Environmental Job Market To Expand

Green Jobs Will Flourish

First Published Date: December 7, 2013 ADawnJournal.com

The current financial situation worldwide has reached such a point that a number of industries are suffering from severe cutbacks, and experts in a range of areas are finding their job prospects marginalized, if not altogether blocked. This is not a situation that anyone is overjoyed about, but for the individuals who find themselves in such situations, public sympathy is pretty cold comfort. Trying to find a way of improving the situation is something that involves a lot of effort – both for the authorities whose place it is to create and nurture the circumstances where it will be less of a problem, and for the individuals who are currently in a position they would not have chosen.

In such a set of circumstances, you can hope that the efforts to improve the situation prove successful – which will inevitably take time – or you can take steps yourself to improve your situation. If you are currently unemployed this may mean taking on short term work in another field. Or you can take steps to increase your employment prospects by up-skilling. The latter is something you can even do if you are in a job at the moment, but fear that it may come under threat in the near or immediate future. And if you are seeking to take this step, one potentially very wise option is in the environmental sector. Although the credit crisis is biting in a range of areas, governments are still aware that they have responsibilities to the environment, and are wisely avoiding taking their eye off that ball.

Alternative energy sources and environmentally-friendly manufacturing – among a number of other things – are being looked at closely by governments and businesses. This is partly out of altruism – no-one really wants to have “I destroyed the planet” as their legacy, after all – and partly out of the fact that eventually, renewable energy sources and materials are going to be vital in terms of keeping a business afloat – the scarcer a product becomes, the higher a premium it will have placed on it. This makes f or opportunities in the environmental science sector, as there remains a lot to be discovered in the sector, and indeed a lot of current knowledge to be refined and put into practice.

There is no way of putting this particular genie back in the bottle. Governments and businesses are now tied to legislation that makes environmental issues impossible to ignore. However much it costs up front, it will save in return when the situation is normalized. And for the individual who learns the ropes of environmental compliance, there will be opportunities to turn that knowledge into a secure job, an income stream and something they can really put into practice. It may even allow some of us to set up our own businesses, thus allowing thousands, even millions of us worldwide the chance to draw our own road map to a greener, brighter future. It’s a journey we are all going to have to take – isn’t it better to be in the driving seat?

To streamline and minimize blog maintenance, I will be discontinuing maintaining the Thegreenlivingblog.com website (however, I will still hold the domain). I will gradually move all articles from this site to A Dawn Journal. This article originally published on the above website on May 14, 2009.