I used to be called the "Green Jack Kemp" because of my promotion of entrepreneurial and work-based solutions for poor people.

I've never launched any initiative or campaign that people thought was a slam dunk.

Environmentalists and clean energy champions should stop telling people that we are working for "sustainability," which nobody understands.

Though the rampant racial injustices throughout the criminal justice system were offensive to me and to millions of other people, I've never drawn a tight circle around the black community to define the limits of my moral concern. But that narrative tends to get imposed on you, if you're an African-American activist.

I don't like to comment on a specific local issue because there are plenty of people already working on the problem who know a lot more about it than I do.

To make sure we aren't training people for jobs that don't exist, the government should provide companies with loans or loan guarantees. And the government should also directly employ people to do things like coastal restoration, land restoration, reforestation and similar programs that absorb carbon and protect America's beauty.

Former brownfields, depressed urban areas, and hard-hit rural towns blossom as eco-industrial parks, green enterprise zones, and eco-villages. Farmers' markets, community co-ops, and mobile markets get fresh, organic produce to the people who can't afford to shop at health-food stores.