By Pete Stidman
News Editor

On the forefront of a movement he says could transform the nation's economy on the scale of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, environmental activist Van Jones stopped through last week to highlight the plight of polar bears - and maybe bring some new jobs to Dorchester.

As oil prices rise, icebergs shrink, and proposals for carbon pricing in the U.S.- a way to charge companies for the carbon they emit into the atmosphere - profligate, a need for a new kind of worker is going to crop up, Jones told over 100 people in Grover Cleveland Middle School's auditorium last Thursday. People will be needed to install solar panels, maintain wind turbines and audit homes for energy efficiency. Jones' idea, along with some members of the U.S. Congress, is to "let Pooky do it."

"Everybody seems to know someone named Pooky," said Jones when local William Lynch asked him, Who is this Pokey? "He's the guy in the neighborhood who always seems to need a job."

Jones was in town to stump for the Green Jobs Act, a piece of legislation he helped inspire Congresswoman Hilda Solis (D-CA) and Congressman John Tierney (D-MA) to tuck into an energy bill currently making the rounds in Washington D.C. If passed, it would provide up to $120 million in federal funds for green jobs training across the country, giving some priority to at-risk youth, displaced workers and veterans.

Jones co-founded the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in Oakland, Calif., where a new Green Jobs Corps training program is starting next year with a $250,000 grant from the City of Oakland. Jones co-founded the Ella Baker House in 1996 to help keep kids out of jail and get them into jobs.

The energy bill passed the house with the Green Jobs Act intact in August, but now faces a tougher crowd in the Senate. Over the weekend, one of the energy bill's most controversial features, a requirement that allows utilities to garner 15 percent of their energy from renewable sources was stripped out, according to the Dow Jones news service. It remains to be seen if the Green Jobs Act ends up on the cutting room floor also, or potentially directs some job-training funds to Boston's neighborhoods. Local eyes are watching.

"We're not at the point where we have a campaign, but the whole thing around the Green Jobs Act is part of the dialogue in Boston," said Penn Loh, director of Alternatives for Community and Environment, an advocacy group for environmental justice issues based in Roxbury. "It's exceptionally shrewd because it crosses a lot of categories and focuses on why it matters for people of color."

ACORN, a social justice group that collaborated with Boston Climate Action Network to bring Jones and chief of environmental and energy services Jim Hunt III to speak at the Grover Cleveland, is also toying with the idea of a future program. Owen Toney of ACORN said they are looking forward to talking with the city about how they could help.

The city is also poised to help local organizations jump for the federal dollars, or possibly fund a more modest program if the federal money doesn't materialize, Hunt told the audience.

"Van Jones is not only an amazing leader, but he is an inspiration to government leaders across the U.S. and to policy leaders like me," said Hunt. "We're committed to creating career ladders across the economic spectrum…We've got a strong mayor who is concerned about this issue. He's got a lot of political capital and he's not afraid to spend it."

On Wednesday, the Boston Globe reported that Mayor Thomas Menino announced a program to spend $500 million to train 2,500 workers for "green-collar jobs" and spend $250,000 on a program to "empower young Boston residents." The Mayor's press office did not immediately return a phone call to confirm or clarify this effort.

In recent years Menino has made energy efficiency and other green strategies a central motif of his administration. Although it hasn't yet been determined if the city's greenhouse gas emissions- the bottom line in the greening game- have dropped, green initiatives have proliferated. It gave Hunt a lot to talk about to the audience at Grover Cleveland.

The city now has the toughest green-zoning standards in the country, requiring all projects over 50,000 square feet to meet the equivalent of U.S. Green Building Council LEED standards. To spread energy efficiency to existing buildings, a $500 million Boston Energy Alliance fund is being put together. Similar to the Cambridge Energy Alliance, it would use money from the Henry P. Kendall Foundation and other sources to provide loans to building owners for energy efficiency measures. The loans would be paid back with savings on energy bills. Then there's the $500,000 solar power initiative that is currently mapping the city to find the sunniest spots for panel installations, and Menino's promise to plant 100,000 new trees by 2020, by which time Menino would be in his seventh term.

Not all government officials are on the green bandwagon of course, particularly on the national scene. U.S. Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) called global warming "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people" on the Senate floor and at his website. In his own travails in the halls of Washington, Jones tells a story about a legislator that approached him, saying he admired his enthusiasm, but respectfully didn't agree. If $10,000 would retrain five guys already in a similar line of work, why should the government spend that same $10,000 on just one of "your formerly incarcerated people?"

"We're building a green economy," Jones said he answered. "In a green economy, you don't just count what you spend, you count what you save. You say you want to save $8,000. But if that young person gets frustrated and goes and commits a crime, you're then willing to spend $30, $40, or $50,000 a year to lock him up. On the eco side, the market has not been able to account for the true costs and on the social side, the market has not been able to account for the true costs."