Stantec.
CA – California, Lafayette
Overview: Our Environmental Services group is dedicated to managing environmental issues professionally and proactively. We provide integrated, multidisciplinary services to identify and assess liabilities and risks, and to develop solutions…
Salary: . Date posted: 05/01/2013
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Ryan L. Cooper, the able young web editor over at Washington Monthly, is the guy who remixed my TEDx talk to such nifty effect. Now he’s finished a new climate video of his own, which he produced and narrated.
Ryan will be the first to tell you that he’s not a video production guru. He’s an amateur, figuring stuff out on the fly. He just feels like he needs to be doing something, so he’s doing something. Would that there were more like him.
Here’s the video:
Feel free to critique, but don’t be a dick.
Filed under: Article, Climate & Energy 
View full post on Grist
Philip Radford of Greenpeace and Bill McKibben of 350.org recently joined the growing crowd of people calling for comprehensive immigration reform and a pathway to citizenship.
I see their leadership on this issue as a promising step. As I explained in Grist three years ago, there are many good reasons for environmentalists to be pro–immigrant rights. Yet it can still take courage for environmental leaders to talk about the important intersections between the green movement and the immigrant-rights movement.
As Radford points out, workers need stable immigration status to better fight pollution and hold politicians accountable: “Current immigration policy forces vulnerable communities to keep silent about corporate pollution for fear of having their lives and families torn apart,” he writes. In my work with Service Employees International Union, I hear of migrant agricultural workers in Washington state who, due to cuts to child-care programs, have to take their children to the fields with them. The children are then exposed to high levels of pesticides, but their parents, because of their shaky immigration status, have little recourse to push for safer farming practices or organize for better child-care programs.
Being under constant threat of deportation, or having to wait anywhere from 15 to 30 years to bring family members to the U.S., undermines an immigrant’s ability to put down roots and engage on environmental issues. This has to change. With the challenges we face, we need to ensure that everyone can join together to push for a healthier, greener, and more sustainable world. And as McKibben points out, Latino immigrants in particular tend to be more concerned about climate change than other Americans and more likely to believe we have a moral responsibility to care for the environment.
So it makes great sense for environmentalists to support a path to citizenship. But it’s not enough. We must go deeper.
People of color make up a fast-growing proportion of the American electorate, a fact that changes our political landscape and underscores the long-standing need to broaden the mainstream environmental movement. Right now the leaders and members of most national environmental organizations do not reflect the changing demographics of our country. Latinos, Asians, other immigrants, and non-immigrant communities of color are largely left out of mainstream environmental discussions. Though there are environmental-justice and green-jobs organizations that make racial equity a core value in their work, big green groups have historically undervalued diversity and inclusiveness.
The environmental movement has to start looking out for the health and well-being of all communities, regardless of race or immigration status. We must engage, educate, and organize communities that mainstream environmentalists have too long ignored. And we need to embrace environmental justice by paying attention to the racial and income impacts of environmental decisions.
Consider the threat posed by coal trains to communities in the Northwest where many residents have only limited proficiency in English. We need to make sure they find out about the dangers coal dust could pose to their families and have the opportunity to join campaigns to fight coal exports.
And let’s not forget about the people who will have to leave their homes and even their countries as the worst effects of global warming become reality. These future “climate refugees” need advocates now in conversations about immigration and the environment.
But we don’t just need to add diverse faces to the crowds at environmental protests. We need inclusive strategies and a diversity of ideas. Communities of color must be equitable partners in identifying problems, crafting solutions, and pushing for change. “Without equity you get diversity lite, where lots of people can come to the party but only a few — of the same kind — can change the music,” says Rinku Sen, executive director of the Applied Research Center, a racial-justice group.
We will have to employ many different approaches as we work to build an inclusive environmental movement. Reconsidering how we engage on current issues is one. Another would be for green groups to work directly with immigrant-justice organizations on immigration reform. Strategic partnerships of this kind could have long-term benefits for both camps. Environmental organizations are a powerful force for grass-tops lobbying, fundraising, and strategic political thinking. Immigration groups and communities of color have a deep understanding of movement building, multicultural and multilingual organizing, shifting power, and large-scale activism. The power of each of these movements alone is substantial; combined, we could be an unstoppable force for change in our country.
Even after we win common-sense immigration reform, there will be years of work ahead of us to integrate 11 million people who will have a path to citizenship, as well as the future flow of immigrants. Green groups and immigrant-justice organizations should partner to ensure that integration efforts include education and organizing on a variety of environmental issues: standing up to corporate polluters, holding elected leaders accountable, learning about water and air quality, advocating for urban parks, and engaging in a clean energy economy, to name a few.
Simultaneously, we must educate and organize current members of the environmental movement to understand the connections between racial equity and core environmental issues. What’s the impact of pesticide use on migrant workers who are such a key part of our food system? What are the racial-equity effects of mass-transit decisions? How can we better communicate and engage a multicultural, multilingual base on environmental issues? How can we ensure that aspiring Americans, Native Americans, and black community members are part of the conversation about climate solutions?
Immigration reform will happen with or without the environmental community’s support. I urge environmental leaders to be part of this huge moment in history and reshape our vision into one that builds leadership with and for communities of color and shifts power from a few to many. To preserve the health of our natural spaces, tackle global warming, ensure clean air and water, and address future challenges, we must develop a movement whose members, leaders, and values reflect those of our changing country.
So let’s get to work on building the 21st century’s strongest movement yet — an inclusive, equitable, multiethnic environmental movement with justice for all. It will lay the groundwork for new campaigns and victories that we haven’t even dreamed of yet.
—
Editor’s note: Bill McKibben is a member of Grist’s board of directors.
—
Filed under: Article, Politics 
View full post on Grist
Mark Kitchell didn’t want to make your standard here’s-a-really-important-issue, be-the-change-you-want-to-see-in-the-world, bleeding-heart environmental documentary. Kitchell, best known for his award-winning documentary Berkeley in the Sixties, doesn’t even consider himself an environmentalist. But the story of the environmental movement was too much for him to resist.
“It doesn’t get any bigger than this, in terms of a social movement,” he says. “Especially when you think about what’s at stake and the kind of transformation of society that needs to take place.”
What Kitchell ended up producing was a kind of greatest hits of the environmental movement from its early days fighting over the building of dams in the West, to Love Canal, the first Earth Day, and the birth of Greenpeace, to the mother of all environmental issues — and maybe all issues, period — climate change. A Fierce Green Fire is now rolling out at a series of film festivals and theaters across the country.
I sat down with Kitchell recently to discuss his struggles telling the story of the environmental movement. Here are excerpts, edited for brevity and clarity.
—–
Q. What was the most difficult part of this story to tell?
A. Telling the story of climate change is the greatest challenge, creatively, I have ever faced. At its essence, it’s the impossible issue, impossible to deal with, impossible to ignore. On top of that, for a long time there weren’t any events that gave evidence of a movement. No big protests like Love Canal or the first Earth Day. It is a creeping, slow, ineffable, and often intangible issue. I grew up in the era of the bomb and it was all going to end with a bang. This is the opposite. It’s going to end with a whimper, and we aren’t going to be able to tell when it has gone too far, when it’s already too late. They say we have to really do something in the next two or three years to avoid catastrophe, but they’ve been saying that since the early ’90s. So you see, it’s a hard story to tell, hard to know which way we’re moving, where the turning point is, whether or not we are actually building momentum, where this is all going, and even what we wish would happen.
Q. For each act in the film, there are images that summarize the movement: the famous cartoon advertisements of the Sierra Club against the building of dams in the West, the photo of a Greenpeace activist on a tiny boat in front of a whaling ship. What is the image for climate change?
A. This was a real struggle for me too. I didn’t want to do the cliché of a polar bear floating precariously on a bit of ice or a glacier calving dramatically into the ocean. These images are so overused, I feel we’re dead to them and they really only capture one tiny piece of the story. We used some imagery from Bill McKibben’s 350 protests. It’s interesting; though: When we first started work on the project, it was right around the time of Katrina, and we wrapped up just as Superstorm Sandy was making her way through NYC. I wonder if when we look back at this nebulous climate change movement we’ll see either of those visuals as pivotal. Or maybe it will be a picture of Obama as he is sworn into office for his second term. You never know; I’m hopeful.
Q. What kind of reactions have you gotten so far? And what kind of reactions are you looking for?
A. Look, this isn’t a typical environmental documentary. I’m not saying, “Here’s this issue, now go do something about it.” We tried to do a “solutions” ending — Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign, wind turbines and shields in space to protect us — but it just didn’t work. I hope our level of discussion was deeper, broader, and more idea-driven than solutions-driven.
I think there are a lot of advantages to focusing on activism, rather than an issue. It’s a more passionate, more involving approach to material that really pulls audiences in more. We see successes and failures. We need to educate, inspire, recruit, and mobilize — I hope this film at least educates. I had a young woman who came up to me after a screening of the film. She was a presenter for Gore’s Climate Reality Project and she said that there were so many things in the film that she didn’t know. Another woman came up to me at a film festival and said that the film reminded her and her husband of all the ways they used to be involved in issues and they realized how much they missed that. I’m good with this response. A film isn’t just a film, you know, it’s all the discussions around a film.
Q. What can be learned from these past successes of the different environmental movements you chronicle?
A. The whole film is a kind of “how to” — how to build a movement. There are a lot of ways things have been done in the past — sometimes movements go too far, and sometimes, like in the case of Love Canal, you just need to take the EPA hostage. How can you use the media? How can you get people’s attention? How can you make government officials listen and, more importantly, act? And when there is top-down political failure, we need bottom-up social movements to take over. Just about every movement is the story of holding on as a small group even in the face of overwhelming odds.
—–
Read more about the making of A Fierce Green Fire, and watch the trailer:
Filed under: Article, Climate & Energy 
View full post on Grist
Mark Kitchell didn’t want to make your standard here’s-a-really-important-issue, be-the-change-you-want-to-see-in-the-world, bleeding-heart environmental documentary. Kitchell, best known for his award-winning documentary Berkeley in the Sixties, doesn’t even consider himself an environmentalist. But the story of the environmental movement was too much for him to resist.
“It doesn’t get any bigger than this, in terms of a social movement,” he says. “Especially when you think about what’s at stake and the kind of transformation of society that needs to take place.”
What Kitchell ended up producing was a kind of greatest hits of the environmental movement from its early days fighting over the building of dams in the West, to Love Canal, the first Earth Day, and the birth of Greenpeace, to the mother of all environmental issues — and maybe all issues, period — climate change. A Fierce Green Fire is now rolling out at a series of film festivals and theaters across the country.
I sat down with Kitchell recently to discuss his struggles telling the story of the environmental movement. Here are excerpts, edited for brevity and clarity.
—–
Q. What was the most difficult part of this story to tell?
A. Telling the story of climate change is the greatest challenge, creatively, I have ever faced. At its essence, it’s the impossible issue, impossible to deal with, impossible to ignore. On top of that, for a long time there weren’t any events that gave evidence of a movement. No big protests like Love Canal or the first Earth Day. It is a creeping, slow, ineffable, and often intangible issue. I grew up in the era of the bomb and it was all going to end with a bang. This is the opposite. It’s going to end with a whimper, and we aren’t going to be able to tell when it has gone too far, when it’s already too late. They say we have to really do something in the next two or three years to avoid catastrophe, but they’ve been saying that since the early ’90s. So you see, it’s a hard story to tell, hard to know which way we’re moving, where the turning point is, whether or not we are actually building momentum, where this is all going, and even what we wish would happen.
Q. For each act in the film, there are images that summarize the movement: the famous cartoon advertisements of the Sierra Club against the building of dams in the West, the photo of a Greenpeace activist on a tiny boat in front of a whaling ship. What is the image for climate change?
A. This was a real struggle for me too. I didn’t want to do the cliché of a polar bear floating precariously on a bit of ice or a glacier calving dramatically into the ocean. These images are so overused, I feel we’re dead to them and they really only capture one tiny piece of the story. We used some imagery from Bill McKibben’s 350 protests. It’s interesting; though: When we first started work on the project, it was right around the time of Katrina, and we wrapped up just as Superstorm Sandy was making her way through NYC. I wonder if when we look back at this nebulous climate change movement we’ll see either of those visuals as pivotal. Or maybe it will be a picture of Obama as he is sworn into office for his second term. You never know; I’m hopeful.
Q. What kind of reactions have you gotten so far? And what kind of reactions are you looking for?
A. Look, this isn’t a typical environmental documentary. I’m not saying, “Here’s this issue, now go do something about it.” We tried to do a “solutions” ending — Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign, wind turbines and shields in space to protect us — but it just didn’t work. I hope our level of discussion was deeper, broader, and more idea-driven than solutions-driven.
I think there are a lot of advantages to focusing on activism, rather than an issue. It’s a more passionate, more involving approach to material that really pulls audiences in more. We see successes and failures. We need to educate, inspire, recruit, and mobilize — I hope this film at least educates. I had a young woman who came up to me after a screening of the film. She was a presenter for Gore’s Climate Reality Project and she said that there were so many things in the film that she didn’t know. Another woman came up to me at a film festival and said that the film reminded her and her husband of all the ways they used to be involved in issues and they realized how much they missed that. I’m good with this response. A film isn’t just a film, you know, it’s all the discussions around a film.
Q. What can be learned from these past successes of the different environmental movements you chronicle?
A. The whole film is a kind of “how to” — how to build a movement. There are a lot of ways things have been done in the past — sometimes movements go too far, and sometimes, like in the case of Love Canal, you just need to take the EPA hostage. How can you use the media? How can you get people’s attention? How can you make government officials listen and, more importantly, act? And when there is top-down political failure, we need bottom-up social movements to take over. Just about every movement is the story of holding on as a small group even in the face of overwhelming odds.
—–
Read more about the making of A Fierce Green Fire, and watch the trailer:
Filed under: Article, Climate & Energy
View full post on Grist
If you’ll forgive me for stating the obvious: Most people don’t understand climate change very well. This includes a large proportion of the nation’s politicians, journalists, and pundits — even the pundits who write about it. (I’m looking at you, Joe Nocera.)
One reason for the widespread misunderstanding is that climate change has been culturally coded as an “environmental problem.” This has been, in all sorts of ways, a disaster. Lots of pundits, especially brain-dead “centrist” pundits, have simply transferred their framing and conception of environmental problems to climate. They approach it as just another air pollution problem.
However, there are two features of climate change that make it importantly different from other environmental problems, not just in degree but in kind. And these differences have important public policy implications.
The first difference is that carbon dioxide is not like other pollutants.
To make this clear, let’s use the old bathtub analogy. The faucet is the source of the pollutant. The tub is the environment. And the drain represents the means by which the pollutant exits the environment. The key fact to remember: the damage to public health is determined by the total amount of pollutant in the tub.
Take a familiar air pollutant like particulate matter. We are spewing it into the air from tailpipes and smokestacks (the faucet). It leaves the air through simple gravity (the drain). Most of it falls to earth in days or weeks.
So when it comes to the particulate-matter bathtub, the drain is very large. We can reduce the total level of particulate matter in the tub any time we want; all we have to do is turn the faucet down, or off, and the tub will drain rapidly.
Carbon dioxide is not like that. Once it’s in the tub, it stays there for up to 100 years before it drains out. And the drain in the bathtub (so-called “sinks” that absorb carbon out of the air, like oceans and forests) is comparatively small relative to the enormous amounts coming out of the faucet. And by the way, we’re actively making the drain smaller by cutting down forests and carbon-loading the oceans.
This makes for a very different situation. Even if we cut our emissions by a third tomorrow, we would still be increasing the total amount in the bathtub:
The typical climate-policy targets that get thrown around — reducing emission rates by 80 percent by 2050, for example — are relatively meaningless. They focus on the rate of flow from the faucet. But that’s not what matters. What matters is the amount in the tub. If the tub fills up enough, global average temperature will rise more than 2 degrees Celsius and we’ll be in trouble. Avoiding that — staying within our “carbon budget” — is the name of the game.
The public-policy implications are straightforward: Because CO2 is slow to drain, and the damages are cumulative, we need to reduce the amount of CO2 we’re spewing out of the faucet now, as much as possible, as quickly as possible. Yes, we’ll need new technologies and techniques to drive emissions down near to zero, and we should R&D the hell out of them. But we absolutely cannot afford to wait. There is no benign neglect possible here. Neglect is malign.
The second difference is that climate change is irreversible.
As Joe Romm notes in a recent post, New York Times columnist Joe Nocera slipped up in his latest column and referred to technology that would “help reverse climate change.” I don’t know whether that reflects Nocera’s ignorance or just a slip of the pen, but I do think it captures the way many people subconsciously think about climate change. If we heat the planet up too much, we’ll just fix it! We’ll turn the temperature back down. We’ll get around to it once the market has delivered economically ideal solutions.
But as this 2009 paper in Nature (among many others) makes clear, it doesn’t work that way:
This paper shows that the climate change that takes place due to increases in carbon dioxide concentration is largely irreversible for 1,000 years after emissions stop. Following cessation of emissions, removal of atmospheric carbon dioxide decreases radiative forcing, but is largely compensated by slower loss of heat to the ocean, so that atmospheric temperatures do not drop significantly for at least 1,000 years. [my emphasis]
This is not the time cycle of particulate pollution — days or weeks — it is the time cycle of the Earth’s basic biophysical systems, which move much more slowly. A thousand years is not “forever,” but in terms of human agency it might as well be.
The damage we’re doing now is something the next 40 to 50 generations will have to cope with, even if we stop emitting CO2 tomorrow. And the CO2 we’ve already released has locked in another 50 or 100 years of damage (because of the slow draining). There is no “reversing” climate change. There is only reducing the amount we change the climate.
Both these facts about climate change set it apart from other environmental problems. They also, for what it’s worth, set it apart from social problems like poverty, crime, or poor healthcare. All of those problems are serious; they all have an impact on public health. But they can all be measurably affected by public policy within our lifetimes. They are bad but they are not cumulative. They are not becoming less solvable over time.
Climate change, on the other hand, is forever.
Filed under: Article, Climate & Energy 
View full post on Grist
IMSG/Washington, DC (Locations Vary)
Environmental Program Manager, Environmental Economist,Senior Water Quality Modeler, Environmental Liaison Coordinator,
and Data Collection & Database Analyst
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Various Locations
I.M. Systems Group, Inc. (IMSG) www.imsg.com, is submitting a proposal to work with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). We are looking for qualified Program Manager, Economist, Water Quality Modeler, Environmental Liaison, and Database Analyst candidates. Actual hiring of candidates will be in the Summer of 2013, after the potential Task Order award.
Environmental Program Manager
• 5+ years’ experience in a Program Manager role
• 8-10+ years’ EPA experience
• Organize and lead responses to Government performance work statements.
• Experience working with the EPA and environmental and economic issues including Environmental Justice desired.
• Sufficient knowledge of water quality and ecosystem issues to secure specialized support as called for to fulfill the work statements.
• Oversee execution of work statements ensuring fulfillment of quality control requirements for data collection and analysis.
• Support public and industry outreach efforts and development of reports and other materials as called for by the work statements.
• Timesheet compilation and validation, policy administration, performance review and salary negotiation, contract management, travel resolution, labor category negotiation, reimbursement negotiation, monthly reporting and resolving invoice discrepancies.
• Develop and distribute solicitations, conduct interviews, and negotiate salaries.
• PMP certification is a plus.
Environmental Economist
• Analyze costs of alternative regulatory and technological options using data on costs of industrial pollution control alternatives.
• Ability to aggregate costs to the national level and use a variety of financial analysis methods.
• Lead or participate in economic data collection, subsequent analysis, documentation, presentation, and participation in workshops.
• Development of economic data collection plans including web-based surveys.
• Knowledge of Environmental Justice, the Regulatory Flexibility Act of 1995, and the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement and Fairness Act of 1996 (SBREFA) are desirable.
• Ability to develop innovative, new analysis methods highly desirable.
Senior Water Quality Modeler
• Use local, regional, and national level water quality models SWAT, SPARROW, SWMM, AQUATOX, and HAWQS in concert with GIS applications to analyze pollutant discharge pathways to quantify impacts to ecosystems and human health in support of weighing alternative regulatory approaches.
• Ability to apply probabilistic analysis and other statistical methods to assess risks resulting from exposure to environmental contaminants and hazards.
Environmental Liaison Coordinator
• Prepare materials to support outreach activities to the public and industry.
• These materials may include reports, brochures, PowerPoint presentations, leaflets or posters and other media.
• May also be required to arrange meetings, lectures, workshops, symposia, and training courses in a wide variety of locations.
• Activities may include preparing course materials, coordinating facilities for training, and providing course instructors.
• Travel may be required. Meetings shall vary in size, location, topics and level of documentation.
Data Collection and Database Analyst
• Provide technical support in maintaining existing databases, creating new databases, and accessing data from commercially available databases. Examples include EPA databases, databases of economic or industry financial information, DMR and TRI databases, databases containing results of literature reviews, and other water quality and pollutant databases.
• Ability to extend or create databases as required, but following thorough research to ensure no existing database will meet work statement needs.
IMSG offers an outstanding benefits package including medical benefits and paid time off. Interested applicants: Please submit your resume, the contact information for three (3) references, and a cover letter explaining how your qualifications meet the requirements of the position to: jobs@imsg.com. Please indicate the position you are applying for in the subject line. Please also indicate your timeline of availability and preferred salary level for consideration.
IMSG is an Equal Opportunity Employer and Veteran friendly.
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Environmental Risk Communications, Inc./San Francisco or Houston, CA
About the Organization
Since 1994, Environmental Risk Communications, Inc., (ERCI) has provided businesses with cutting-edge tools to analyze and manage highly complex environmental liabilities. ERCI uses advanced probabilistic modeling, decision analysis, and Monte Carlo simulation approaches to identify the most effective financial risk reduction opportunities. The company deals with all aspects of environmental risk analysis, including reserve forecasting, budgeting, portfolio analysis, capital stewardship, financial engineering, and environmental decision analysis/strategic support.
ERCI offers business analysis services to Fortune 500 corporate environmental managers and is the developer of the most widely used environmental liability risk analysis and forecasting software, Defenderâ„¢. Our clients utilize Defenderâ„¢ to forecast project costs, set budgets, and recommend environmental reserves on both a project and portfolio basis.
Finance Associate
The successful Finance Associate will become involved in projects covering the entire spectrum of ERCI’s activities. ERCI projects include evaluating environmental remediation portfolios, validating reserve forecasts, designing portfolio management programs, and supporting Sarbanes-Oxley compliance. ERCI also facilitates industry benchmarking studies, offers training and support for Defenderâ„¢ users, and participates in detailed site analysis sessions. ERCI is a team-oriented organization within which the Associate will assume considerable responsibility for the day-to-day management of complex projects. This position involves considerable direct client contact, which often necessitates domestic travel. This is an excellent opportunity for an experienced professional with a passion for environmental accounting and remediation.
Primary Duties and Responsibilities
The Finance Associate will perform the following and other duties as assigned:
Services for Existing Clients
• Provide financial analysis and in-depth analysis of specific liabilities and portfolios.
• Research technical issues and develop remediation strategies.
• Provide decision analysis reflecting cost accuracy and alignment with client goals.
• Participate in problem structuring, including work planning, issues analysis, process planning, etc.
• Interact with clients and manage client interactions.
• Draft, edit, and format documents and presentations.
• Ensure quality control of outgoing work products and correspondence.
• Manage integrated consultant/client project teams.
Business Development
• Play a leading role in marketing efforts, engaging and meeting with potential clients and producing summary memos, proposals, and presentations as needed.
• Develop and maintain active relationships within industry to provide guidance on company positioning and capitalize on innovative business opportunities.
• Represent ERCI at conferences, trade events, and meetings.
Qualifications
The successful candidate will have the following minimum qualifications:
• A bachelor’s degree from a major university in a field requiring complex analytical and quantitative methods and skills such as environmental engineering, environmental science, environmental economics, engineering, finance, economics, mathematics, statistics, or business administration
• 4+ years of consulting, financial project management, and/or sales experience in one or more of the following industries: investment banking, environmental and/or management consulting, environmental accounting, oil and gas, chemical, utilities, heavy manufacturing, or transportation
• Demonstrated project management skills, including client, contractor, and budget management experience
• Familiarity with environmental regulations and their effect on financial risks for industry
• Demonstrated leadership, strategic thinking, and organizational skills
• Willingness and ability to manage and carry out all aspects of a project with minimal support
• History of delivering on commitments, motivation to achieve excellent results with minimal guidance, and ability to establish goals/priorities
• Extensive experience with development of numerical models
• Proven track record of successful client service
• Solid business development and new client generation skills
• Excellent writing, communication, and presentation skills
• Experience with software development strongly preferred
• Strong attention to detail and dedication to accuracy
• Ability to work within deadlines, prioritize, and multi-task
• Willingness to travel regularly
• Extensive experience using Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint, and Project on PCs
Compensation and Location
ERCI offers an excellent benefits package and a competitive salary that is commensurate with experience. Our benefits package includes medical, dental, and vision coverage; three weeks paid time-off; a bonus incentive structure; and a company-sponsored retirement plan. Unless located in San Francisco or Houston, the Finance Associate will work from his or her home office. Locations (other than San Francisco or Houston) on the East or West Coast near a major airport will be considered for exceptional candidates.
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 ERCI with this search. Please direct all applications and inquiries to CEA Recruiting. This position will remain open until filled.
http://www.ceaconsulting.com/…=CEA&jobId=213
ERCI 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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“Ecological unconscious” might sound like some psychology mumbo jumbo, but hear me out on this — it’s actually a fascinating concept. The idea is that we all understand nature and the environment in a certain way — in a way that we might never define explicitly, but that nonetheless affects the way we interact with the world. Whether we know it or not, our ecological unconscious is always there, hanging out in the background. It’s sort of like the environmental landscape in your brain, or your internal map of global ecology.
So how is our ecological unconscious formed? Sure, it comes from obvious channels, like our parents, the culture we grew up in, and the wilderness we explored as kids. But, says literary ecocritic George Handley, it also comes from the stories we read, even when those stories aren’t explicitly nature- or environment-oriented. Stories from children’s books, say, or The Lord of the Rings, or the literature you read (wait, Cliffs-Noted, let’s be real) for high school English class.
“If you really want to know what’s influencing people’s environmental imagination, I would wager that it’s popular literature and sacred literature,” says Handley. And yes, please take a deep, calming breath my friends, because Twilight is definitely in the realm of popular literature. But sacred literature influences people’s ecological unconscious too. And for Handley, a Mormon and a professor of interdisciplinary humanities at Brigham Young University, the intersection of faith and ecological unconscious is of special interest.
I know what you’re thinking: The only thing scarier than the ecological unconscious of a teenaged Twilight fanatic is that of a Utahn. The state is deeply, deeply conservative and Republican, which we automatically assume means anti-environmental. But Handley believes that the Mormon faith, when carefully and thoughtfully examined, actually fosters a pro-environmental ethic. In fact, he personally feels “a Christian obligation to listen very carefully to science,” including on the topic of climate change.
Handley, who recently published a memoir called Home Waters, helped my co-producer Michael Osborne and me dissect some of the roots of climate change denial in the Mormon community, which he believes stem primarily from politics rather than religion. “There are a lot of people of the LDS faith and certainly a lot of people in Utah of other faiths who are fighting very hard for something to be done about climate change, and are doing so precisely because they’re people of faith, not despite the fact that they’re religious,” he says.
Listen in to our conversation covering everything you’re not supposed to talk about at the dinner table: religion, politics, and yes, even Twilight.
This interview is part of the Generation Anthropocene project, in which Stanford students partake in an inter-generational dialogue with scholars about living in an age when humans have become a major force shaping our world.
Filed under: Article, Climate & Energy, Politics 
View full post on Grist
Environmental Defense Fund/San Francisco, CA
With world attention focused on both the environment and the economy, Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) is where policymakers and business leaders turn for win-win solutions. This leading green group, with programs from Boston to Beijing, has tripled in size over the past decade by focusing on strong science, uncommon partnerships and market-based approaches. You can be part of a vibrant workplace that welcomes diverse perspectives, talents and contributions, where innovation and a focus on results are a way of life.
EDF Climate Corps is Environmental Defense Fund’s innovative summer fellowship program that places specially trained MBA and MPA students in companies, cities and universities to build the business case for energy efficiency. If improving building energy efficiency were as simple as flipping a switch, organizations could easily cash in on big cost savings and emission reductions. Unfortunately, limited resources, information gaps and organizational barriers prevent many organizations from taking advantage of smart energy investments. EDF Climate Corps overcomes these barriers with ambitious young talent trained to develop customized energy efficiency investment plans for their host organizations. Since the program’s launch in 2008, EDF Climate Corps fellows have uncovered over a billion dollars in energy savings for participating organizations.
EDF pioneered the NGO-corporate partnership model, and over the past twenty years has worked with leading companies such as Walmart, McDonald's, FedEx, and KKR to protect human health and the environment by reducing the lifecycle environmental impacts of products and services, and by incorporating environmental considerations into business culture and decision-making. Our projects are designed to achieve significant environmental results, generate business benefits for our corporate partners, and create new industry-wide best practices. For more information on our work, see edfbiz.org.
OVERALL FUNCTION
The Analyst reports to the Senior Manager, Strategy and plays a key role in the success of EDF Climate Corps, which EDF has ambitious plans to scale up over the next five years. The Analyst's primary responsibilities are to coordinate EDF Climate Corps' strategy to accelerate progress towards implementation of effective energy management by developing and overseeing program analysis and performance measurement, strengthening and leveraging relationships with hosts, and participating in key operations of the fellowship program. The Analyst works closely with the rest of the EDF Climate Corps team to deliver a consistently high quality fellowship experience for hosts and fellows, and to leverage the results and relationships developed through EDF Climate Corps to advance EDF’s climate and energy goals.
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES
•Lead development of energy management toolkit, which includes onboarding, diagnostic, advocacy tools for effective energy management
•Lead development, application, and verification of the Virtuous Cycle of Organizational Energy Efficiency
•Lead effort to advocate for leading practices in energy management in EDF Climate Corps host organizations
•Develop agenda for annual network event and other content for network activities
•Create content for training and summer resources for fellows
•Measure and evaluate success of programs, in coordination with rest of team
•Define, extract, and analyze data from fellow recommendations and barriers surveys in order to identify trends, learnings, and outcomes, in coordination with rest of team
•Conduct research on data and trends to keep EDF Climate Corps relevant within the external energy management context
•Manage 10-20 EDF Climate Corps summer engagements and support all tasks related organizing and administering the summer fellowships, such as:
1.Recruit hosts based on selection criteria, manage host relationships, and develop project workplans
2.Recruit talented graduate students from target universities
3.Review final reports and vet results from engagements to determine program outcomes
4.Track the implementation of energy-savings measures recommended by fellows
5.Track and evaluate program results through surveys, project data analysis, and after-action reviews
6.Communicate program results to internal and external stakeholders through meetings, reports, media and online outreach, conferences, presentations, and other methods; and
7.Work with EDF’s marketing and communications staff to promote Climate Corps, including supporting media outreach and developing marketing materials.
QUALIFICATIONS
We are seeking a highly organized and analytical self-starter with an academic or professional background in the business and/or environmental sectors. Other qualifications for this position include:
•Bachelor's degree in business, economics, statistics, finance, policy or environmental science;
•3+ years of work experience working in the corporate environment and/or the building energy efficiency field
•Strong analytical skills, including statistical analysis and interest in performing rigorous analysis in support of highly visible work;
•Excellent written and oral communication skills, the ability to work with colleagues and partners of varied backgrounds and experience, and excellent ability to build strategic relationships;
•Exceptional personal organization, attention to detail, and ability to multi-task;
• Project management experience and/or a demonstrated ability to use independent judgment required to plan, prioritize, and organize a diversified workload;
•An ability to work both independently and as part of a team in a fast-paced, dynamic, and entrepreneurial environment;
•Basic knowledge of the business implications of environmental issues, building energy efficiency, and climate and energy policy;
• Willingness to travel (up to 20% of the time);
•Strong proficiency in the use of IBM PCs, the Microsoft Office suite of software (Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and SharePoint), database programs, and Salesforce.com;
• Sales experience a plus.
LOCATION
This position will be located in the San Francisco, CA office.
TERM
This position is a 3 year term position. Upon conclusion of the term, the term may be renewed based on funding and programmatic need
Due to the volume of employment applications and queries received, EDF is unable to respond to each application individually. Applicants will be contacted directly if selected as a candidate.
Environmental Defense Fund is an Equal Opportunity Employer
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