As part of the Roosevelt Institute's 10-part series on the Jobs Crisis, running on the New Deal 2.0 blog from Nov. 12-25, I was asked to reflect on what can be done to get Americans working again. Here's my take.

People with jobs are better off than people...

Does "Made in China" (or anywhere else for that matter) tell you the whole story? Why not require production labels on products sold here?

Food labels tell us about what we eat, but what about the ingredients in other products? One thing they all require is electricity. In China,...

In the US, energy-inefficient buildings account for over half of greenhouse gas emissions.

But tearing everything down and rebuilding means a lot of demolition debris - carted off with trucks through poor communities - to be dumped on other poor communities further away. Not good.

Retrofitting buildings is...

So what is going to drive the economy after oil and coal have played their parts and are on the way out? Probably a combination of many things, but they are all going to have one thing in common, they will be "cleaner" than what we do now.

A...

One problem we face with all our well-meaning legislative efforts is that not all laws get enforced equally. Let's face it, no matter what color you are, areas where poverty exists are last on the list when it comes to enforcing our environmental laws.

One trick to making sure...

If a tree grows in a city and nobody is there to assess its ancillary benefits to society, is it worth anything?

We can all agree that green, living things like trees, wet lands, green spaces, even flowers, help deal with costly problems like cleaning the air, reducing urban heat...

Gasoline and food rationing, domestic production mandates, a military draft! Sounds like a totalitarian nightmare, but it stopped global fascism. As we face our own global environmental crisis, what lessons can we learn from pre-war Americans?

My wedding ring belonged to my husband's grandmother, and I love to hear...

When people ask me what I do for a living, my short answer is, "I'm working to save the world, starting in the South Bronx."

Yes, the South Bronx is a poor Latino and Black community in New York City. At first glance, we don't have much in common...

A low-income single mom takes her child to a high-cost emergency room for an asthma attack late at night. She is less productive at work the next day, and might get fired if it happens too often. She and her child are more likely to suffer from obesity and diabetes...