Are you feeling motivated to do some work on climate? Do you wish you could start learning to figure out if you are part of the solution? Maybe volunteer a bit of time or maybe even pivot your career to climate? You're not alone! This is the top question I get asked: “How do I get started working in climate?”
If you have that question, then I have great news for you!
This is the best time to work on the climate that there has ever been! Example: See air conditioning. 5 years ago, working at an air conditioning company was NOT cool. Flash forward to today: It’s suddenly very cool to work on Heating / Cooling (heh). Many heating cooling startups are becoming very popular and are increasingly present in the popular zeitgeist.
Although it is the best time ever to do work on climate and/or sustainability, it's still not exactly an easy path.
Problems
Climate is scary!
It’s true! Considering the consequences of the potential doom of the planet is incredibly scary! Perhaps the scariest part is feeling like you aren’t part of the solution yet, but have no idea how to start.
Climate is such a BIG topic
It is hard to find issues/topics you truly care about working on and feel like you can make a difference. Although there are a LOT of companies/work for climate, one of the really important things is to find an issue you connect with and care about fixing/working on. Solar power, for example, is a great technology and tool, but practically we don’t need everyone in the world working on solar. We especially don’t need people working on it when they aren’t excited about that particular problem. Finding something you are passionate about can be a real challenge.
So what should you do? Here are my suggestions below. Leave a comment or ask a question as well and I’ll be sure to follow up with you.
What to do
Find a Safe Community
Find a safe place or community to learn and ask questions. Establishing a place where you have a sense of psychological safety is, in my opinion, the key first step to learning and moving towards action.
If you are new to the space, or even if you're not, it's really difficult to find a truly safe place to ask any kind of question about climate / a particular idea on your journey. Try to find a group of people that won’t make you feel silly or afraid when you ask questions and further your learning journey towards climate. If you encounter those people in a group, my advice is to leave. Find a different place to grow. Those people won’t help you.
There are many great digital communities where you can grow ( I’m a big fan of Work on Climate), but also consider finding a local community. For example, at one point in my life, I was learning more about climate from my local gardening club than I was in my university degree program.
Spread Narratives of Hope, not Fear
Most of the rhetoric about climate is still fear-based. Ex: "We better do something or our planet is doomed!". This is not helpful, because the natural human response to a fear stressor is to avoid the fear. That's exactly what we can't do with climate: avoid it.
It’s easy to consider sharing a scary piece of information with your friends and family that you read in the news, but I urge you to pause and consider if you are part of the problem or solution by sharing that? Instead consider focusing on solutions and sharing success stories and positivity!
Break things into bite-sized chunks
It is more helpful than most people realize to simply learn, document, and share. Some of the most helpful ways to share are to contribute to the gradual breaking down of big problems into little ones. Or perhaps big solution genres into specific solutions.
Example: We don't have to solve all regenerative ag this week, we just need to start by compiling our learnings first in a starter pack! Do this as you follow your learning journey!
Support Each Other!
We have to provide emotional and ideological support to each other as we all make progress in our learning journeys. Notice when someone is doing this for you and thank them! Then, pay that forward and try to help someone else on their journey!
It’s been my experience that if you do the things above, you’ll soon find yourself making impactful contributions to climate and bringing up others behind you, as I am hopefully doing with this post.
Stay positive and continue to grow, learn, and do the work we need to do for the climate. I'm always open to help if anyone needs it, so don't be a stranger.
Keenan