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Advice on taking the first step toward a new eco-career Looking for a job is a daunting task, and just about everyone — from life coaches to library books to your Aunt Edna — has a few tips on how to go about it. But Kevin Doyle of the Environmental Careers Organization says it all […]

Addicted to Hot Air

Bush hits the road to tout alternative energy technologies With the American people restless over high home-heating and gasoline prices, President Bush has embarked on a PR tour of electorally important states to promote alternative energy technologies. Yesterday, he touted his plan to increase funding for energy research during visits to solar-panel manufacturer United Solar […]

Advice on making the move to a new eco-career

As director of program development at The Environmental Careers Organization, Kevin Doyle knows a thing or two about job searching. In a new column for Grist, he'll explore the green job market and offer advice to eco-job-seekers looking to jumpstart their careers.

February is National Mentoring Month. Aren't you psyched? No? Well, consider this column a shout-out to mentors everywhere. If you've had a good mentor in the past, or if you have one right now, celebrate February by calling that person just to say "thank you." (And call your mother, too. She's worried about you.)

In this column, I want to focus on the biggest of big pictures and share three pieces of strategic wisdom I've stolen over the years from people who are a lot wiser and smarter than me.

Just get started!

Take a look at any book about jobs and careers. Inevitably, you'll find the same rigid list of action steps buried in the text. Strip away the detail, and the strategy usually looks something like this: Know yourself (your skills, your preferences, your values, your astrological sign, Chinese New Year animal ...) and understand "your industry" (job titles, public and private employers, salary levels, important trends). Have a plan and develop a vision of your ideal job. Get needed degrees, certifications, and experience, and master the basic job search skills (résumés, interviews, cover letters). Build a good reputation, and develop and maintain a strong career network.

That's a lot of work! Where does one even start? Truth is, it doesn't matter where you start. Trust me on this. Before you're done, reality will force you to deal with all of the career components above. If you're listening to your life at all, each situation will practically scream a good next step in your ear.

So, if you're the planning type, go ahead and plan. If you're a doer, jump right in. If you derive power and energy from self-reflection, by all means, go ahead and gaze at that navel. The important thing is to get started.

Um

Did someone actually ask this question?

Environmental justice

As the Director of the Sierra Club's Environmental Justice program, I'm thrilled to see that Grist is doing an in-depth analysis of various poverty and environment issues across the country. It is all too easy for many Americans, even those interested in environmental issues, to forget that low income communities and people of color suffer disproportionately at the hands of corporations and are neglected by our government officials.

Hurricane Katrina brought this disturbing fact into the limelight, and for awhile, Americans were painfully aware of the inequalities that pervade where we live, our access to resources, and how we're treated during a natural emergency. But as the hurricane fades from public consciousness, we can't forget those realities.

Odds are that no matter where you live, there's a community living with environmental injustice nearby. No person should be condemned to living in a polluted community, and we must all work to ensure that people of color and low-income people are not disproportionately affected by pollution. We must see this work as integral to the environmental movement as a whole. Sierra Club supports environmental-justice efforts by assisting communities that deal with air pollution, mountaintop-removal mining, destruction of sacred sites, industrial facilities being built in neighborhoods, and sickness and death caused by chemical exposure. Find details on the work we are doing to support communities facing environmental injustices at our site.

Thanks for all of the work everyone is doing!

Rebels slash production production take hostages in Nigeria.

Everyone's favorite fungible commodity is causing some real trouble in Nigeria, where rebels claiming to represent "ethnic Ijaw communities" are laying siege to property owned by Royal Dutch Shell, the Guardian reports. There's even a hostage crisis brewing:

The group of three Americans, two Thais, two Egyptians, a Filipino, and a Briton -- John Hudspith -- were seized by up to 40 gunmen who stormed a pipe-laying barge. In emails to news agencies, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend) said its goal was to punish oil corporations and the government for siphoning off the region's wealth without returning anything to its impoverished ethnic Ijaw communities; as well as saying the hostages' fate had yet to be decided, the movement also warned that they might end up being killed in crossfire with the army.

The rebels managed to halt about a fifth of supply in Nigeria, which according to the Wall Street Journal is "Africa's leading oil exporter and the U.S.'s fifth-largest supplier, usually exporting 2.5 million barrels daily." Crude surged past the $60/barrel mark on the news.

I wonder what ol' Shotgun Dick Cheney thinks of all this.

Hayward’s chestnuts

I don't view climate change as a partisan issue, and I've been pleased to see it slowly shake free from that calicified status. It's too important to simply serve as ammunition in the ongoing partisan wars. But perhaps not everyone shares that perspective.

I've exchanged emails with Steve Hayward of the American Enterprise Institute and he seems like a straight shooter. But he comes close to going off the rails in his big climate-change story in the Weekly Standard.

It begins with a survey of the rising profile of global warming, a growing list of bipartisan activists, and a description of the many increasingly confident, hair-raising climate-change stories in the mainstream media.

Out of this he somehow conjures "a sense of political desperation among climate change alarmists, as the world slowly turns against them." Hm? If this is down, then I been down so long it feels like up to me.

To his credit, he isn't stoking the denialist fires on the right. He acknowledges:

First big Clean Water Act case reaches the newly aligned Supreme Court

The moment we've all been waiting for has arrived. The Roberts Court, with freshly added Justice Alito, will hear two cases this week on the Clean Water Act. The two new justices will have their first chance to grapple with the Constitution's Commerce Clause, upon which much federal environmental law rests, from the highest bench in the land.

Dilbert takes on foreign oil

I've tried a few times to argue that "foreign oil" is a bit of a red herring. The problem is oil, full stop.

Today my argument finds support from, of all places, Dilbert.

(hat tip: Corey)

Update [2006-2-19 17:12:48 by David Roberts]: Hm, the folks over at Oil Drum take a rather dim view of this comic. Just a couple of comments:

• It seems like a common sentiment that if there were enough Dilberts buying hybrids to actually reduce U.S. oil demand, the price of oil would fall, foreign despots would get less money, and Dilbert would be vindicated. But the basic oil story is one of leveling-off-and-declining supply, coupled with inexorably rising demand. Billions of people in China and India are having their standard of living rapidly raised. Moderate reductions in U.S. demand seem woefully insufficient to offset this rising tide of demand. Rising oil prices seem inevitable absent a truly historic -- and truly unlikely -- commitment by the U.S. to radically curtail its demand, and possibly even then. So to the extent that oil money funds terrorists, it seems likely terrorists will have ample funding for the foreseeable future. In that, Dogbert is correct.
• My own view is that the "foreign oil" motivation articulated by Dilbert is rather naive, for the simple reason -- voiced by Dogbert -- that we can't pick and choose where we get oil, or who ultimately gets our oil money. If you participate in the world oil economy, you participate in the world oil economy; you don't get to do it daintily, or in some targeted way that's in line with your values. But there are good reasons to reduce U.S. oil use, period. Aside from all the environmental benefits, we would reduce our vulnerability to geopolitical manipulation and arguably provide an enormous stimulus to the economy. I attributed both halves of my view to the cartoon, but re-reading it, I suppose I may have been projecting the latter half. Scott Adams (the author) may simply be arguing that it's pointless to reduce oil use at all (and not just for Dilbert's stated reasons). That would indeed be monumentally stupid.
• Yes I'm droning on and on about a cartoon, but it's Sunday evening and the kids are napping. What else am I gonna do?

Wangari Maathai in Seattle

Wangari Maathai will be speaking in Seattle at Benaroya Hall on Friday, March 17, 2006 at 8:00 pm as part of Foolproof's American Voices series.

More information here.