It’s been just over 21 years since the United Nations released Our Common Future and introduced the term “sustainable development” to the popular culture.  I was thirty years old when I read it, and I remember highlighting whole sections and inserting exclamation points, and adding notes in the margins like “Exactly!” Many environmental professionals (me included) eagerly embraced the notion that humanity’s hopes for ecological health, social justice, and economic security were inextricably interwoven and might be addressed together through coordinated policies and actions.

One of the consequences of the “sustainability” idea was a reconsideration of what it means to be an environmental professional. Recognizing that the protection of ecological systems was wrapped up in the economic and social justice conditions of people, we began to imagine a new kind of “sustainability” professional who could develop environmental solutions that simultaneously advanced social and economic goals. Or, I suppose, social justice solutions that promoted ecosystem health.

Over time, a conversation developed about how best to educate and train “sustainability” professionals.  Broadly speaking, I’ve observed three arguments in this conversation.

One approach calls for interdisciplinary education of what might be called “sustainable solutions” professionals. The idea here is that mega-issues like climate change, poverty, species extinction, unemployment, income inequality, and water quality concerns can be studied and understood as an interlocking set of ecological, economic, technological, cultural, political, financial, administrative, and social justice issues so that workable solutions can be created.

With this in mind, educational institutions have created some innovative programs – especially at the Master’s level – which are designed to help future professionals grapple with the complex intersections of different professional worlds and invent creative solutions. Thus, instead of an engineer, economist, biologist, or accountant who “works on climate change,” we have a climate change solutions professional who tries to embody many different understandings in one, multi-disciplinary person.

A second approach to “education for sustainability” assumes that good solutions to complex problems are best arrived at when specialists bring their unique knowledge, skill, and experience into a conversation with other specialists. Earth scientists remain earth scientists. Social justice activists remain activists. Engineers are not required to read up on creative government financing schemes. Lawyers do their lawyerly thing. MBAs keep MBA’ing.

Under the sustainability paradigm, however, it is essential that professionals from different skill sets and perspectives be able to talk to one another respectfully and to incorporate what they are hearing into their own thinking and problem-solving. Understanding this, professional education for sustainability turns on learning how to work together with professionals from other disciplines in a team setting. This is not nearly as easy as it sounds on paper.

The third approach to the professional education question challenges the entire sustainability idea, with its assumption that ecological health, social justice, and economic security are interlocking goals instead of competing interests. People who take this view argue that the real world is about competing interests, and that it’s not realistic to expect that human beings will invent solutions that strengthen the economy, lift poor people out of poverty, assure greater equality of income, and protect and restore damaged and threatened ecosystems at the same time.

In this view, it’s both realistic and appropriate for people to set up institutions that are specifically designed to protect the natural world with the full expectation that the needs of ecosystems will often clash with the desires of people – rich and poor. These institutions need educated professionals with deep knowledge, skill, and experience in fields like wetlands ecology, forestry, fisheries and wildlife biology, hydrology, marine science and so forth.  They need environmental professionals to work at our environmental agencies, companies, advocacy groups, and consulting firms.

Of course, all three of these general approaches to professional education in the era of sustainability are simplified and the distinctions get blurred once we launch into our actual careers and try to get things done. It’s been my experience, however, that the assumptions behind the models are real and often deeply ingrained.

Since I’m often asked to provide career advice to college students with an interest in growing a more sustainable world, this issue is of more than passing interest, and I frankly don’t have an easy answer. For now, I take the easy way out. We need all three approaches to educating the next generation of “sustainability” professionals.

And, employers seem to agree with me.  As I travel about and ask companies and agencies about their workforce needs, I hear calls for interdisciplinary “solutions” people, requests for “team” focused people with a major specialty, and demand for disciplinary specialists who are narrowly focused and really good in their chosen area.

So, for now anyway, talented people don’t need to be too worried about which path they take to their sustainability career. Or, at least that’s the way I see it. I’d enjoy hearing from other Island Press authors and readers.

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Kevin Doyle is the president of Green Economy, an independent consulting, research, facilitation and training firm serving the public and private institutions who are growing a more sustainable global economy. He is the co-author of three books about environmental careers (including The ECO Guide to Careers That Make a Difference: Environmental Work for a Sustainable World) and writes the monthly green careers column for Grist Magazine (www.grist.org). He delivers presentations and workshops about green careers on college campuses through “Grist U” and he welcomes your questions. Write to Kevin at kevinldoyle@gmail.com.

Recently, I received a review copy of a handbook for people seeking “green” careers. This has been beat for a long time now, and I’m always interested in other people’s wisdom and advice. I was vaguely troubled after reading it, but I couldn’t exactly say why. There was just something wrong.

The handbook was informed and up-to-date, so there was no problem there.

The authors emphasized the fact that sustainable economy careers were often in the business world and that one could promote greater ecological health from a job in traditional business professions like sales, marketing, finance, investment, human resources, facilities management and product design. I make those same points in my own presentations, so that wasn’t a cause for concern.

The global climate change crisis was front and center, as it should be, and a call for people to consider jobs in energy efficiency and renewable energy careers and companies was loud and clear. The need for revolutionary advances in energy technology was covered. Check that.

There was a more than adequate description of the “green collar jobs” movement, which effectively carried the message that jobs on the manufacturing line and in the trades were an important part of the emerging green economy. Double check.

The 21^st century of information technology was amply represented, with references to website designers and social marketing campaigns. Right on.

Finally, the handbook clearly explained that green careers were not limited to a focus on protecting, conserving and restoring the natural world, but also included social justice and economic security concerns. Amen, brother.

So, I started through the text a second time. And then, it hit me. The problem wasn’t with the careers and professions that were included. It was with the people that were left out. And who might they be?

There were no foresters. No fisheries, wildlife, wetland, soils, freshwater, marine or conservation biologists. No agricultural scientists. No air, water, hazardous waste, or solid waste professionals. No environmental, geological, chemical or any other kind of engineer. No Environment, Health and Safety managers. No land use planners or recycling coordinator. No environmental lawyers or activists. No park rangers or interpretive naturalists. No land trust managers and staff.

In this world of green careers, there was no Environmental Protection Agency, National Park Service, Fish and Wildlife Service, Forest Service, Natural Resources Conservation Service, or Bureau of Land Management. In fact, there wasn’t much reference to government careers at all.

In the effort to demonstrate that green careers were not limited to traditional conservation and environmental protection professionals, this little handbook seemed to suggest that our brave new world of sustainability didn’t include them at all!

The real green careers, it seems, involve producing, marketing and selling high-end organic iced teas or coordinating “social responsibility” reports for global corporations and retail chains.

So, I Googled the words “green jobs” and “green careers” and began to re-read some of the more recent media stories. To greater and lesser degrees, I found the same thing. The definition of environmental careers hadn’t been expanded to include a wider circle of professions for sustainability. It was in the process of being redefined so that entire swaths of the environmental and conservation professions and institutions were somehow labeled as old school, irrelevant, or (worse) actively negative.

So, things are getting just a bit out of hand.

You can help! Next time you hear an expression like “I’m not one of those tree huggers,” or “I care about people, not polar bears,” “I’m not one of those bugs and bunnies environmentalists,” or any of the dozen other ways that we belittle traditional conservation and environmental protection people while still claiming to care about the health of the planet, push back a bit.

Stand up for the foresters! Stand up for the fisheries and wildlife biologists. Stand up for the air and water permit processors at the state DEP! Sure we need the cool renewable energy technology venture capitalists and the exploding number of innovative green businesses with their colorful marketing campaigns.

But, we need our park rangers and water quality technicians, too. We won’t get to the promised land without them. Don’t leave them out of the green career handbooks.

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Kevin Doyle is the president of Green Economy, an independent consulting, research, facilitation and training firm serving the public and private institutions who are growing a more sustainable global economy. He is the co-author of three books about environmental careers (including The ECO Guide to Careers That Make a Difference: Environmental Work for a Sustainable World) and writes the monthly green careers column for Grist Magazine (www.grist.org). He delivers presentations and workshops about green careers on college campuses through “Grist U” and he welcomes your questions. Write to Kevin at kevinldoyle@gmail.com.

I’d be interested to hear your reactions or to answer any questions about the growing green collar jobs political movement.

Is it just me, or is the word “green” approaching it’s sell by date? I know I’m getting a bit tired of all things green, and I really need this color association to hold on to its hip cachet. It would be a minor disaster for me if green was more like the old beige than the new black.

Why? My business name is Green Economy. I’m talking up the potential of green careers and helping institutions grab the employment creation potential of green collar jobs. I’ve used expressions like “go green” and “green it up” more than I care to admit. “Greening” became a verb for me a long time ago – as in “greening the campus,” “greening our business,” “greening your sex life.”

Don’t get too excited about greener sex, actually. My wife and I assumed that that it involved pagan rituals and possibly the intimate use of body paint. Frankly, we were pretty interested. Instead, we got a dire warning about toxic vibrators. We got a little thrill out of shocking the neighbors on household hazardous waste day, but other than that the whole thing was a big disappointment.

Anyway. Where was I? Oh, yes…green.

I’ve talked to architecture students about green buildings, would be scientists about green chemistry, MBAs about green business, public administration classes about green government, and sales people about green marketing. Like many others, I’ve issued warnings against greenwashing. And, to my horror, I once actually referred to “greenification” before a group of land use planners. May the language police forgive me.

I’m not alone, of course. My favorite bookstore in ever trendy Cambridge, Mass. has a rapidly expanding section under the sign “Green Living.” Almost all of the books there have the word “green” in their title and the color splashed on the front cover. Green marketing types have even explored which shade of green best captures the very essence of greeneosity. (Kelly is in. Lime is out.)

It’s becoming a struggle to use green in new ways. I’ve lined up the color as an adjective with just about any other “g” word – gang, group, gossip, gaggle, goals, gals. And, I’ve sought out all kinds of alliterative combinations, creating references to green genes, scenes, deans, beans, fiends, teens and queens.

Clean and green, of course, go together naturally, and that’s why we’re already getting sick of hearing about clean, green energy – even though we desperately need it. To my ear, however, none of these word combos are as musically mellifluous as “green dream.” I’m still kicking myself for not using it first and trademarking it.

If there’s a well-known expression or slang term that can be greened, I’ve shoehorned it into pieces and speeches. “Green with envy.” “Greenhorn.” “Green around the gills.” “Paint the town green.” “It’s not easy being green.” Each of them has been given some kind of treatment that sounded at least a little bit creative and witty until… it didn’t.

It appears that just about anything can be improved with the simple addition of the colorful adjective. Cleaning products (greenwashing, indeed!). Women’s clothing. Snack foods. SUVs. Coal-fired power plants. Hazardous waste. Republicans. New Jersey. I’m waiting for the first green tactical nuclear weapon.

Is there an alternative to green? I’ve heard the argument that we should segue to a new color scheme: blue. But where does that get us? We’d have to reframe our references to blue movies, blue laws, playing the blues, getting the blues, blue Hawaii. Instead of Kermit the Frog whining on for another decade about how hard it is being green, we’d have that dog Blue barking about sustainability. I’d have to change my name to Blue Economy, which sounds more like a lobbying group for pornographers than an environmental consulting company.

On the plus side, we would get the expression “blue collar” back.

How about “sustainable”? Could we use that as our default adjective, instead of green? Of course not. We embraced green precisely because sustainable was so hopelessly clunky and academic. There is absolutely no way that a mainstream movement could be built around the word sustainable.

“Sustainable” completely lacks poetry. It’s all Dennis Kucinich, without a hint of Barack Obama. It feels boring and dull as soon as it leaves the world of conference room Power Point presentations. Truth be told, it’s pretty boring and dull there, too. (SustainAble would, however, be a great name for an erectile dysfunction drug. Call me, Pfizer.)

So, for now we’re stuck with green. It could be worse. We have the color of forests and corn fields, of spring buds and summer leaves, of frogs and pond scum. And, I’m hoping we stay happily stuck with the color for a long time. I’m ordering company t-shirts soon. All of them in green.

Hello Island Press readers! It’s a pleasure to be asked to contribute a few thoughts about environmental careers for the blog. I hope that these thoughts spark some conversation.

As I thought about a possible theme that might be helpful, I found myself reflecting on the conversations I’ve been having more and more frequently with frustrated, even angry, job-seekers. A growing number of would-be-green professionals are telling me that they are annoyed with the breathless media reports about the explosive growth in green jobs. If the market’s so hot, they ask me, why am I having such a hard time finding work?

The question rang a bell in my head. I trundled off to the archives of the green careers column that I contribute to Grist Magazine. Sure enough, I wrote about this problem in early 2007, at the very beginning of the green jobs boomlet. I think that the ideas are even more relevant now, and I hope you agree:

The environmental careers market is strong and steady right now, not only in traditional green fields like environmental protection and natural-resource management, but especially in the rapidly expanding world of organics, renewable energy, energy conservation/efficiency, environmental health, green building, and research areas related to global warming. Unlike the rising tide, however, a rising economy doesn’t lift all boats. If your boat is stuck in the mud, here are seven possible explanations:

1. Your range of acceptable positions is too narrow. No one is a stronger advocate of seeking your dream job than I am. I wish that everyone could earn a high salary with wonderful benefits, doing progressive work they love, with fabulous colleagues, in a family-friendly environment, close to home. But if you’re having difficulties finding your job, it may be time to expand the parameters of your search into other geographic areas and/or other sectors of the economy. I worked with someone recently who said that he was “wide open” to all jobs, as long as they weren’t in business (too mercenary) or government (too bureaucratic), didn’t require a commute of more than 30 minutes from his midsize city, understood his need for a 40-hour week, paid more than $100,000, and had an old-fashioned, defined benefit retirement plan. Uh huh. I’ll get right back to you on that.
2. You’re not “out there.”When a person is gainfully employed, it’s easy to be actively engaged in a wide collection of different networks. There are committees to serve on, conferences to go to, work partnerships to participate in — and you get paid for it! It’s so much harder to stay involved in these important networks when you don’t have the official sanction — and financial support — that a job title provides. Yes, it’s difficult, but you have to do it. One idea: find at least one paid gig as an independent contractor while you’re out of work, and use it as a vehicle for staying involved in and expanding your networks.
3. You’re not as competitive as you think you are. A shocking possibility, I know, but one that you have to consider. Remember that the employer gets to decide who is the best candidate. They have criteria of their own — many of which are never disclosed, or are deeply buried, in the formal job announcement. It’s up to you to ferret out the specific combination of knowledge, skills, attitudes, experience, and recommenders that defines the finalist pool for decision-makers. When you have that information, you can accurately assess your realistic chances to rise into the top three to four candidates.
4. You’re not tailoring your resumé and cover letter. Here’s a reminder for something you already know: You must alter your resumé for each position you apply for so that the connections between your qualifications and the priority-selection criteria for the job literally leap off of the page — sometimes in bold italics, underlined. No one is going to do detective work on your resumé to see if you have the right stuff. You have to show them that you’re the one that they want, clearly and unambiguously.
5. Your skill and knowledge level has fallen behind the times. We’ve all been told over and over that the speed of change makes our skills obsolete more quickly than ever. We nod our heads in agreement. But many of us fail to take action on the obvious conclusion to be drawn from the reality of a rapidly changing world. You must continue to upgrade your skills and knowledge — both through formal degrees and certifications, and through informal learning on your own. This is especially true of technical skills.
6. Your profession is shrinking, disappearing, exported, or fundamentally changed.The overall environmental job market may be expanding, but that doesn’t mean that every field and sector is vibrant. Just ask the diminishing numbers of corporate “environment, health, and safety” professionals. In every profession, there are subareas that are hot and others that aren’t. Thankfully, there are people in your career area who track emerging trends and help you stay ahead of the curve. Find out who they are, and start paying attention.
7. You come across as process-focused instead of results-driven. Here’s one way to check: Does your resumé describe the “tasks and responsibilities” of the jobs you’ve had? Or does it vividly highlight the results that you’ve achieved for your employers? Can you talk easily about the results that you’ve accomplished and the even-better results that you aim for in the future?

Of course, there are many other possible explanations for a stymied job search. For example, you may be one of the many victims of employment discrimination based on age, race, gender, culture — even body size and personal appearance. It happens every day, and it may be happening to you. Still, the seven possibilities above are pretty common, and they give you a brief checklist to examine your situation and make some midcourse corrections.

Kevin Doyle is the president of Green Economy, an independent consulting, research, facilitation and training firm serving the public and private institutions who are growing a more sustainable global economy. He is the co-author of three books about environmental careers (including The ECO Guide to Careers That Make a Difference: Environmental Work for a Sustainable World) and writes the monthly green careers column for Grist Magazine (www.grist.org). He delivers presentations and workshops about green careers on college campuses through “Grist U” and he welcomes your questions. Write to Kevin at kevinldoyle@gmail.com.