Jobs that save the earth

What if your school bus released no harmful emissions? What if your school relied more on sunlight than on fluorescent light bulbs? What if your classroom wasn't even a room, but a stream, and you helped protect your whole community by watching it?

All of these things are possible, and, in fact, happening today. I interviewed and wrote about four people who chose careers that improve the environment. While protecting the world and saving the planet are deeds usually reserved for superheroes and their sidekicks, it's all part of a day's work for Galen Burrell, Bern Johnson, Lindsay Patterson, and Giorgio Zoia (below and page 19). For them, protecting the environment is more than a passion; it's also a profession.

The environment can't speak for itself. It can't stop someone from polluting rivers or chopping down too many trees. But the United States and many other countries do have laws to protect different aspects of the natural environment.

Environmental lawyers help make sure the laws are enforced. One of these attorneys is Bern Johnson, the executive director of Environmental Law Alliance Worldwide (E-LAW).

Mr. Johnson started with E-LAW as a staff attorney after working on environmental issues in Congress. His work has taken him to the former Soviet Union, Africa, the Middle East, Asia, the South Pacific, and Central and South America.

"We work with communities to protect their natural resources and health, the things that are important to them," Johnson says. For example, a coral reef is important to a thriving fishing community, so laws to protect it need to be developed and enforced locally.

Environmental law works in many ways. Issues can be argued in a courtroom or a lawyer might ask a judge to enforce a law.

An environmental lawyer can also work to get legislation passed or even educate communities about the environment and threats to it.

E-LAW helps communities in developing countries by giving them access to scientific research. It also provides resources that are necessary to identify and challenge environmental abuse.

"Environmental problems are scientific," Johnson says. "You need to be able to show where the damage came from and [propose] a cleaner way that does not cause pollution."

E-LAW recently supported lawyers and advocates in Nigeria who went to court against the Shell Petroleum Development Co. of Nigeria. E-LAW and Nigerian environmental lawyers showed that when open flames are used to burn off gases that were extracted from the earth with the crude oil, greenhouse gases were created and the local community was exposed to health risks.

Johnson sees enforcing environmental laws as good not only for people today, but also for the future.

"A lot of environmental issues are about children and the next generation," he says. "Will the air, the rivers be there for my children and their children?"

He encourages kids to make wise decisions about how their personal behavior affects the environment.

"We all make choices that affect the environment," Johnson says. "If you rode your bike to school, even if only one day, it would make a big difference."

Students in Tim Maze's class in Ranchester, Wyo., went from being just eighth-graders to being considered local heroes. All they did was show up for class.

Mr. Maze and his classes had been conducting research on the Little Tongue River for about 10 years. Because they had studied the same stream for some time, the students noticed when something was different: Some of the substrate (or subsoil at the bottom of the river) that they collected wasn't the same color as usual.

The class reported what they had found to the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality. When representatives came out to the area, they discovered that a landowner upstream had been dumping ashes from his coal stove into the stream. The landowner stopped, which prevented further contamination.

So environmental education allowed the students to find and address a problem and protect the stream.

Lindsay Patterson is an environmental educator and researcher who works with teachers, such as Maze, to develop monitoring and research skills they can teach to their classes.

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