Protecting the climate has been Doug Grandt's full-time job for three years. He figures his green encore career might span another 10 or 15 years, as he homes in on where he can have the most impact. At 62, he's just getting started fighting climate change.

He wants to combine his engineering background and his new skills in leadership and public speaking to help take clean energy solutions to scale. "Solar on every rooftop," is his goal.

Are you in a green encore career? Tell us about it!

Editor’s note: The following article by David Bank, vice president of Civic Ventures, appears in the Fall 2009 edition of Generations, the journal of the American Society of Aging. See below for more information about the issue.

The Great Recession is over, the chairman of the Federal Reserve and other officials have declared. It might not feel that way to the 10 percent of Americans who are officially unemployed, including the more than 2 million out-of-work Americans over age 55 whose ranks have more than doubled in two years.

If it’s back to business as usual for bankers and traders, it’s anything but for those at or near what used to be called retirement age. Nearly two-thirds of those ages 50 to 61 expect to delay their retirement because of the recession, according to a recent study by the Pew Research Center. Nearly four of every 10 adults who are still working at age 62 have already delayed their retirement plans.

The New York Times' David Brooks issues a rousing call to action for the encore generation in his column today.

Under the headline, "The Geezers' Crusade," Brooks calls for a social movement of older adults on behalf of younger people.

"Spontaneous social movements can make the unthinkable thinkable, and they can do it quickly, Brooks writes. "It now seems clear that the only way the U.S. is going to avoid an economic crisis is if the oldsters take it upon themselves to arise and force change."

The economic crisis may be about to claim as another victim: Idealist.org, the nonprofit job site that has been a strong proponent of encore careers.

Ami Dar, Idealist’s founder and chief executive, explained in an appeal this morning that the recession has cut Idealist’s revenues from nonprofit job postings, which had grown to cover about 70 percent of the organization’s budget, leaving a hole of $100,000 each month

Ellen Goodman is headed straight for the semicolon, that pause between her long career as a Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper columnist – and whatever comes next. Goodman has just told her editor that she will wrap up her column at the end of this year.

“I love the phrase ‘encore careers,’” Goodman said in a funny and deeply personal keynote that opened the Purpose Prize Summit. “Life is a stage. We are all, always, only in a stage of life. The words are full of showmanship and applause.”

In talking about her own plans, however, she said, “The phrase that kept running around in my head was, ‘I’m letting myself go.’”

From health reform to Social Security to the job market, there’s a lot of talk recently about the economic status of Americans over 65.

Steven Greenhouse of the New York Times reports that there are more Americans 65 and older in the job market today than at any time in history — 6.6 million compared with 4.1 million in 2001 — and nearly half a million workers 65 and over who want to work but cannot find a job.

The 2009 Purpose Prize winners all have compelling stories to tell in these 10 short videos.

USA Today reports on the meeting today of Retirement USA, a coalition that is “working for a universal, secure, and adequate retirement system to supplement Social Security.”

Leslye Louie, a former Hewlett-Packard executive now working with Partners in School Innovation in San Francisco, explains how the Silicon Valley Encore Initiative helped her make her encore transition, in this piece from KQED's "California Report"

(Editor's note: NPR's Morning Edition ran the piece as well. Here's the link.)

A new encore fellowship program based at Columbia University will help downsized journalists continue to serve the public interest in encore careers that take advantage of their journalistic skills and experience.