What’s Missing in the Climate Change Movement
Our Work as our Climate Vote
Something I’m Learning
In a recent edition, I described how I came to my personal theory of change on climate, or rather discovered what I could bring to this field. But I didn’t say what that idea was. So here it is.
Simply put, can we use work as a lever to get an unprecedented number of people invested in addressing climate change? The climate sector has historically been hard to break into, coming across as the opaque domain of scientists, wonks, and techies. But now the science is agreed on, the ideal policies are known, and the tech is increasingly available. And still progress is too slow. So what’s missing? Perhaps it’s a groundswell of support and action that makes those in power see a worthy counter-force to the established and highly sophisticated fossil fuel interests. What’s missing, in other words, is us.
One of my all-time favorite quotes is Annie Dillard’s “how we spend our days is how we spend our lives”. And we spend much of our adult days working. So, through work, can we create new pathways for people from all backgrounds - finance, communications, law, sales, program management, fundraising, IT, you name it - to be able to roll up their sleeves and pitch in with all they have? There needs to be a role for everyone.
And increasingly there is. Project Drawdown’s Jamie Beck Alexander famously said “every job will be a climate job”. I interpret that as climate or sustainability is eventually going to be a ‘horizontal’ like IT or accounting or DEI or HR, something that every organization, no matter what they do, must plan, budget, and staff up for. And just like any of you reading this has to interface with technology or budgets or HR policies every day at work, you will eventually add sustainability to that mix. This is what Apple’s viral ‘Mother Nature’ ad was getting at – that climate will be in every part of a company’s value chain.
We’re testing out this hypothesis – i.e., that there’s a role for people from non-climate backgrounds in addressing climate change – with a new program for finance professionals across the world. Last month, a group of these folk from across Asia, Africa and Latin America, kicked off a yearlong career transition fellowship that aims to give them a soft landing in the nonprofit climate finance sector. We’re cheering them on as pioneers clearing the path for others, and already looking at other fields whose expertise is sorely needed in climate change.
I’m certainly not the only one beating this drum. In the San Francisco Bay Area, a nonprofit called Work on Climate started as a Slack group for the climate-curious and has since grown dramatically into an international community. Another fast-growing Bay Area company, Terra.do, aims to educate 100 million people globally to join the climate workforce. Two years ago, there were more than 50 climate-related fellowship programs around the world, and today there’s likely to be twice as many at least. And a new climate job-board or LinkedIn guru seems to pop up every day.
The other side has the status quo and the public’s fear of change, control of the airwaves and the politicians, and infinitely more money. But we are assembling, and organizing, and gaining momentum.
A side benefit: once climate is part of our daily work, we naturally begin making climate-friendly lifestyle choices. For instance, my partner and I invested in solar panels on our house. And as others see us doing these things, it makes them more climate-curious too. I’ve now recommended our solar company to several others in my city. While it’s important not to rely on what any single individual can do, as we’ve learned from BP’s creation of the ‘carbon footprint’ as a distraction strategy, more and more people doing such things and talking about them will add up to votes at the ballot box and the cashier, and that changes things.
Something to Consider
The Ocean Cleanup seems to be going well! (Definitely click on the videos for both horror and hope.)
Something to Quote
The climate crisis is a leadership crisis. A big part of the story is that people in positions of power and influence and decision making have not been doing a good job of using that power and influence and decision making capacity for the benefit of our species, much less the rest of the species we share this planet with… We need a different kind of leadership rising up in every place, in every community, in every organization.
- Katharine Wilkinson, My Climate Journey podcast