...to attend the conference.  I look forward to hearing about it.

Excellent speech.  Let's all get to work.

I certainly believe in the great value of Van Jones's enterprise, but I am afraid I cannot be quite so hopeful as he is.  Not that I have surrendered to despair; it is just that the obstacles still seem so huge and insurmountable.

Actually, though, there is surely no one who knows as well as he how difficult it is to "link the solutions of social justice, peace, and ecological sanity" in the minds of many people who do not see an obvious connexion.

We cannot doubt, though, that Jones is right to relate this "new dream" to the dream of Martin Luther King, Jr., and to claim that King today would be saying the same things as Jones.

Jones includes among his signs of hope some partisan shifting of power in the last couple of years.  He does not refer specifically to the candidacy of Barack Obama; but it seems hard not to suspect that for Jones, an Obama presidency would be likely to bring the "new dream" closer to realization.

I am glad that, toward the beginning, Jones listed "the extinction of species" as one of the woes of our age -- without feeling he had to comment on the alleged effeteness of us defenders of polar bears.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Van's comments are too global, whereas social justice frequently is local in the way solutions are or are not reached.  I believe that similarly, environmental sustainability (including effectively resolving global warming problems) will involve local community building and people of all kinds working together in an equitable way to "be the change that they seek" in the world.

That's what I'm doing, anyway.

I am making choices of how I will live, to achieve the sustainability I desire, and along the way I am involved in my community making it a better place for all to live, and "get along" as Rodney King liked to say.

It's easy to rail against "the other" who is at fault for the problems of injustice or unsustainable lifestyles.  But how can we expect others to make the changes (that may at first be viewed as sacrifices) if we ourselves are not willing to make them?  

King understood that. He walked with the people. He worked locally to organize and speak up for them. They linked arms and made it happen.

We can too.  
Working locally is the way to get it done. Not by jet setting to conferences or blaming the "Katrina" events (was that the hurricane, or the response to it?) on somebody in charge. There's plenty of blame to go around, from the Corps of Engineers to those who sited New Orleans on a sinking delta, to those who bungled the evacuations of all the poor residents... yes, to those who have contributed to global warming (all of us).

The challenge is to get diverse peoples working together for a common goal of sustainability. King knew that his dream would take time but the steps on that road would be empowering. We will get there too, for the sake of all that is worth loving about life on this planet.

Moving toward sustainability with hopefulness, one revolution at a time.