Annette John-Hall: A silver lining to going green

You would have to be living under a biodegradable rock not to notice that, even with our election obsession, the activists who have been getting a lot of attention lately are not necessarily liberal or conservative, or red or blue.

They're green.

These days, eco-chic is the latest trend.

Celebrities are all over the cause. There's designer eco, like the hemp couture Natalie Portman wears. Or eco-cuisine, like the food - if you want to call it that - Gwyneth Paltrow grazes on. And eco-transpo, like the Prius that Brad Pitt tools around in.

And don't forget those ubiquitous "Go Green" T-shirts, shopping bags, mouse pads, water bottles. The list is endlessly recyclable.

We all know, though, that fads are not sustainable.

And with any exclusive tendency, we're in danger of paying an exclusionary price.

Though everybody would agree that saving the planet is noble and necessary, ordinary people and especially those from disadvantaged communities - kids who get asthma at a disproportionate rate because of urban pollution, residents who live near toxic-waste dumps - have much more on their minds than fighting global warming.

They're too busy trying to figure out how they're going to pay their doctors' bills.

But Mayor Nutter is undeterred. He intends to make Philadelphia the greenest city in the country and knows that the only way to get there is to start by taking the elite out of green.

He says if we focus on people, the planet will take care of itself.

"It really is about jobs," the mayor told me recently. "We can [create] great training programs where you don't have to have the highest levels of education. It's wonderful for the environment. But it would be tremendously beneficial for us."

Nutter sees green providing more green for at-risk youth, ex-offenders, and other non-college-bound workers.

City Council has already adopted a resolution for a Green Job Corps in Philadelphia. And yesterday, it held hearings on how to best build a green economy. We seem to be on our way.

With a high inner-city unemployment rate, it seems a no-brainer.

The challenge is making sure that everybody rides this green wave.

Philadelphia hopes to model its Green Job Corps after a groundbreaking initiative in Oakland, Calif., the brainchild of environmental activist Van Jones, who has been brought here several times to share his ideas.

The 39-year-old Yale-educated lawyer is considered the guru of a more inclusive green movement.

This year, with $5 million from the state, Jones started a national initiative called Green For All in mostly minority Oakland. Its goal is to create pathways out of poverty through the green movement. The Green Job Corps, the first national program of its kind, is part of that initiative.

But creating jobs - 600 of them - is not the only focus. Training a green workforce, pulling together government and business, and raising awareness in minority communities are considered the keys to sustainability.

As a Berkeley native, I know that the California green movement is not a trend, but a way of life - long before green became cool.

Jones has a way of breaking down the most benign policy paper into barbershop talk.

That's part of the mission, he says. Making sure ordinary people understand what is at stake for them.

Sure, he says, poor people are "dealing with a personal crisis before they deal with a planetary crisis."

"Lots of people assume that most of these green issues target affluent white people and that our communities are completely unreachable. That's wrong. What we found is when we approach people from the point of economic opportunity, saving money and community health, low-income people are very interested."

In the Bay Area, almost everybody is invested - including the unions, sure to be a major hurdle in our city.

"To get the unions on board, it's not going to be a cakewalk," Jones said. "But if you listen to how fast we have to make this transition from oil and coal to clean and renewable, it's going to take millions of people. If we get the right government policies to create a demand for labor, they have to open it up. The labor union has to become more brown and more green.

"We have to include more people," he said. "We should be concerned about polar bears - but we should also be concerned about [the person] down the street."