economy

QUESTION: Defining "clean" and "green" occupations and industries

question / pregunta: 

I am beginning research to create a white paper on the emerging "clean tech economy." I will need to define what are "clean occupations" and "clean industries." There does not seem to be a lot of official consensus out there on the topic on definitions.

The Pew Trust has released a report with their own definitions, as other agencies have done the same. State labor departments have released their own reports also, attempting to define these industries and occupations. The Bureau of Labor has mentioned "green jobs" occassionally, but has not created an official definition.

There is low inter-consistency between these reports on "clean" occupations and industry definitions. I am missing any source or leading report on the topic?

Answers


Answer posted by:
jim miller

usasearch.gov may help find hearings, position papers, proposals, etc., put out by both federal and state agencies regarding standards or requirements for "clean" or "green" industries and jobs. The search: "clean industry" standards gets 75 hits; "clean jobs" definition gets 30; "defining green jobs" gets 20. Compare Google search using site limiters: "defining green jobs" site:gov gets 15 unique sites; "defining green jobs" site:edu gets 17; "defining green" site:edu gets 181; but "clean industry standards" site:edu gets only 1.

Since such definitions will require political compromise, consensus, and ultimately people's votes (or at least their representatives' votes or executive orders), the free government sites may be as valid a search as you are likely to get. But the major search engines are by no means complete searches. It is wise to go into more specific sites, for example California.gov, which gets 92 unique hits for the search: "definition of green". Note that phrases including the traditional "stop" words such as a, an, of, the, in, etc. are still a bit dicey. Some newer search engines will find sites that have exact phrases including these words; others will simply go into "smart search" mode and look only for the "significant" words - possibly giving higher relevance to the sites that have those main words closer together.

There are some major free Federal databases, such as the Department of Energy's OSTI and DTIC, that have very many full text reports. For a start, you may prefer to get many at a time in Science.gov, especially since a major player, EPA, is not known for having an easy to search database. Its Technical Reports and Publications doesn't give any quick hints which database to start with, or how to search.

If you want to bolster your White Paper with scholarly articles, many of the commercial full text databases might be worth searching for theoretical work on these definitions. Most of them offer "proximity search", that allows you to specify that words must be no more than a set number of words apart. For example, JSTOR gets 3 hits for the search: "standards clean occupations"~20. But you can also try exact phrase: "defining green" gets 10 articles. Things such as "Green's Functions" will muddy the water. Try: "definition green"~2 AND environment* (29 hits in JSTOR).

Proximity search is different in the various commercial databases. ScienceDirect, a VERY scholarly and technical (and LARGE) collection of journals published by Elsevier, gets 103 articles for: clean w/5 industr* w/5 standards. Probably easier to find at more academic and maybe even a few public libraries is Academic Search, sometimes listed under Ebsco databases. Academic Search Premier gets 22 articles for: clean w5 industr* w5 standards. Business Source Complete (also Ebsco) surprisingly gets only 11 for the same search. Note that Ebsco leaves out the / in the "W" operator.

There are many other databases that might help with this project, but these 3 big full-text ones may be your best start - after exhausting the Federal and state sites.

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Related Question

QUESTION: globalization of U.S. communities

question / pregunta: 

The focus of our project is identifying the effects of globalization at the community level. We are trying to identify data and information resources that demonstrates trends in the internationalization (i.e. migration - including migrant sending and receiving countries/communities - and international trade patterns) and then tying those to a generation (last 15-20 years) of primarily neoliberal foreign and economic policy choices. The goal is identify 12 communities for further study on local impacts and the ways communities respond to the positive and negative aspects of these trends.

Answers


Answer posted by:
jim miller

Academic Search Premier is a multi-disciplinary database that is at most colleges and universities (and some large public libraries). It gets 58 articles with the search: (globalization or internationalization) and communities and policy and united states, in the default title, subject, abstracts search. You can limit to full text online and even to “scholarly/peer reviewed” journals.

You can try many different searches: “Full Text” search, in scholarly journals, gets 210 hits for the search: (globalization or internationalization) and american communities and (foreign policy or economic policy). The same full text/scholarly search gets 138 hits for: (globalization or internationalization) and american communities and (neo liberal or neoliberal). It’s a word game, as you no doubt have found in Google – you have to try neoliberal as one word OR the phrase, and also “american communities” will pick up Latin American Communities – but you may not want to risk missing something because the indexers failed to add the Subject heading: United States. Academic Search has a few “cited reference” links – to papers that are cited by a few of the ones you find – and possibly even some that cite a few of the ones you find.

SocIndex tends to be limited to more scholarly sources, but will be available at fewer places. For the search: globalization and communities and su united states it gets 95 hits; for (globalization or internationalization) and communities and policy and su united states – 32 hits; and for (globalization or internationalization) and communities and (foreign policy or economic policy) - 47 hits, but MANY on other countries besides US. The search in all text: american communities and (globalization or internationalization) and (economic policy or foreign policy) gets 105 hits, and seems to be a little more promising. Also, SocIndex has many cited references as well as papers that CITE one you are looking at, so a few good ones might lead you to more good ones.

If this is a major research project, especially a Masters or PhD possible topic, be sure to search Proquest Dissertations. It covers very few Masters theses, but even if you are doing a Masters or advanced undergraduate project, it can help you to know about PhD research that has already been done in related areas. For one thing, PhD theses are likely to have huge bibliographies. I tried the “citation and abstract (default search): communities and united states and (globalization or internationalization), and got 152 hits. If you are at or near a large university, quite possibly they have full text online of dissertations back to 1996.

You can also use some free web sites, but it is much more tricky to get “scholarly” or “official” sources. You may find Google Scholar to be a bit discouraging unless you are at a big university, because it links to many SUBSCRIPTION sources (not just free web sites). If it finds an online journal your school subscribes to, it will link you to the full text, however. It gets 140 hits for: "american communities" globalization "neo liberal" (must use quotes for phrases in Google). You might want to compare these 140 with the 94 in a “Web” search for: communities" globalization "neo liberal" site:edu; or the 5 hits for "american communities" globalisation "neoliberal" site:ac.uk , etc.

For free government (including some state government) research or position papers, etc., try usa.gov with searches such as: communities globalization "neo liberal" (28 hits), communities globalization neoliberal (37 hits), etc. To get more from states, you can try the format alaska.gov, california.gov, etc. and use their site searches to look for publications or discussions of community issues and globalization.

You may also find it helpful, especially if the 12 communities you want to identify are all U.S. communities, to use data from the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey. For example, to access a table of percentage of foreign-born residents by metro area (or county) by state, follow these steps:

1. Go to the American FactFinder main page.

2. Under "American Community Survey," click on "get data."

3. Select the 2005 American Community Survey (a lot of the ACS 2006 data won't be released until September 12, 2007, including the foreign-born stats that we're looking for now) and click on "Geographic Comparison Tables."

4. Leave "Nation" as the geographic type. Select one of the geographic break-downs from the other drop-down menu (use the glossary to help figure out what each geography means) and click on Next.

5. Scroll down in the next drop-down menu to "Percent of People Who Are Foreign Born" and click on Show Result.

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