Let’s Talk About Making Climate Work Accessible
The climate crisis calls for wartime-like mobilization to rebuild entire industries – similar to the industrial revolution, but this time, low-carbon and high-efficiency. To do this, we need manpower, as in people-power. Eugene Kirpichov, the Co-founder and Executive Director of Work on Climate’s report called Work on Climate Theory of Change: A Roadmap to Making Climate Work Mainstream dives deep into our systemic challenges in making climate work accessible and what the climate ecosystem must do to prepare for the broader workforce transition. Eugene is one of several remarkable speakers we’ll host during our upcoming Climate Careers Virtual Q&A event on June 8th at 4 PM ET; register here to attend.
Our Q&A will feature a panel of experts, including Josh Garrett, Co-founder and CEO of Redwood Climate Communications; Eugene Kirpichov, Co-founder and Executive Director of Work on Climate; Daniel Hill, Innovation Director at the Environmental Defense Fund and Founder of the #OpenDoorClimate movement; Pooja Tilvawala, Founder and Executive Director of Youth Climate Collaborative, and Kristy Drutman, Founder of BrownGirlGreen and Co-Founder of Green Jobs Board. The event is designed to support the current wave of climate job-seekers and advocate for the systemic change needed to make climate work accessible. So whether you’re a climate job-seeker, a leader in the industry, or a professional in a field that you don’t think is climate-related, we invite you and your peers to join us to discuss transitioning into the green economy and how every job is, in fact, a climate job.
The Challenges that Climate Job-Seekers Face
A more recent report by Work on Climate titled Landing a Climate Job: Key Obstacles and How to AddressThem highlights climate-job-seekers' challenges and strategies to overcome them, emphasizing the need to bring together a diverse workforce to combat the climate crisis. It identifies five key obstacles to landing a climate job; psychological and emotional barriers, the skills/experience gap, networking effectively, the concern that climate jobs have lower salaries than “non-climate” jobs, and finding relevant climate opportunities quickly amidst the noise. The climate challenge(s) call for diverse perspectives and skills at the grassroots and community level, within private organizations and institutions, and in places of political power. But not everyone starts their climate journey from the same place.
The New Climate Workforce Calls for Intersectional Collaboration
To create the workforce needed, we must develop greater collaboration between organizational stakeholders, employers, policymakers, educators, and fellow climate industry professionals to make doing this work accessible to people of every professional, socioeconomic, and educational background. People have the skills; however, we need more training programs like Terra.do and the Climatebase fellowship, as well as for climate companies and organizations to implement best hiring practices that help reduce barriers to entering the field, clarifying the pathways to entry. If you’re a student just starting your climate journey, there are many opportunities to get involved, and school clubs are a great place to start. No matter your age or stage in your process, we can all benefit from widening our climate community by attending events and networking with people with shared interests.
We need everyone dedicated to systems change to join this movement, from engineers working on large-scale intervention to politicians who can bridge the gaps between politics and policy that prevent real climate action to strong communicators who convey the benefits of climate progress in clear, compelling terms. Climate work is grounded on researchers and analysts informing the industry by compiling data and business leaders pioneering new models for financing ecosystem restoration and resilience. We need Black, Brown, and Indigenous voices to be at the center of climate and environmental conversations and be hired into leadership positions. There is no denying we need everyone.
Climate Action Beyond the Climate Industry
If you don’t work in climate, there are still ways to have an impact. Last month, I spoke with Stephen Lacey, host of the Carbon Copy podcast, who shared some ways to advocate for sustainable organizational practices and engagement. For example, he shared, “you can pressure leadership to ask if they’re tracking their carbon emissions, and if they’re doing anything big-picture about sustainability that’s not just a press release. Whether it be purchasing renewable energy or buying renewable energy credits, there are lots of things that companies could and should be doing.” Stephen elaborated, sharing that some of the largest companies have shifted their activities due to public and internal pressure, specifically Apple: “for example, some of their supply chain transparency and renewable energy procurement activities directly resulted from internal pressure from people asking the right questions.” Seattle 350 published this Toolkit: Tech Organizing for Climate Justice, which can help you get serious about demanding climate action and ethical practices from your employer.
Another example may be if you work for a communications agency as I do; you can ask your company’s leadership if you can take on more environmental clients and choose not to work with those negatively impacting the environment and climate. For example, communications, PR, and advertising companies are getting pressured to stop working with oil and gas. At Redwood, we are big proponents of this. So, regardless of industry, age, or background, we can all advocate for climate action within our organizations
Join us for our Climate Careers Virtual Q&A event on June 8th at 4 PM ET to continue the conversation. Register now.
