Finding your green dream job is now easier, thanks to this career counsellor

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This week:

• A guide to finding your green dream job
• CBC's climate dashboard has a new look
• 'Living snow fences' could replace wooden ones in Ottawa

Finding your green dream job is now easier, thanks to this career counsellor

There was a time when Trevor Lehmann, dealing with unusual medical symptoms, wasn't sure how long he'd be able to continue doing his job.

The Winnipeg counsellor often heard from people worried about climate change, wanting therapy for their eco-anxiety or advice about how to take action on the problem.

Feeling the need to be able to keep helping his clients, despite the health problems making his future uncertain, he came up with an idea.

"What if I could take everything I know about career counselling and try to distil it into a guide?" he told What On Earth host Laura Lynch. "A structured way for people to move through thinking about how they want to spend their time on this Earth."

The result is a free online resource called An Imperfect Guide to Career and Climate that Lehmann published on his personal website a couple of years ago and continues to update and expand.

The guide walks readers through how to assess their interests and values and research occupations to find a green job that fits whether that's a traditional job with an environmental slant, or a newer climate-specific job such as climate actuary or solar panel installer.

And there could soon be more of such jobs, since the federal government passed the Sustainable Jobs Act, Bill C-50, this week.

Lehmann said he was also inspired to create the guide after reading an article about the so-called "hope gap" a feeling of despair that can occur when people care about climate change but don't know how to take meaningful action.

"It was really an effort to [try to] harness that engagement and interest in a better world with what that actually looks like in tangible work and life," he said.

Lehmann said he finds people often have a limited view of what working on climate change looks like.

"I often treat climate as a sector as opposed to a job, because I think when people think of climate, they think, 'Oh, I need to know advanced atmospheric physics,'" he said.

People interested in working on climate change, he said, need to recognize that a wide range of professions from lawyers to community organizers to tradespeople can work towards solutions. He also suggests people think about ways to take their current skill set and put it to work for the climate, offering his own profession as an example.

"I'm a counsellor by trade, which I wouldn't say is by default a climate-related job, but you can definitely focus on ecopsychology," said Lehmann, who founded the climate-informed counsellors chapter of the Canadian Counselling and Psychotherapy Association. Ecopsychology explores the connection between humans and the rest of the natural world.

Lehmann sees good, well-paid jobs as a climate solution in themselves.

"I'm a big advocate of decent work," he said, adding that he believes creating more stable climate-related jobs could help with a "just transition" to clean energy.

Lehmann's guide also includes information about how volunteering and activism can help people worried about climate change find work opportunities that match their interests andalso be a good way to feel engaged with your community and make a difference.

"You often have more political power and influence than you do at the global level," he said.

When it comes to activism, he said, "you want to be doing things that you feel are going to be playing to your strengths and your values."

He said for people who do environmental work whether as a paid job or volunteering burnout and frustration are risks that need to be managed.

"It's important they feel that they're doing things that are meaningful to them, but also that they're then taking time to process those emotions and feelings in a supportive environment."

He said the global scale of the problem of climate change, and the slow pace of positive change can make it hard for people to feel hopeful.

Lehmann sees parallels between the uncertainty some people now feel about the future and his own experience living with illness, which, fortunately, doesn't seem to be progressing.

"Can I live with uncertainty about how much time I have and feel that I'm doing meaningful actions?" he said. "[It's] the idea of making change even if we don't live to see it."

Likewise with climate change, he said, because action taken now might not be felt for decades.

"Can we live with the uncertainty of this problem that ultimately requires more than any one human being can deliver and acknowledge that it doesn't mean you should stop trying?"

Rachel Sanders

Old issues of What on Earth? are here. The CBC News climate page is here.

Check out our podcast and radio show. In our newest episode: What is nature saying when a lake drained a century ago keeps flooding farmland? First Nations leaders say the message is to make room for the water. Then, why the story of Sumas Lake is just one example of how Indigenous connections to the land must inform climate action.

What On Earth33:27The lake that keeps trying to come back

What On Earth drops new podcast episodes every Wednesday and Saturday. You can find them on your favourite podcast app, or on demand at CBC Listen. The radio show airs Sundays at 11 a.m. ET, 11:30 a.m. in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Reader feedback

Previously, we asked whether you had tried to buy a small car and found it difficult.

Sheila Crawford writes: "I had just such an experience this week at Toyota. I drive a leased 2020 Toyota Prius Prime. I love it. I fill the gas tank, perhaps once a month and zoom around quietly on electricity. The lease is coming up this summer, so I went to Toyota to discuss my options. If I wish to get a new Prius Plug-in, I must order it now, with the prospect of getting it in about a year. No guarantee on the price, nor the interest rate, so consequently the monthly payments. Toyota has put themselves in a bargaining position where there is no bargaining. The dealer showed me long lists of people waiting for theirs. Whereas I could get myself an SUV tomorrow. I suspect the dealers are manipulating the market this way."

Maria Kerby writes: "The search for a small truck is even more difficult. As a small scale maple syrup producer I need to have a truck. I am 5' tall, I don't want some monster thing I have to lift things in and out over my head. I park it in an older garage that is low and narrow. It also needs to be 4x4 otherwise I can't get in and out of my bush in winter and spring, which is syrup season. The older model Ford Ranger is the perfect vehicle. Good luck trying to find one, especially as a 4x4, it's like trying to spot a unicorn. After years of searching I was finally able to get one a couple years ago through a private sale, a 2008 model! I need to drive it for the rest of my life, because there are no other small pickup trucks around."

We'll be publishing our story on the ubiquity of SUVs soon. Stay tuned.

In the meantime, we'd love to hear more of your experiences with bike sharing services in your city. What do you use them for? What's it been like?

Write us at whatonearth@cbc.ca.

Have a compelling personal story about climate change you want to share with CBC News? Pitch a First Person column here.

The Big Picture: CBC's Climate Dashboard gets a new look

CBC's Climate Dashboard tracks current conditions and extreme weather events across Canada in real time and compares them to historical trends. Based on your feedback since its launch last year, we've improved the dashboard. Its new design makes it easier to navigate and to read. Highlight cards give you an overview of the hottest and coldest places across the country right now and the records being broken. You'll also find more information about wildfires, global CO2 levels and the historical and projected trends for 485 locations. Let us know what you think of it at climate.dashboard@cbc.ca.

Nael Shiab

Hot and bothered: Provocative ideas from around the web

• Want solar power but don't own a roof? Looking for an easy way to invest in solar? Solar co-operatives across the country are helping more Canadians get a piece of clean energy.
  
• Climate policies have been facing pushback in many countries, including Canada and the U.S. But here are six policies that are extremely popular among U.S. voters.
  
• Spain is the European Union's second largest renewable energy producer, thanks to a huge expansion of wind and solar. But now there's sometimes too much power, leading to zero or negative electricity prices. Here's why that isn't necessarily a good thing.
  
• While sheep clippings typically go to waste, a B.C. company called Woolwerx has found a way to employ marginalized women and repurpose the "waste" to create sustainable fertilizer pellets.

Ottawa could start planting 'living snow fences' soonto make rural driving safer in the winter

Every year, the City of Ottawa puts up wooden snow fences to protect drivers from snowdrifts.

They're essential for wintertime rural road safety. No one wants a sudden gust coating their windshield with snow, and snow fences divert and minimize the wind.

But they also cost the city $8.14 per metre, plus maintenance costs, which adds up to millions of taxpayer dollars over the years.

Andrea Sissons and Pam Chiles had a more natural solution in mind, one that city council has now approved: installing living, breathing, self-maintaining forests on roadsides instead.

Sissons and Chiles are members of Rural Woodlands Ottawa, a volunteer group that strives to protect local forests.

Instead of the wooden slat fences, they suggested that the city develop "living snow fences" in rural Ottawa: rows of trees and shrubs that would do the exact same job.

Council has since unanimously approved a motion put forward by Rideau-Jock Coun. David Brown.

Now, the group is working with the city and the Rideau Valley Conservation Authority (RVCA) to convince farmers that they should get involved.

One big reason to make the change is the annual savings in taxpayer dollars, according to Ian Cochrane, a forester for RVCA working on the pilot.

Every year, Cochrane said, the city sends out crews to put up snow fences and then again to tear them down. That involves a lot of costly labour and equipment, he said.

While a living snow fence would need tending for the first few years as the trees grew in, Cochrane said it could mostly manage itself.

Sissons said even though the city will pay landowners a subsidy for the land they use, that will still be cheaper for the municipality than using artificial fences.

According to Brown's motion, the initiative could also protect taxpayers' lives along with their wallets.

Without fences, the snow that piles up on the side of rural roads can blow into traffic, making driving hazardous. Brown's motion notes rural Ottawa represents 37 per cent of all fatal collisions in the city, and living snow fences are more effective at keeping snow away than artificial alternatives.

For the team at Rural Woodlands Ottawa, it's also a way to promote forested space in Ottawa.

"The mayor has his goal of [having] 250,000 trees planted a year," Sissons said. "He can't make that goal. There's nowhere to plant them."

Even if there was space, Sissons said it wouldn't be an adequate replacement for the old, diverse forests that have been destroyed.

According to Sissons, nearly 500 hectares of forest are ripped up in the Ottawa region each year. While living snow fences will just be a "drop in the bucket" when it comes to replacing those trees, "any tree planted in this city is important," Sissons said.

Cochrane said that one reason Ottawa hasn't used living snow fences before is that, unlike some other municipalities, the city needs the buy-in of private landowners.

Ottawa owns the roads, but doesn't own enough space on either side to plant five-metre-wide strips of trees and shrubs. Farmers need to agree to give up some of their land for the project.

But lost land means lost revenue from the crops they could have grown there. That's why there will be a subsidy the amount of which is still undecided to compensate them.

Cochrane thinks the subsidy will be enough to convince them, since there are other benefits to look forward to. He said trees provide nutrients for the soil, lead to better crop yields downwind, and prevent erosion.

According to Cochrane, some local landowners are already interested in the pilot. Sissons hopes that their success will eventually convince any holdouts.

"It's a hope that [the other farmers] come around," she said, and "that we collectively have a little bit of a mind change about the value of wild spaces and natural areas and the fact that we need them."

Gabrielle Huston

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Editors: Emily Chung and Hannah Hoag| Logo design: Skdt McNalty