One Way Job Seekers Can Use the Project Drawdown List of Solutions

Part two of a five-part series on what we can forecast about jobs from the research done to identify Project Drawdown solutions.

Right now, we’re waiting for an update to Project Drawdown – estimated to happen by the end of February – so let’s do a check-in about Drawdown and how it can be used by job seekers and job counselors.

Project Drawdown has done the analysis for 80 climate solutions that can be implemented right now. Theirs is a global analysis, ranked by the amount of greenhouse gases that would be avoided, in seven sectors: Electricity Generation, Food, Women and Girls, Buildings and Cities, Land Use, Transport, and Materials. The ranked solutions include both strategies you’d expect to find, like solar and wind, as well as those you might not, including the current number one ranked solution: managing refrigerant (the chemicals that keep food, medicine and buildings cool).

Other solutions include, for example, number three: reducing food waste and the concomitant release of methane from rotting food (which is responsible for approximately eight percent of global emissions); number 32: increasing the efficiency of global shipping and transport through engineered improvements to boats; and number 61: installing smart glass, the use of which improves building energy efficiency.
Project Drawdown answers the question “Of all the possible actions and technologies, what will be most effective to reduce greenhouse gasses?” And, it anticipates the follow up questions: “What is the cost? And, is there a savings in those actions?” This list is where it is at in terms of addressing climate change. So, if that is an important goal of a job seeker, here is one idea about how job seekers and job counselors can use the Drawdown list of solutions.

Using the Green Economy Sector occupational listing (O*Net OnLine), job seekers can identify career areas of interest. Then take those career areas and match them to Drawdown solutions. For example, an interest in a career in geothermal, either as a geothermal technician or a geothermal production manager maps perfectly onto solution #18, Geothermal (in the category of electricity generation). Drawdown indicates that currently only 6-7% of the available geothermal resources are being used and that 39 countries could power all their electricity needs through geothermal. Building from this, a job seeker could research companies in the US currently installing geothermal systems, and training programs suitable for positions in the industry.

More complex, would be mapping an interest in a career as a freight forwarder, a job which researches rates, routes and modes of transportation available and appropriate for shipping products. This career area maps onto several of the Drawdown solutions: electric vehicles (#26), ships (#32), mass transit (#37), trucks (#40) and airplanes (#43), cars (#49),high speed rail (#66) and electric bikes (#69). There would be a lot for a job seeker to investigate. A next step would be to review the Drawdown solutions and narrow the list down to two or three and then conduct, by phone or in-person, informational interviews with individuals working as freight forwarders and discuss the role of the different modes of transport that are identified as climate solutions.

How can you imagine using the list of solutions in your career exploration activities?