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Advantage IQ/Spokane, WA

Director, Process Improvement & Expense Management
The Director, Process Improvement will lead and manage a team with responsibility for identifying and driving process and quality improvement initiatives, which result in operational efficiencies, technology advancements, and continuous improvement of services provided by the Expense Management department. Through continual assessment and review of existing procedures, technologies, and business analytics the position will also develop and implement quality assurance initiatives and training standards and programs, to successfully support and assist the company’s Expense Management Solutions department in achieving key business objectives.

Role Description
• Develop and lead business analytics function to monitor and seek improvement on business metrics and client value associated with service offerings such as client savings, late fee trends, service interruptions, client satisfaction, data integrity and processing times
• Develop and continually improve training standards and programs to establish and build employee domain knowledge and technical proficiency. Identify and integrate industry-leading training programs to promote best-in-class expense management services.
• Guide and build quality assurance initiatives for expense management, which provide measurable and quantifiable results to assist with performance management, training program development, and continuous process improvement.
• Design and manage a data validation initiative to actively seek out, and make necessary adjustments and improvements to, collected and reported data.
• Support client management team for client specific data review and improvement opportunities.
• Act as a primary liaison to IT for establishing and developing business requirements, scope management, business case justification and project prioritization for expense management technology initiatives. Identify and drive technology advancement needs in support of key business objectives keeping up to date on industry leading technological advancements.
• Lead efforts for development of, and provide implementation support for, operational standard processes to help drive consistency, accuracy and efficiency.
• Provide technical writing support for SOP’s, online expense management help systems, and client documentation for expense management processes.
• Assist in annual budget development and ongoing re-forecasting activities related to responsible operational expenses.
• Promote leadership development, and act as a mentor for team managers and other supervisory staff. Establish and promote leadership qualities that support seamless communication and teamwork within the delivery teams, in the pursuit of establishing a cohesive culture and in support of delivery excellence. Responsible for development of a team which holds principle accountability for technology advancement.
• Maintain leadership standards that foster teamwork by promoting continuous improvement, soliciting suggestions and new ideas, and encouraging the exchange of information with all employees throughout the company.
• Partner with Human Resources regarding all aspects of staffing and workforce planning, development of staff, evaluating performance and recommending salary adjustments. Responsible for disciplinary actions up to and including termination.
• Continuously strive to build employee engagement and motivation for client service and the success of the business. Recognize and celebrate department and individual accomplishments. Model a strong client service commitment philosophy.

Role Competencies
• Minimum of seven years management experience within a customer service and/or production-focused organization with a focus on process and technology improvement, and service quality.
• Must be results driven with strong leadership aptitude and ability to develop and maintain a high functioning team. Solid leadership principles, a high degree of integrity, and a collaborative work style are required.
• Knowledge of company objectives as well as service deliverables, and in-depth understanding of Advantage IQ’s full suite of services, including utility/telecom/waste expense and energy management and external client reporting tools are required.
• Models a strong client service orientation.
• Demonstrated initiative and competency in identifying, developing and implementing best-in-class operational procedures, quality assurance initiatives, training programs, continued process improvement and leading technology advancement
• Must be a skilled communicator, both in written form and through verbal interactions.
• Excellent planning, organizational, decision-making and interpersonal skills.
• A bachelor’s degree in business administration, accounting, or other related field preferred.
• Other combinations of education/experience may be considered.

Advantage IQ Information
Our salaries are competitive and commensurate with experience. We are a performance-based culture and have a goal-based incentive program and generous employee benefits. Our comprehensive benefit package includes medical, dental, vision insurance, life, AD&D and short- and long-term disability insurance. We also offer flexible spending accounts and 401(k) with a generous employer match.

Advantage IQ is an equal opportunity and affirmative action employer. All qualified applicants will be considered without regard to age, race, color, national origin, ancestry, sex, sexual orientation or preference, religion, marital status, citizenship, veteran status, or physical or mental disability.

To learn more about Advantage IQ and to apply online, please go to: http://www.advantageiq.com/…abid/69/Default.aspx.

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by David Roberts.

A new commentary in Nature Geosciences has pretty much ruined my whole Thursday. The details are technical but the takeaway point is this: the climate models currently in wide use (by, e.g., the IPCC) probably won’t be able to predict abrupt climate changes.

Those abrupt changes, popularly known as “tipping points,” are the low(?)-probability, high-impact catastrophes that keep climate scientists up at night: shifts in ocean circulation, release of methane from permafrost, sudden collapse of ice sheets. They’re scary because they’d be both devastating and irreversible—civilization-threatening stuff.

In the commentary, Paul Valdes reviews four examples of abrupt climate change from the historical record and finds that climate models don’t do a good job simulating them. The models have to be retroactively tweaked to produce the conditions that ended up actually happening. Here’s Valdes’ conclusion:

According to the evidence from the past, the Earth’s climate is sensitive to small changes, whereas the climate models seem to require a much bigger disturbance to produce abrupt change. Simulations of the coming century with the current generation of complex models may be giving us a false sense of security.

That moderate terror we were all feeling? Turns out that was a false sense of security. We should have been way more terrified! We’re running an epic experiment on global biophysical systems with only the faintest clue what we’re even doing, much less how to manage it. We know things could go rapidly, irreversibly, horribly wrong, but we’re not sure how likely that is, or when it might happen. So we just blunder ahead at top speed. Because coal is cheap.

It’s worth noting that the inability to grapple with long-tail risks also affects common economic models. They project climate-change costs rising linearly because, well, that’s what makes the models tractable. That’s why climate economics so often becomes “a knob-twiddling exercise in optimizing outcomes,” in economist Martin Weitzman’s memorable phrase. Fact is, radical uncertainty and volatility are the new normal. We have very little real grasp of the risks we face, we just know that some of them carry consequences so large—potentially limitless—that they completely short-circuit our models.

Anyway, for much more on the need to reform climate economic models, see this post. I’ve probably ruined your Thursday too by now, so I’ll leave it there.

Related Links:

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View full post on Grist – the latest from Grist

by Tom Philpott.

Cross-posted from Mother Jones.

Back in 1975, a young,
newly elected California governor named Jerry Brown signed into law a
historic bill recognizing the right of his state’s farmworkers to
unionize. Nicknamed “Governor Moonbeam” for his new-age tendencies,
Brown might have been a bit spacey, but he didn’t waver in standing up
to his state’s powerful agribusiness interests.

In the decades since, the protections offered by that law have
eroded. Farmworkers say field bosses use intimidation to keep people
from voting to form unions. The United Farm Workers have been pushing
for years for new protections that would make it easier for workers to
cast their votes without being under the noses of the bosses. Advocates
have managed to push such a bill through the California legislature four times in recent years. And each time, Arnold Schwarzenegger—unapologetically
carrying water for the state’s powerful agribusiness lobby—vetoed it.

Now The Arnold is gone, and that ‘70s-era governor is back, again
deciding the fate of legislation that would improve the lot of the
thousands of people who work in California’s fields. But this time,
Jerry Brown came down on the side of the bosses. On Tuesday, he vetoed the the Fair Treatment for Farm Workers Act.

He had signed the original 1975 act at a press conference with much
fanfare. Jerry Brown 2.0 rejected the 2011 bill hidden away in his
office, accompanying the veto with a weasely memo [PDF]. In that sad document, the onetime firebrand wrings his hands
over the possibility of “drastic changes” to the state’s farm-labor law.

According to LA Times, what Brown is really up to is an Obamaesque lurch to the center. Reporters Patrick McGreevy and Anthony York write:

The governor’s veto—on the heels of a budget deal struck with
Democrats alone—helps keep him in the political center. Brown has often
referred to such centrism as “the canoe theory” of governing: paddling a
little on the left, a little on the right and staying in the middle.

So the governor paddled right for the agribusiness lobby over whether
the state should expand the right to organize. Now he has the perfect
opportunity to swing left for farmworkers by banning methyl iodide, a
fumigant so reliably carcinogenic that scientists use it to introduce
cancers cells in lab tissue.

Pesticide Action Network (PAN) reports that back in March, Brown agreed to reconsider his predecessor’s
decision to green-light methyl iodide (which marked the Governator’s
final gift to the agribusiness lobby, made just before he exited
office). But so far, Brown has done nothing to stop application of the
deadly pesticide, and already, two farms have used it, PAN says. The
group is urging people to call Brown’s office to demand that he ban it.

I should emphasize that this is a national issue, not just a
California one. The farmworkers affected by the state’s laws toil within
its borders, but their produce feeds the entire nation.
When California’s industrial-scale farmers intimidate workers or expose
them to deadly pesticides, they’re doing it in your name, too.

Related Links:

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How the meat industry turned abuse into a business model

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View full post on Grist – the latest from Grist

Global Footprint Network/Oakland, CA

Global Footprint Network
Director, Research and Standards Department
Oakland, CA
Full Time

About the Organization
Global Footprint Network is an international science and policy institute working to advance sustainability through use of the Ecological Footprint, a tool that makes sustainability measurable. Together with its partners, the Network coordinates research, develops methodological standards, and provides decision makers with robust resources accounts to help the human economy operate within the Earth’s ecological limits.

Established in 2003, Global Footprint Network has offices in Oakland, California, USA; Brussels, Belgium; and Geneva, Switzerland.

For additional information about Global Footprint Network’s work, please visit www.footprintnetwork.org.

Director, Research and Standards Department
Global Footprint Network seeks a Director for the Research and Standards Department to spearhead the development of the core technical programs, manage the scientific development of the Ecological Footprint method, and foster the standardization of its use and application throughout the world. The ideal candidate will be a seasoned manager, skilled at building consensus within diverse scientific communities, and will have a proven track record of leadership during rapid growth. This position will work closely with Global Footprint Network’s President and COO to guide technical programs. The Director will also be responsible for leading projects with governments, scientific organizations, companies, and consultancies; providing strategic oversight of the standards development process; and fostering consensus among staff and partners on methodological and research issues.

Primary Duties and Responsibilities
The Director, Research and Standards Department, will perform the following and other duties as assigned:
* Lead the annual planning process for technical programs and ensure the successful accomplishment of program goals.
* Supervise the science team in the development and implementation of the National Accounts Improvement Program and ensure implementation of the research agenda.
* Provide strategic oversight of standards development process and foster consensus among staff and partners on methodological and research issues.
* Develop and supervise research collaborations and other strategic projects with governments, academic institutions, and partners.
* Ensure the successful delivery of technical projects by supporting project managers in meeting goals and by engaging directly with partners in high visibility or politically sensitive projects. This includes guiding and overseeing quality assurance.
* Work with the VP External Affairs and the project development and fundraising team to secure funding for technical programs.

Qualifications
The successful candidate will have the following minimum qualifications:
* 7-10 years of management experience in consulting, government, business, and/or research
* Advanced degree (Ph.D.) in related field, such as environmental science, environmental or natural resource management, or ecological economics
* Proven success at leading teams and mentoring and developing staff
* Track record of successfully managing large projects
* Experience working with governments
* Developed interest and expertise in global resource issues
* Interest in teaching and curriculum design
* Experience with input-output analysis, large scale database management, statistics, scenario modeling, and applied policy analysis advantageous
* Fluency in European languages a plus
* Willingness to travel

Compensation and Benefits
Global Footprint Network offers a benefits package and competitive salary that is commensurate with experience. This position will be located at Global Footprint Network’s offices in Oakland, CA.

To Apply
To be considered for this position, interested candidates must follow the link below to submit a resume, cover letter, and salary requirements. CEA Recruiting is assisting Global Footprint Network with their search for a Director, Research and Standards Department. Please direct all applications and inquiries to CEA Recruiting. This position will remain open until filled.

http://www.ceaconsulting.com/…=CEA&jobId=160

Global Footprint Network is an equal opportunity employer.

CEA Recruiting works with leading environmental nonprofits, foundations, and businesses to recruit top talent and design effective organizational staffing strategies. For more information, visit www.cearecruiting.com.

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by David Roberts.

A while back, Washington Monthly ran a provocative piece by Jeffrey Leonard arguing that all energy subsidies should be eliminated. I wrote a two-part response. In the first, I argued that while subsidy reform is certainly needed, the libertarian ideal of an energy market with no government involvement is neither possible nor desirable. (I’m quite fond of the post—go read it!)

In the second, I argued that, as a political matter, comprehensive energy subsidy reform is extremely unlikely because nobody actually cares about the deficit. In 99 out of 100 cases, politicians’ professed concern over the deficit is thin cover for an effort to advance pre-existing policy goals. In practice, all pols like subsidies that go to their constituents and contributors and are unlikely to sacrifice them in the name of the deficit, which, just to repeat myself, they don’t actually care about.

Has subsidy reform become more likely since I wrote those posts? Washington Monthly editor Paul Glastris has a blog post up arguing that it has. He says …

… enough has happened in the last few days to give me hope. First, on Tuesday, a measure sponsored by Sen. Tom Coburn to cut ethanol subsidies almost passed—it was killed on a procedural vote, but not before garnering 34 GOP votes. Then, today, the same measure passed, 73 to 27. It was an amendment to a spending bill that itself might not make it. Still, it’s pretty stunning that a majority of Senators voted to eliminate ethanol subsidies. Also noteworthy is Sen. Lamar Alexander’s announcement yesterday that he is putting together legislation to cut energy subsidies across the board. Again, hard to know where all of this will ultimately end up, but things are clearly moving in a direction that few people thought possible six months ago.

Brookings’ Mark Muro has a similar post, arguing even more strongly that subsidy reform will be “forced by budget necessity.”

Like I said, I agree with both Glastris and Muro that subsidy reform is direly needed and could be done in a rational way that raises revenue and produces better energy outcomes. But I still think they’re indulging in wishful political thinking. Call me a cynic, but I don’t think substantial, rational subsidy reform is any more likely now than it was a year ago.

First: yes, Obama has pushed for the removal of (some) oil subsidies. It even caught a little traction and got a little press attention. But Congress decisively rejected it, because Congress very much likes oil money. You’ll note that the very same people wringing their hands about the deficit one day were wringing their hands about tax hikes and lost jobs the next day. They do not care about the deficit. (Did I say that already?)

Second, the Coburn amendment, it seems to me, is less about energy subsidies generally or even ethanol specifically than about Coburn trying to outmaneuver Grover Norquist and open up a space for Republicans to support raising revenue by tackling tax expenditures. Should Coburn win this battle—and it’s way too early to say he has—that may lead to an interesting conversation about subsidies. But there’s no reason to believe Coburn is motivated by sensible energy policy or that tackling ethanol subsidies (which are unusually vulnerable right now) will lead to tackling oil, gas, or nuclear subsidies.

Third, as for Lamar Alexander’s plan … feh. Feh, I tell you! Alexander is a clown and his plan bears absolutely no resemblance to Muro’s vision. The main impetus behind Alexander’s gambit can be found in this hilarious quote: “Why are we talking about Big Oil and not talking about Big Wind?” (Since 1990, the oil and gas industry has given $238.7 million to political candidates and parties, the alternative energy industry, $4.6 million.) You see, Lamar Alexander hates wind power. Hates it. It’s one of the more bizarre boutique obsessions you will find in the U.S. Senate, and that’s saying something. Alexander’s thinking is, well, if they’re going to take oil subsidies away, let’s take ‘em from wind too!

Is this some kind of market purism, a devotion to a “level playing field”? Ha. Even as Alexander is trying to strip wind subsidies, he is stumping for subsidies to electric cars. And remember his climate plan? It was to build 100 nuke plants! That would have been the mother of all subsidies. Like every other pol, Alexander wants to subsidize what he likes and is happy to kill subsidies for what he doesn’t like.

So, I don’t see the momentum against energy subsidies that Glastris and Muro see. I see a bit of opportunistic flailing connected to this particular budget debate. There is no “budget necessity” for intelligent subsidy reform or any other status quo-threatening policy. It looks like we’re headed for default anyway!

Stepping back, though, the bigger problem that lurks behind this entire debate is that there are subsidies and there are subsidies. Renewable energy subsidies tend to be extremely visible, since the industry is new and subsidies tend to come in the form of explicit cash grants or tax exemptions. Oil gets some of that too, but the real oil subsidies are woven deep in the fabric of U.S. law, code, and infrastructure. Start, of course, with unpriced externalities, principally CO2 and oil wars. Then of course there’s the U.S. highway system, perhaps the biggest oil subsidy in the country’s history. That’s to say nothing of the ongoing power of the politically entrenched road-building/real-estate complex, which continues to bias land use, transportation, and funding decisions toward gasoline. Hell, the entire modern economy co-evolved with oil. The same situation—implicit subsidies woven into a century of law and infrastructure—obtains for coal. Nukes and natural gas only have about a 50-year head start.

These buried and implicit subsidies are in no danger. The greatest danger is to the top-line subsidies, the visible ones. Taking those and only those away would be no boon to renewables or any other fledgling industry challenging the energy status quo; it would simply cement current structural imbalances into place. I smell a set-up.

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Sapphos Environmental, Inc..
CA – California, Pasadena
JOB SUMMARY:  Sapphos Environmental, Inc., an environmental, planning, and resource management company located in Pasadena, California, is currently expanding its pool of temporary, non-exempt field technicians for several upcoming projects…

Salary: $15+. Date posted: 06/29/2011

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by Tom Philpott.

Cross-posted from Mother Jones.

As a long-time student of the meat industry, I read Ted Genoways’ extraordinary article on conditions at the “head table” of a factory-scale pig-processing
plant with delight. As a human being, my reaction was revulsion.

In a single long piece, Genoways lays out the crude history of U.S.
meat over the past 80 years. We get the unionization of the kill floor
in the wake of Sinclair’s The Jungle, the post-war emergence of
meatpacking as a proper middle-class job, the fierce anti-union
backlash of the ‘70s, followed by corporatization, scaling up, plunging
wages, and then, well, all manner of hell breaking loose, graphically
documented by Genoways. All I can add to the story is to emphasize how
forces in the broader economy turned the meat industry into one that
profits not by putting out an excellent product, but rather by
relentlessly slashing costs.

In his story, Genoways reports that Quality Pork Processors sped up
its kill line by 50 percent between 1989 and 2006, while the plant’s
workforce “barely increased.” The strange malady acquired by those
workers in Austin, Minn., makes for an eye-popping story, but the rough
conditions they worked under aren’t the exception—they’re industry
standard. By 2005, things had gotten so dire for meatpacking workers
that Human Rights Watch—typically on the lookout for atrocities in war
zones—saw fit to issue a scathing report on their plight. The report’s title says it all: “Blood, Sweat, and Fear.”

What drives such routine worker abuse? What would make a company
steadily increase pressure on its workers to the point of endangering
them, even as wages flatline?

The surface answer is, of course, because they can. After the unions
evaporated, the meatpacking workforce became extremely vulnerable. By
the ‘90s, meatpacking had become such an awful job that native-born
Americans abandoned the industry as quickly as they could. Undocumented
workers from Mexico and points south, fleeing agrarian decline in those
regions, filled the void. Unprotected by unions, one brush with
authority away from deportation, undocumented workers are easy targets
for the predatory practices of powerful employers, as Genoways
demonstrates.

But
there are deeper forces than naked power on display. Corporate profit
strategy shifted in the wake of the 1970s—era stagflation crisis—in a
way that transformed not just meatpacking but also the broader business
landscape. Companies could no longer assume they had the power to raise
prices to burnish the bottom line. Wage inflation, and the fear of it,
convinced them that holding prices down was the better idea. Profit
would be eked out by selling ever greater volumes of stuff—and by
holding costs, including labor costs, to a bare minimum.

As Barry C. Lynn showed in a luminous 2006 Harper’s essay— later expanded into the book Cornered: The New Monopoly Capitalism and the Economics of Destruction—the
new profit regime required a new antirust regime. U.S. antitrust
authorities still operated under Progressive-era policies that had them
looking for instances of anti-competitive behavior. There are two ways
companies wield improper market power. The first is monopoly: they use
their market heft to impose artificially high prices on consumers, like,
say, OPEC sometimes does with oil. The second is called monopsony.
That’s when dominant companies use their weight to squeeze their
suppliers—everything from their own workforces to the companies that
sell them inputs—into giving them better terms.

In the ‘80s under Reagan, the authorities essentially stopped
prosecuting monopsony and focused only on monopoly, Lynn shows. It was a
convenient change for Big Business, because gouging consumers on price
was now passé; the path to profit growth lay in gouging suppliers on
cost. The goal was to get as big as possible and sell products as
cheaply as possible, keeping volume high and the the antitrust cops at
bay; and impose relentless pressure on cost. The strategy sparked a
massive wave of consolidation, as companies bought each other out,
scaled up, and/or merged in a rush to grab market share.

The food industry is probably the example par excellence of the
post-Reagan monopsony economy. Lynn shows that Walmart’s move into
groceries, starting in the early ‘90s, accelerated the industry’s
already-rapid consolidation. In order to remain profitable despite
Walmart’s constant demand for more product at ever-lower prices, food
companies had to get bigger and bigger—and constantly hunt for
opportunities to slash their expenses.

The meat-processing giants led the way. A 2007 report [PDF] from University of Missouri researchers Mary Hendrickson and
William Heffernan tells the story. In 1989, the four largest hog
processors slaughtered 34 percent of the hogs raised in the United
States. By 2005, that ratio had risen to 64 percent. The same trend held
sway in beef and chicken—and has only intensified since. Today, just four giant companies—Tyson, Cargill, JBS, and Smithfield—process more than half of the beef, chicken, and pork consumed in the United States.

Yet more consolidation may be afoot. Smithfield, by far the globe’s
largest pork producer, is actively looking to get even bigger. According
to Bloomberg,
among its potential buyout targets are Sara Lee, which has become a
major player in the processed meat sector; and even Tyson, the largest
overall U.S. meat producer. A combined Smithfield/Tyson would own dominant
positions in pork, beef, and chicken.

As these companies lurch along, forever looking to get bigger and cut
corners to maintain profitability, society pays a steep price for all
the cheap meat they churn out. Genoways nailed how workers fare under
our cheap-meat regime. Abuse of animals is routine. Entire ecosystems get trashed, as is the case of the
Chesapeake Bay—once one of the globe’s most productive fisheries, brought to near-ruin by runoff from a stunning concentration of factory chicken farms. Family farmers are literally turned into serfs as they scale up to meet the industry’s demands. And we all face the menace of the antibiotic-resistant pathogens now brewing up on animal factory farms, which now consume 80 percent of antibiotics used in the United States (both to make livestock grow faster and keep them alive in cramped, filthy conditions).

Meanwhile, the industry can be expected to vigorously fight any
attempt to curtail its abusive practices. Market power extends to the
political sphere—the meat lobby is one of those powerful D.C. players
that—like oil and banking—has the cash to maintain friendships on both
sides of the political aisle. As Monica Potts recently reported on Grist, the meat lobby has financed a push to stop Obama’s USDA from implementing new rules that would
force the big processors to deal more fairly with farmers. The rules,
mandated by the 2008 farm bill, stand in danger of being nixed.
Advocates are encouraging consumers to call the White House to urge President Obama to stand strong against the pressure.

Meat-industry abuse: not just for workers

As I tried to tease out above, the meat industry’s business model hinges on cutting costs. And
relentless cost-cutting pressure translates to relentless pressure to
cut corners down the production chain, from the slaughterhouse kill
floor to the factory-farm pen. Workers pay the price for the mountains of cheap meat the industry pays out.

Animals pay, too. They are treated as industrial commodities—like
identical machine parts being churned out by a factory—not living beings
that have evolved over millennia to thrive or suffer under specific
conditions. Systematically objectified, factory-farm animals are subject
to routine abuse. If you worked as a quality-control inspector on an
assembly line, you’d think nothing slamming a defective widget into the
waste bin. Widgets feel no pain. As a matter of course, animals get the
same treatment, as this—the latest in a string of appalling recent undercover videos—demonstrates:

Now, unlike other recent cases of abuse exposure, this one isn’t
likely to result in the responsible company declaring the workers
involved “bad apples” and firing them. Most of what you see in the video
is entirely routine and industry-standard—like the practice of cutting
off the tail of piglets with a pair of shears and no anesthetics. “Tail
docking,” as the practice is known, is necessary on factory hog farms,
because distressed hogs tend to try to chew each others’ tails off. The
same isn’t true of hogs that live outside. Note also the practice of
tossing piglets roughly across rooms—which a plant manager is caught
onscreen training workers to do, based on the theory that piglets are “bouncy.”

What’s happening here isn’t just a moral abomination. Public health,
too, is threatened by abusing animals to the point the point they have
open wounds and then hoping daily lashings of antibiotics will keep
infections at a manageable level. I can’t imagine a better strategy for
incubating antibiotic-resistant pathogens. According to Mercy for
Animals, the group that planted the undercover investigator at the
facility, documented these conditions:

Mother pigs—physically taxed from constant birthing—suffering from
distended, inflamed, bleeding, and usually fatal uterine prolapses
Large, open, pus-filled wounds and pressure sores
Sick and injured pigs left to languish and slowly die without proper veterinary care

Rather than change practices in response to public outrage over these exposures, the meat industry has floated legislation in several states to ban the practice of sneaking cameras onto factory farms. It’s an industry that can’t bear scrutiny.

Related Links:

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The indignity of industrial tomatoes

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View full post on Grist – the latest from Grist

Rainforest Alliance/New York, NY

Title: Projects Manager – Climate Program
Reports to: Director – Climate Program
Location: Home Based – U.S., Washington, DC preferred

The Rainforest Alliance is an international nonprofit organization that works to conserve biodiversity and ensure sustainable livelihoods by transforming land-use practices, business practices and consumer behavior. Based in New York City, with offices throughout the United States and worldwide, the Rainforest Alliance works with people whose livelihoods depend on the land, helping them transform the way they grow food, harvest wood and host travelers.

The Rainforest Alliance’s Climate Program works to conserve biodiversity and enhance livelihoods by supporting sustainable land management practices that allow communities to mitigate and adapt to climate change. The climate program is cross-cutting, involving the sustainable forestry, agriculture and tourism programs of the Rainforest Alliance. The principal goals of the climate program are to: build capacity for REDD+ implementation through project facilitation and by developing/deploying training and guidance materials; contribute to REDD-readiness initiatives at a national level in target tropical countries; innovate and implement projects leveraging carbon finance as tool for landscape-level conservation; shape forest carbon standards and REDD+ policy at the national and international level and among key climate investment funds; develop and scale adaptation-oriented tools and initiatives; and build demand and capacity for forest carbon validation, verification and methodology services in priority tropical regions, among others. The climate program works with a wide range of stakeholders, from small producers to large corporations and governments.

Position Summary:
Under the supervision of the Climate Program Director, the Projects Manager will provide dynamic and creative leadership to manage Climate Program projects in agriculture, forestry and tourism globally, with a particular focus on the Amazon and Congo basins, Southeast Asia and Central America. S/he will coordinate with staff from Sustainable Forestry, Agriculture, Tourism, and other programs to ideate, develop and implement projects, and will build and strengthen partnerships with key stakeholders from civil society, the private sector and government. S/he will lead the Rainforest Alliance’s efforts to shape climate policy in priority tropical countries and amongst target bilateral and multilateral climate investment funds and international organizations including UNEP, FAO CIFOR and others. S/he will supervise the Climate Program Assistant.

Responsibilities:
Project management
• Manage portfolio of Climate Program projects including: guiding and supporting day-to-day operations, providing project planning and developing work plans, progress reports, and budgets for assigned projects; and, coordination with other Rainforest Alliance programs or divisions;
• Manage and execute projects to ensure their close coordination with Climate Program strategies for enhancing sustainable agriculture, forestry and tourism work;
• Grow the scope and scale of projects in the following areas: capacity building for REDD+, engagement in national REDD-readiness development processes, training for farming and forest communities, adaptation and REDD+ project facilitation at the site and subnational levels;
• In coordination with Evaluation and Research Program, establish and manage a climate change research agenda and supervise the implementation of climate-oriented research projects; and
• Provide input to overall Climate Program planning and strategy.

Partnership Building and External Relations
• Identify and cultivate partnerships with key organizations and institutions from the global- to project-levels to multiply the impact and scope of RA-led projects; and
• Coordinate with regional initiatives and build new alliances to ensure that Climate Program activities complement and build upon existing programs/projects led by other organizations.
Policy and Guidance
• Provide technical and policy guidance to Rainforest Alliance staff and partners on REDD+ programmatic design, strategies, social and environmental safeguards, market development and other thematic areas;
• Author climate policy white papers, policy briefs and position statements, and contribute to the development of a range of publications including guidance on forest carbon, technical case studies, feasibility analyses, and economic, policy and/or regulatory analyses; and
• Support delivery of the Rainforest Alliance’s rigorous, high-quality forest carbon auditing services through participation in field-based validation and verification assessments and desk-based reviews of methodologies and other technical project documentation;
Fundraising
• Spearhead proposal development and technical writing processes, in coordination with the Development team and other RA programs, as needed;
• Proactively coordinate across programs to explore grant opportunities and conceptualize and develop project proposals; and
• Other tasks as assigned.

Qualifications:
• Advanced degree in Forestry, Natural Resource Management, Environmental Economics, Environmental Policy or related field required;
• A minimum 7 years project management experience in sustainable land management and climate change arenas, spanning Southeast Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America;
• Minimum 5 years experience with international NGO programs and projects funded by multi-lateral, bi-lateral organizations and foundation sources;
• Proven experience developing/implementing Social and Environmental Safeguards for forest carbon projects;
• Field-level experience in sustainable forest and/or agriculture management;
• Experience in design of complex proposals and projects;
• Strong working knowledge of UNFCCC policies, REDD+ and PES schemes, and voluntary carbon markets;
• Ability to communicate and engage with high-level stakeholders including governments, private companies and NGOs;
• Excellent communication skills – written, presentation and verbal;
• Fluency in Spanish required; proficiency French and/or at least one Asian language a plus;
• Experience with community-based adaptation initiatives a plus;
• Excellent interpersonal skills with an ability to interact culturally and diplomatically with diverse staff as part of a team and diverse partners including community leaders, businesses and government officials;
• Ability to take initiative and work independently;
• Strong computer skills (MS office and Internet);
• Strong organizational skills and attention to detail; and
• Ability to travel a minimum of 25% per year, nationally and internationally.

Compensation:
Commensurate with experience. Competitive benefits package provided.

Apply via GreenBiz Job-Link;
or,
Send resume, cover letter and salary history to Human Resources, Rainforest Alliance, 665 Broadway, Suite 500, New York, NY 10012; Fax: 212-677-2187. If emailing, use the following format in the subject line: first name and last name, job title of position you are applying for.

The Rainforest Alliance is an equal opportunity employer

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Coral Reef Alliance.
CA – California, San Francisco
The Coral Reef Alliance (CORAL) is an international, non-profit, member-supported organization dedicated to uniting communities to save coral reefs. CORAL is based in San Francisco and employs field staff in…

Salary: non-disclosed. Date posted: 06/29/2011

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by Kate Sheppard.

Back in 2008, ExxonMobil pledged to quit funding climate change deniers. But according to new documents released through a Greenpeace Freedom of Information Act request, the oil giant
was still forking over cash to climate skeptics as recently as last
year, to the tune of $76,000 for one scientist skeptical of humankind’s
role in global warming. This—and much more—came to light in a new report
about the funding [PDF] of Wei Hock “Willie” Soon, an astrophysicist with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Soon has been a favorite among climate skeptics for years, since coauthoring a paper back in 2003 that claimed that the 20th century was probably not the warmest, nor was it unique. That paper, published in the journal Climate Research, was widely criticized by climate scientists for its content, not to mention the funding it received from the American Petroleum Institute. An astrophysicist by training,
Soon has also claimed that solar variability—i.e., changes in the amount
of radiation coming from the sun—are to likely to blame for warming
temperatures.

In 2007, Soon coauthored a paper challenging the claim that climate change harms polar bears. The paper drew plenty of criticism, as it was funded in part by the American Petroleum Institute, The Charles G. Koch Foundation,
and ExxonMobil—groups with a clear interest in the debate over whether
the bears merited endangered species protections.

Given that Soon had previously disclosed some of his corporate
funding, in December 2009, Greenpeace submitted a Freedom of Information
Act request to the Smithsonian Institution asking for information about
Soon’s funders and any conflict of interest forms he may have submitted.
In response, Smithsonian produced a list of his major bankrollers,
which included more than $800,000 from major energy interests. According
to the document, Exxon provided $55,000 for a study on Arctic climate
change in 2007 and 2008, and another $76,106 for research into solar
variability between 2008 and 2010.

ExxonMobil spokesman Alan Jeffers accused Greenpeace of “peddling
this discredited conspiracy theory” about its support for climate
deniers. He maintained that the company stopped funding Soon in 2009.
“We made a decision to discontinue funding groups whose positions on
climate change weren’t very constructive. It was distracting,” said
Jeffers. “The issue of climate change is so important, it shouldn’t be
distracted by the type of things Greenpeace does,” Jeffers said.

Even if Greenpeace and Smithsonian are wrong and ExxonMobil has
stopped funding his work, Soon still appears to be getting significant
backing from other fossil fuel companies, with the coal giant Southern
Company providing $120,000 to look at “solar variability and climate
change signals from temperature” in 2008 and 2009, and the Koch
Foundation providing Soon another $65,000 last year.

“Dr. Soon needs to make clear what exactly these corporations
expected from him,” said Kert Davies, research director at Greenpeace.
“There’s been a long-term campaign of climate denial for over 20 years,
organized by big coal and big oil. This is evidence that it continues to
this day.”

Related Links:

Critical List: Global warming—it’s happening; Exxon funds climate deniers

Santorum: ‘There’s no such thing as global warming’

Critical List: U.S. nuclear plants leak radioactive materials; Big Oil is the bad guy in Cars 2

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