‘Corporate Hippies’ Seek Their Bliss in a New Environmental Economy (Felicity Barringer)

  “I would call myself a corporate hippie,” she said. “I’m in the business of definitely caring for and supporting environmental growth and change for the better, but I also believe in the growth of business. And from the beginning I have believed there should be a cost associated with pollution.”

  March 7, 2007 -- CHANGE once came slowly to the job market for people seeking careers focused on the environment. No more.

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Philip Greenberg for The New York Times

   RENEWAL Jesse Johnson, 36, left a career in finance to get a degree in environmental management and business and create a furniture business focused on sustainability.

  There were signs as early as the 1980s, when the Rainforest Alliance began working with businesses to create a program for identifying environmentally sound wood products: more graduates were taking jobs outside traditional environmental arenas like engineering, waste management, policy development, law and resource protection.

  The shift gathered steam in the 1990s, when companies like Starbucks and Nike started to integrate such concerns into everyday business practices.

  Early this decade, Daniel C. Esty, a professor of environmental law and policy at Yale University, noticed changes in the goals of younger students and the kinds of jobs students took when they left the Yale School of Forestry and the Environment.

  Law and science, which were traditional environmental specialties, still attracted many students; but a newer one, corporate environmental management, was growing. The latest ones — finance, venture investment, entrepreneurialism — barely registered.

  “I am overwhelmed by how this has evolved,” Dr. Esty said recently.

  Students still gravitate toward nongovernmental organizations, advocacy groups and government, but a large plurality of the current generation interested in environmental work are looking elsewhere, particularly to financial firms, small businesses and even corporations. They seek employment there because, among other things, they think that is where they can have the greatest impact.

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