrogant for anybody to say that twentieth-century capitalism is the last word for humanity; that we will never invent a better way to allocate wealth. But even if capitalism isn’t viable in the long term, there is no way to get to a postcapitalist world except by going through a green-capitalism phase. I think there will be a postcapitalist society. I can’t predict what it will look like, except to say that it won’t resemble the last century’s attempts in that direction. The immediate challenge, however, is to make capitalism as green and humane as we possibly can. Doing that will conceivably buy us a few more decades or centuries on the planet.

Kupfer: How do you deal with cynicism and apathy?

Jones: Some people are committed to being cynical, and they have their role, which is to keep asking the tough questions. I use those people to keep my own thinking sharp. But right now a lot of good people are being cynical who shouldn’t be. Some of them accuse me of being “inspirational,” as if that were a bad thing. I hope that I am inspirational about projects that excite me.

I want to break people out of their cynicism, because the level of cynicism that we have been indulging in is a luxury that we cannot afford. It is indulgent to live in the richest, most advanced technological society in history and say, “We cannot do it.” We have the best shot of anyone at solving the big problems. We have technologies that thirty years ago people couldn’t have imagined: the Internet, laptop computers, cellphones. You and I have better computers on our person than the U.S. government had when it landed a man on the moon. Everyone you know is a walking technological superpower by the standards of thirty years ago. To be playing helpless and throwing up our hands when we haven’t even tried to solve these problems is totally unacceptable to me.

There was a speech that Winston Churchill gave in the early days of World War II, before the U.S. entered the war. British citizens felt they were living in darker days. “Do not let us speak of darker days,” he said. “Let us speak rather of sterner days. These are not dark days; these are great days.”

That is how I feel. These are difficult times, but these are great times. It’s when the authoritarians have taken over your country and are running it into the ground and the earth is crying out for a change of course that people have to look within and figure out where they stand. I think many people are willing to stand together and make the necessary sacrifices. It is going to be a tough period, but I’m betting that this country’s best days lie ahead.

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