What are some environmental jobs?

What jobs are available/best-suited to an environmental management/sustainability student whose strongest skill is being critical?

• I'm male, 23 and currently an MSc student. I often find myself enjoying assignments in which I have to criticize (or look for flaws) in already-existing reports, methods or approaches. Although some of my friends see this as a weakness, I believe it is a strength and should be treated as such. That's why I would like to know if there are any jobs that are particularly suited to this 'skill' (especially in the field of sustainability/environmental management).

• Answer:

  Critical thinking - the ability to identify flaws or weaknesses in an argument - is essential in all areas of environmental analysis. However, you will NEVER get a job unless you are able to pair critical thinking with positive solution -building. Being critical is often associated with a negative perspective, tearing down approaches to problems because they have flaws. Unless you can also suggest an improvement to the approach or the model, you have not enabled the work to move forward. Sometimes an imperfect solution is better than no solution (this is particularly true in environmental analysis), and suggesting that one starts over again is not productive. You may have great skills of analysis, but frankly it is relatively easy to find flaws; it is much more difficult to correct those flaws. Also, there is a personal element here. Every approach, every model, had some person or team working on it. People created it. By pointing out flaws without suggesting improvements, you are effectively disrespecting their work. In the long run, this is the biggest mistake you can make. There is no engineer or scientist who can proceed without the work of others, so you better be able to respect it. I speak from experience, since my thesis some years ago, actually discredited the work of my advisor ("Analysis of Uncertainty in Nonpoint Source Pollution Modelling"). While I developed some interesting variance propagation techniques, I didn't really improve the world of nonpoint source pollution modelling. I regret not taking it the next step - identifying how my analyses could improve the models.