The new green jobs appear to be for two groups of people.

(1) New graduates who can devote time to an internship and/or aren't currently dependent on a relatively good salary. That is, they have not settled down and are not obligated to pay a mortgage or care for a family.

(2) Older workers who earned a high enough income during their first career and squirreled away enough cash so that they can stop working for a couple years and return to school to prepare for a completely different career.

What about an almost middle-aged person locked in a dead-end, potentially environmentally destructive job, who has to continue to work full-time to pay their bills and might have already dipped into their savings to survive substantial reductions in income and unexpected expenses? How does such a person find and prepare for a role in the new sparkling green economy?

I don't consider selling the house and jetting off to the next green economic boom town a viable option. That's the sort of behavior that has been destabilizing communities for decades.

To quote Joel Makower, who quotes Van jones...

"The next set of challenges have to do with going from rhetoric to reality."

Thank you, ruweez, for providing the link to Joel Makower's blog.