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263: What Career Should I Have in a Climate Crisis?

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About this episode

Welcome to the third episode in our How to Live a Good Life in a Climate Crisis series, where our hosts grapple with some of the fiercest climate conundrums we face. 

This week, Tom, Paul and Christiana look at the issue of careers and ask - would you move jobs in response to the climate crisis? Is changing your job your most effective form of climate action? They explore what to look for if you’re attempting to use your career to scale up climate solutions. And they pose the biggie: is there even such a thing as a climate change job and a non-climate change job?

Taking a moment to discuss their own careers, the hosts share what they’ve learnt about innovation, interns, and how chair-making can pave the way to the UN!

We’d love to hear what your experiences are… Please do get in touch. 


NOTES AND RESOURCES

‘Thuto ya Batho’ Teachings from the People: Women Adapt to Climate Change by Maite Nkoana -Mashabane
Outrage + Optimism: BP’s Road to Rebuilding Trust with CEO Bernard Looney
Cardiff Freight Company Wins NatWest Cymru’s ‘Green Business of the Year Award’
Gen Z seek ethical workplaces as environ-mental health burden bites (Bupa, 2021)
2024 Gen Z and Millennial Survey: Living and working with purpose in a transforming world (Deloitte, 2024)
The Undercover Activist
Creatives for Climate


Learn more about the Paris Agreement.

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Full Transcript


Tom: [00:00:05] Hello and welcome to Outrage + Optimism. I'm Tom Rivett-Carnac.

Christiana: [00:00:08] I'm Christiana Figueres.

Paul: [00:00:10] And I'm Paul Dickinson.

Tom: [00:00:11] This week we continue with our series on how to live a good life in a climate crisis. And today we talk about careers. Thanks for being here. Welcome back to our mini series on how to live a good life in the climate crisis. I think it's been a really interesting journey we've been on thus far, and today we're going to be tackling another topic that is really, I think, front of mind for many people, which is how you can use your career in service of solutions to the climate crisis. So we have had.

Paul: [00:00:46] It's the most important thing at all. You know, it's, what is it, do you shape your life or does your life shape you.

Tom: [00:00:50] These are very good questions. And of course the answer like so many things, of course, Paul is both. But we did survey our listeners and we asked specifically whether people would change their job in response to the climate crisis. And this is the only time we.

Christiana: [00:01:04] That 100% of our listeners said, yes. Load More
Tom: [00:01:11] Precisely. 100% of you. So everyone listening to this podcast, it's possible you weren't one of the people that responded to the survey, but 100% of the people who did respond said that they would change their jobs in response to the climate crisis. That is a striking statistic.

Christiana: [00:01:22] And you know what, this is a poll that we did recently, but we had done one a while ago, and there were some people who actually told us they had already changed their job on to do something that is more climate responsible because of what they learned on the podcast. So good on us, that's pretty cool.

Tom: [00:01:41] Wonderful. That's a very fantastic outcome. We're very excited about that.

Christiana: [00:01:44] Not good on us. Good on them.

Tom: [00:01:46] Good on us. Yeah, yeah, good on us. You're absolutely right. Thank you, Christiana.

Paul: [00:01:50] Good on our funders who supported us to make this outcome happen.

Tom: [00:01:54] Absolutely, let's make it even more self-serving. Yeah. Well done Paul. Right, okay. So I think we're going to get into this, and we're going to look at choosing a job and whether you should change your job and all these kind of big questions. But maybe before we do, we should set the context a bit in terms of our own journey, and also talk about the unique position that the three of us are in. Christiana, do you want to come in on that?

Christiana: [00:02:12] Yeah, yeah, yeah, because I think we should acknowledge that actually just being able to sit down, pause, breathe and ask the question, am I in the job that I really want to be in or should I change it, just being able to ask that question is already incredibly privileged.

Tom: [00:02:30] Huge privilege, absolutely.

Christiana: [00:02:31] Very, very privileged because there are many people who would like to work and don't find a job. There are people who don't have as broad a gamut of work options just because of where they live, or many other reasons that don't allow them to have choices. So so I think we should definitely, recognize that. And the other thing that we should recognize up front, just to be fair and transparent, is that the three of us here have a bias, and that is all three of us now, at this point in our life, we all devote our lives to something on climate change. And and that for sure colours the way that we think and experience this topic. So let's just be aware about that.

Paul: [00:03:25] We were just basically very lucky. I feel very lucky because, you know, a lot of people suffer because they're doing whatever work they're doing or they're trying to get whatever work they want to get, and they think they wish I had the opportunity to work in climate change. And I know that we've all had the opportunity to work in climate change for like, decades, so we're very lucky.

Christiana: [00:03:41] Well, I think that we're very lucky that we can work in that which we're passionate about, that I think is the incredible, incredible because I honestly can't think of something well, I can think of many things that are more miserable, but it would be miserable to get out of bed every day and go and work on something that you don't believe in, that you hate. 

Tom: [00:04:00] It's terrible for your mental state. It really is. People really struggle with that.

Christiana: [00:04:03] It's just terrible, so I just think it's.

Tom: [00:04:05] Yeah, well, I have had jobs now and then, and I've not felt like I've really been delivering an outcome that I've wanted. It's been a while ago. I mean, I'm the same as you. I have this privilege of, for a couple of decades now, I've been working specifically, but when I was younger, that wasn't always the case. So should we.

Paul: [00:04:17] I've had lots of stupid jobs, sure.

Tom: [00:04:18] Yeah, I love that your story of your first job, actually, maybe we'll get onto that.

Christiana: [00:04:20] But we should tell a little bit the story each of us yes, of how we came to now be working on climate. Paul, do you want to start?

Paul: [00:04:29] Ideally within a context that's as useful as possible. I can't even remember what the story of my first job was, but.

Tom: [00:04:35] A professional apologizer at Harrods. 

Paul: [00:04:36] No, well, I didn't want to work at Harrods. I was kind of pretty left wing, to be honest with you. It kind of communist in my thinking until I was about 20, and I got given a book called The Open Society and Its Enemies, and I disabused myself of believing in a historical dialectic, but park that for a minute. So I happened to be working in a department store, and I actually got quite a good business education. I had left school, you know, without completing school, in fact. And so no university education. Key for me was at the age of 20, deciding that I wanted to be a politician. And that's when I kind of thought the world could be better run. Maybe I could help. And I went off and did my sort of school exams or whatever. And at the age of 24, I started a politics degree. So I was a sort of younger, mature student, but I actually left that in my first term. Very weird thing to do. But it's because I was working in an annual report design company, and I was looking at the annual reports of these gigantic companies in 1988. And I thought, actually, the power of national governments is declining and the power of corporations is increasing, and it would be better to pursue a political career through the business system than through the government system. And that felt very sort of weird, but I felt it really in my, my water. So I spent 11 years working in corporate design.

Paul: [00:05:49] And then what actually led me to the job now was doing a master's degree when I was 34 I think that Anita Roddick from The Body Shop had set up, and that was in responsibility and business practice and exposed me to a lot of thinking and allowed me to sort of find some other people and work on what I thought would be a private sector thing, but actually ended up being a charity, primarily on climate change, but I think that the heart of it lots of good fortune. I won't go into all the details, but I had had the opportunity to, make a decision that I'd work on climate change for the rest of my life in 1999, and then from that, it was quite easy to find other people to work with. And, you know, I won't go into all the details, but that's that's exactly the heart of it for me. And I think there is one particular thing I want to pull out from here, which is and people have said to me, Nigel Topping actually said that he came to work with us because I had so much confidence that I could just offer him a job when we first met, I said, we haven't got any money to pay you, but if you can find the money, you can come and work here. And the point is that confidence came in me from the certainty I had in what I was doing.

Christiana: [00:06:57] What a wonderful job offer.

Tom: [00:06:58] Yeah, that's classic NGO job offer, isn't it? It is. Nicely done. Exactly.

Christiana: [00:07:03] Tom, how about you? How did you come to work in climate?

Tom: [00:07:06] Yeah, I mean, I will, I will, I will shorthand it a bit, as you did, but that's a very nice story Paul, thank you for sharing that. So I suppose the backdrop to my story is my father's a petroleum geologist, grew up traveling the world looking for oil and gas, and that wasn't really a conscious part of my childhood, but I think it formed the backdrop of much of what I did. But I didn't really know what I wanted to do through university. And, and and as some listeners may know, I then went to South East Asia and spent a few years as a monk. And when I decided to disrobe, which was definitely connected to the climate crisis, I didn't know what I wanted to do, but I knew I wanted it to be mindful and present and engaged in finding solutions. So I actually became a craftsman and started making chairs. I did a traditional apprenticeship on the west coast of Scotland, felling trees and building green houses and making chairs. And then I moved with that down to Devon, where I went to Schumacher College. And during one of the summers in the early 2000, I was teaching now chair making at Cornell University on the east coast of the US, and. 

Christiana: [00:08:01] You were teaching chair making?

Tom: [00:08:02] Yeah. Chair making. Crafts.

Christiana: [00:08:05] Teaching chair making.

Tom: [00:08:05] Chair making.

Christiana: [00:08:06] I just.

Tom: [00:08:07] Yeah, not at Cornell, but in the area, in Ithaca to Cornell students.

Paul: [00:08:11] It's the fast track into climate change.

Christiana: [00:08:14] The fast track into Cornell University.

Tom: [00:08:17] I was teaching to Cornell students in Ithaca, but I wasn't like a Cornell professor of craftsmanship and chair making. Exactly.

Christiana: [00:08:23] Yeah, yeah. Okay.

Tom: [00:08:24] And anyway, one of my students said I'm a youth delegate at the UN. You should come down. It's the Commission on Sustainable Development next week. So I went down to the UN, having never bought my first suit in New York and went to the UN, and I was like, wow, this is a whole other world. And that sort of opened my mind to think about other ways in which I could have an impact. I then got a job at something called CarbonSense providing advice to corporations. Then I came to work with Paul at CDP, and then the rest of my career unfolded. 

Christiana: [00:08:52] And then you came to work with me.

Tom: [00:08:53] And then Christiana told me that I had none of the skills or experience necessary, but she thought I'd be good. And we and the rest is history, as they say. So that's been my pathway. So I've, I've, I've been very lucky to have been able to be intentional and to be able to say what is important to me are these different qualities in my job and to jump and pursue that and to have the opportunity to do it.

Paul: [00:09:13] Probably for both of us in different ways. A little bit of financial security also gave us the chance to take a risk that a lot of people haven't had.

Tom: [00:09:20] 100%, yeah.

Paul: [00:09:21] Now, Christiana, you have had the most incredible job and you have done the most incredible job. And many of our listeners will be aware of your amazing career. But could you.

Tom: [00:09:33] How are you going to summarize this in 2.5 minutes?

Christiana: [00:09:34] Yes. How to summarize it very quickly. So I must say that I definitely did not start working on climate change. I did many different types of activities, all of which had to do with either political consulting for political campaigns. Given the fact that I come from a highly political family in Costa Rica or policy, and so working for the Costa Rican government in various various ways, and it wasn't until I became a mother that I discovered climate change. I had fallen in love with this very unique, golden toad that was a species that was endemic to one of our national parks. I had fallen in love with that species when I was very young, and it had opened up my love for nature. And when I had two girls by the mid 90s, I wanted them to fall in love with nature also, and I wanted to introduce them to this beautiful species. And that species no longer existed because it had actually gone extinct. So I started to find out what on earth happened. And those were the first pieces of information that I got of something that at that time was called global warming.

Christiana: [00:10:54] Now it's called climate change. But that's how I got into climate change because of the disappearance of my, my very favorite species. And after I studied it for a while and realized what had happened, then I decided, right, in that case, I have to work on this because I inherited from my parents a planet that was relatively stable and relatively healthy with respect to all of the species. And I was a new mother with two young daughters, and I was inheriting to them, or bequeathing to them a planet that was severely diminished with respect to the one that I had inherited because of the disappearance of species. And I thought, that's not what a mother ought to do. So I started working on climate change. I formed an NGO, worked at at the NGO for many years, and then did other things on climate until I was called up to the to the UN to UNFCCC. But it just strikes me how interesting, because both you and I came into climate in the mid or me in the mid 90s. You in the. 

Paul: [00:12:09] Late 90s.

Christiana: [00:12:10] Late 90s. And you Tom?

Tom: [00:12:13] Well, I suppose it was the early 2000, late 2004, something like that. Yeah.

Christiana: [00:12:18] So it's, it's it's interesting because here we are, we chose that career path many decades ago, and none of us has wavered from that. I think that's really interesting. And that, I would say contrasts with most people out there in the world, especially now, who feel like they have to have a change constantly. We have been dedicated to climate change from different perspectives and from different offices, and with different little calling cards or whatever, but very, very dedicated to addressing climate change in a timely way, and I think that's, I think that's remarkable and as you say, a privilege.

Paul: [00:13:02] Well it's unusual in general careers. But isn't it actually quite normal for people I know that work in climate, are kind of, always there.

Christiana: [00:13:10] That we stay. I used, I used to say, you know, you're bitten by the climate bug and it just gets in your veins and there's no way that you can leave.

Tom: [00:13:17] It's hard to say, I'm going to go off and do something else associated with the economy that sort of doesn't have the I mean, you know, the flip side of that, having that deep meaning and that deep sense of purpose is you sort of can't really do something without it after that. It's a one way, it's a one way street, right. Once you're able to get into that and as we said, that's a privilege. You can't really go back.

Christiana: [00:13:34] So is this a warning to everyone who's.

Tom: [00:13:35] This is a warning. Don't do it, people. No. Only joking.

Christiana: [00:13:39] Once you're in, you're never out.

Tom: [00:13:42] So that was great. And hopefully that's useful to listeners to hear a little bit about our own journeys. And it's been, you know, a few decades, obviously for, for each of us. Now, we should get into some of the questions that have been asked by our listeners. And, and they, they, they take different themes, of course, but a big one is around how do I sort of or in what way can I kind of come into the climate world? How do I make a choice to take a job in this space? Maybe we should talk a bit about people who are out there, who might be deciding what kind of career they want, maybe making a career change. What would we say as they choose a job? What sorts of things should they be on the lookout for if they're going to try and do something meaningful with their career on climate?

Paul: [00:14:25] Yeah. Catalina Merchan. I call it the mother question. What are your recommendations for those of us who are looking into transitioning into a climate job or a climate career?

Tom: [00:14:33] Yes. No, that's exactly the question, Paul. So, I mean, there's there's a how to but there's also if you're entering the workplace and you want to make a choice to have a career, let's let's break it down this way. If you had a young person come to you and say, and this is in some of the questions, I want to make a difference on climate in my career, should I go and work, and you want to take a job at a company, should I go and work for a company that is doing the most on climate change, that is leading the ESG scores, that is clearly a leader? Or should I go and work for somebody who's not doing anything on climate and try and change what that company is doing and have more of an impact? Let's talk a little bit about those two different choices.

Paul: [00:15:09] It's so hard. I want to write an opera called you know which one, you know, like on the one hand there's these fantastic companies like Orsted and Vestas, and Signify, I mean, there are zillions of them. Schneider Electric, they're all just doing this fantastic work, you know, totally committed to climate change. And then there are really tough companies, your your Shells or your, I don't know, a car companies like Ford or something or maybe a cement company like Holcim, where really the emissions are. And it's a tough job. I think it's, you know, the one the only thing that I've ever found, I was once introduced to what I'm told is a very good interview question. I think it is not a bad interview question for a job. It's what do you enjoy doing? Now, you ask the candidate that not necessarily because you're such a nice employer and you want them to be happy, but actually it's trying to link people's passion with their work because there is a school of thought that says you're going to be best at what you're passionate at. So if you think you want to proliferate some kind of fantastic low tech, then you should go there. If you think, no, no, I want the toughest of all the challenges. I want to make zero cement. I want to kind of make the, you know, then then go into go into aerospace. Let's find, you know, you can come up with the airplane that's going to, you know, not emit anything. Does that make sense?

Tom: [00:16:23] Yeah, totally. And in fact, I remember having a conversation with somebody at one of the companies you just mentioned, one of the leaders on ESG. And he was saying to me, you know what, I think I need to quit and go and work for Shell. Because actually, what he was finding is that there was so much momentum around what they were doing, he didn't feel like he was adding value. It's a really interesting dilemma. What do you think, Christiana?

Christiana: [00:16:40] Well, I want to complicate the question a little bit.

Tom: [00:16:43] Oh, great okay, perfect.

Paul: [00:16:43] Good, that's what we like to do here, more dimensions.

Christiana: [00:16:46] And that is that I think it's a little bit simplistic to divide the world into high emitters doing a responsible thing or high emitters not doing a responsible.

Tom: [00:16:56] Correct, correct.

Christiana: [00:16:56] Because the fact is, it's very difficult to find any field of human endeavour that is not either contributing to the problem of climate change, or contributing to the adaptation to or contributing to the solution. The fact is that all human endeavour sectors are actually being touched, some more profoundly than others. So to pick up on your point, Paul, start where your passion is, but realize that wherever, whatever sector you want to work in, that sector is not exempt from climate causation or climate impacts, and that our responsibility is to raise the awareness of that sector or that company to understand that we're living in a climate impacted world. So it's easy to understand that in energy, for example, it's easy to understand that in conservation. But it is also true of architecture, for example. It is also true of buildings. It is also true of urban design. It is also true of finance right.

Paul: [00:18:11] Oh, yeah.

Christiana: [00:18:11] You know, we need people who are climate conscious, who work in finance as we know. It is also true of sociology. It is true of psychology.

Paul: [00:18:22] Health service.

Christiana: [00:18:22] Health services. It's true of education. How do we deal.

Paul: [00:18:26] Armed forces even.

Christiana: [00:18:27] Entertainment, communication.

Paul: [00:18:29] Yeah, yeah everything. 

Christiana: [00:18:31] I mean, on and on and on right. The list is actually quite a limited list. And so for me, it's not a question of what sector or what company should I go if I want to work on climate. It's first of all what sector or what company am I best placed in and am I most excited about contributing to? And then take your climate lens with you, that's that's the piece. And and that really is additive because most people who have been in these industries pick your industry architects, urban designers, whoever, entertainers, they haven't been thinking about climate. And so for people to come in to go like, look, okay, great. We're going to entertain people. But can we also use entertainment to educate people on climate change? Yes. Okay. We're going to build a new building. What materials are we going to use? What are the sustainability designs that we're going to do. What is the passive heating and cooling.

Paul: [00:19:26] How might we use the shell of the old building?

Christiana: [00:19:28] Exactly. So I think that is the piece. It's not about what do I do, but how do I take my climate lens.

Tom: [00:19:36] It's a great it's a great build. So I really appreciate you raising that because I think it makes it more complicated but it makes it more real world. So so therefore the next question that follows from that is, is there actually a useful distinction between because all of our listeners said that they would change jobs in response to the climate crisis, to do something else, to be of more service, is there such thing as a climate change job and a non climate change job?

Christiana: [00:19:57] Well, there is, if I would argue that maybe what we do is really a climate change job, right. Because, yes and no. Because you could also argue, well, yes, we're all devoted to climate change. But Paul does it mostly through corporate disclosure. You and I do it mostly through policy consulting and communication. I think that's actually what we do. And then the fact that we take the carbon lens or the or the climate lens is the add on to that. So I think it's helpful to divide that and ensure that the add on is not just an add on that it actually moves very quickly into the center of attention.

Tom: [00:20:45] So I hear you, but let's just push on that a little bit because, I mean, you say you're a nurse working in a hospital and you're concerned about the climate crisis, and you want to find a way to feel that sense of purpose and meaning in your work. You might find some ancillary ways that are connected to your job, to make your operations more efficient, or to talk to your boss here and there. But most of your time is going to be spent on the essential and important work of being a nurse. So you're not actually going to have the scope to really do a lot around the climate crisis.

Christiana: [00:21:13] I would argue that you have more scope than you think.

Tom: [00:21:16] All right, let's hear it.

Christiana: [00:21:16] Because I would argue that, as we know, there are many human diseases that are expanding and growing into new regions and into new, new scale because of climate change. And if I'm a nurse and I see that that is happening with my patients, my obligation is to take this awareness to the attention of wherever I'm working in the health sector, in the health of, I don't know, in the clinic, in the hospital to say, look, you guys, do you realize that we now have an escalating incidence of what should we pick?

Tom: [00:21:53] Dengue fever.

Christiana: [00:21:54] Dengue fever. Why do we have so many patients with dengue fever. It's not just because there are more mosquitoes around, it's because there's a changing climate. This is causing more disease. So I think that is the responsibility is to look at everything that we're doing through a climate lens and be able to walk it back to its original, to its original cause and bring that awareness to the attention of those who should be doing something about it. 

Tom: [00:22:25] PD?

Paul: [00:22:25] One of the biggest strategic moves the NGO I've been working in for 24 years, CDP made, was the result of the insight of an intern at one of our stakeholders. She had an idea about extending to the supply chain that became sort of now three quarters of what we do. So it doesn't matter whether you're at the top of the organization or if you're you're you're, you know, much lower down, your ability to see with clear eyes what's happening. I have a friend who's been passionately involved in decarbonisation in the NHS, and that's the project for everybody, you know, for the for the like hundreds and hundreds of thousands of NHS employees. And so, yeah, who knows. You know, who is going to find the best way to do what that is different. And, you know, one nurse, what can they do. Well, they can get together with one administrator, maybe with one doctor, maybe link with other people in other hospitals. Have conversations. Think about health as a broader concept. There's no limits on any of us. We don't have to put blinkers on ourselves when we're dealing with whole societal change.

Tom: [00:23:31] Yeah.

Paul: [00:23:31] In the in the private sector, I'm going to pull out one thing, which is thousands of corporations report to the NGO I work at CDP. Look at your CDP response. You can download it from our website free of charge. What is your organization saying about what you're doing, and is what's actually happening in the organization matching those aspirations. You know, I think that we should see ourselves. Look at your your annual report of your organization. Look at all the different ways your organization communicates. Are you being authentically matching your communications? If not, how can you use the authority of your own organization within your organization to achieve the change that we all want?

Christiana: [00:24:08] And now contrast program to that great example contrast program. I remember when we were at the South African COP. I don't know if you remember this, Tom, and the president of the COP was the female Minister of Foreign Affairs, and she published a book on women leading adaptation. Beautiful book. And one of my favorite, favorite chapters that she has in that book is the case of a group of women who had been raising chickens as their income, and they were selling eggs, and they were eventually selling chickens, and that was their income. But they lived in an area that was getting more and more water, and they were having more and more precipitations, having a lot of difficulty with keeping their chickens healthy. What did this brilliant woman do? She talked to all of her neighbors, and she said, we're going to change the chickens for ducks. I mean, that's brilliant, right. That is called on the ground adaptation. And she explained to them the reason why we have more and more rain and the reason why we have ground that is more and more soggy is because we're having climate change. So can we fight and solve climate change. Probably not at our level, but we can adapt and we can then change our income stream to be more in tune with the conditions that we have now. So it's not only working on the solutions, it's also what can we do to adapt to some of the unavoidable consequences.

Tom: [00:25:49] I love that.

Christiana: [00:25:50] So both sides need to be on the table.

Tom: [00:25:52] And meeting a place which is based on the reality, but then flowing into that and delivering the outcome you can. So, so this is really helpful, and I hope listeners find this kind of empowering, the narratives and the stories that you're both sharing around how in any situation, you have more power than you think.

Christiana: [00:26:06] Absolutely.

Tom: [00:26:07] And we heard that in some of our other podcasts, right. I mean, particularly even when we talk to the CEO of BP who said that actually the main reason they were doing something on climate, is because otherwise they couldn't recruit, employees is actually what drives the strategy of organizations, big and small. And if people realize that wherever they are, they can step up and make a change, so.

Christiana: [00:26:24] Let's talk about that. Let's talk about especially young, young people not being willing to sell their brains to irresponsible companies.

Tom: [00:26:34] All right, yeah.

Christiana: [00:26:34] I totally love that.

Tom: [00:26:36] It absolutely drives the bus for many of these different CEOs. It's one of their major concerns. Yeah.

Paul: [00:26:43] You're all gonna laugh at me, but I genuinely think it won't be that long before the machine intelligence will also refuse to work for irresponsible businesses. You know, don't go thinking you could do without the clever young people and get the machines to do it, because they might not do it either.

Tom: [00:26:54] Wow.

Paul: [00:26:55] I just got one more case study here. I just want to throw in because it's just so sweet. It's about a small haulage company I discovered last night called FSEW in Wales. They bought, they didn't know what to do about climate change, so they bought a couple of electric trucks that cost a lot of money. But guess what, they suddenly their business has gone completely ballistic because rather than contracting on these wafer thin margins for, for for freight contracts, they're dealing with the sustainability team. There are bigger budgets available and they've got a much more profitable business. So it's just like that's a haulage company, but it's one of a million stories about how, you know, you take the plunge and miracles can happen.

Tom: [00:27:32] So so let's turn this a little bit to another question. Because the statistic we started with this with was that 100% of listeners would be prepared to change their careers. Is there what I hear you both saying is that actually, wherever you are, you can look at the power levers available to you and make more of an impact than you think you can in your current role. And I think that's 100% true. But is there also instances when it's right to walk away and say, I'm not working for this company because it doesn't align with my values?

Paul: [00:28:03] I've got a two part answer, just briefly. One is yes, absolutely. And that's that's a great thing to do. But and you could go off and kind of start your own NGO. A lot of people do. That's very tough. One thing I would say is, you know, you might be in an organization. And what I would say an organizations tend to be, you know, a bit older, have got a platform, they've got some scale, whatever they are, you might want to leave an organization like that that you think is irredeemably bad, and you might want to start your own thing, or you might want to go and join another big organization that can change and have all of that impact already built into your new employer. So I just wanted you I wanted people to recognize the the sort of scale of what has been built, and it is tough building things from scratch, but I'll just throw that in.

Tom: [00:28:50] Christiana?

Christiana: [00:28:51] Well, a couple of statistics provided here by our wonderful editors. So in the UK, the health insurance company Bupa.

Paul: [00:29:00] Huge, huge company.

Christiana: [00:29:02] Huge company found in 2021 that 64% of their young people said it was important for their employers to act on environmental issues, and that they would remain longer if they could actually work for responsible employers. And in Australia, but I think in many other countries, people are walking away young and not so young people are walking away from companies that are not doing enough to respond to climate change, because at some point it just gets the the gap between what they know and what they see, their employees or their companies doing. The gap gets so large that they just cannot deal with that gap anymore. And that's healthy, that is very healthy. And I don't know how many people have asked me to prepare them for interviews for for work. I'm sure you get the same thing. And the funny thing about that is when I say yes and I think they're always going to come with, okay, how do I respond to this question. Many of them come to me to say, what questions can I ask to find out if that employer is really serious about what they have published in their annual report. That's a different attitude, that's a very different attitude. That is like, I am not going to sell my brains to a company that is either blatantly irresponsible or even worse, greenwashing. And that's a very different expectation of of people coming into, into the workforce than when we did 100 years ago.

Tom: [00:30:37] And that has a huge systemic impact, right. Raising these things in interviews, refusing to join an organization because you don't agree with their values. And I think the other thing that can also have a systemic impact, we've talked about the behavior inside the organization that can actually lead to real change. But if you keep trying that and you don't find that there is a receptive audience to actually make the transformation that you see as necessary. Walking away is completely legitimate, is what we're saying. And that in itself can have a systemic impact. If enough people say, you know what, you're not serious about this, and I'm going to go somewhere else, do it, but do it in a really smart way. Make sure that the impact of that really lands you explain why you're doing it. You don't have to be like, you know, a jerk about it and you know, but you can really make it land in a really impactful way I think.

Paul: [00:31:23] Well here's a tough question that comes out of that. I happen to know someone was telling me a story some time ago. You're probably all familiar with this. Two graduates, I think they were both in maybe 25 or something. One had gone into financial services, one had gone into oil and gas, the one in oil and gas was earning twice as much. The oil and gas industry already has to pay a huge premium to keep people. I'm going to reference Lenny Jam, who said to us, high pay work for the rainy, stormy days versus purposeful, low paid free work. What Lenny is setting up there is a kind of dilemma, and I want to challenge us to not frame work doing the right thing as necessarily by design, lower paid or worse, because I think this is a very important issue. It is true.

Christiana: [00:32:06] It could be.

Paul: [00:32:07] It could be. But I mean, the point being, you've got two things going on here, like a fairer society and and the power of capitalism, shall we say. Now, I'm all in favour of a fairer society. But I also don't deny the power of capitalism. So I just want to kind of acknowledge that you won't. It won't necessarily serve us all to think that if we're sort of loss making or struggling to get by, we're necessarily having a better impact on the climate. You know, the success of the Tesla car company has influenced many other companies to make electric cars, not because they were losing money, but because they were making money.

Tom: [00:32:44] It's such a good point, actually. Absolutely. And Christiana, I don't know if you have any comment on I mean, you're very close to all of the finalists and the winners of the Earthshot Prize who are some of you know, these people have really like been entrepreneurs and innovators and have built companies. So, I mean, that's a career path that people are increasingly choosing is saying, I'm not going to work for anyone I'm going to solve this myself.

Christiana: [00:33:02] Yes. And there's there's so much space for innovation, right. Again, I go back to the vast array of sectors in the human endeavor that need innovation. There's, you know, there's there's no sector that is currently structured and functioning to deal with what is coming upon it over the next few decades. And so every single sector needs innovation, needs disruptive thinking, needs exponentially more efficient functioning and more resilient functioning. So it's not just about going out there and finding a job and finding work for an employer who is responsible. There is also both the need and the opportunity to be a disruptor, an entrepreneur that disrupts and that is innovative and not easy to find, to find the capital. But increasingly. And I know this from my daughter, who is an impact investor. Increasingly, investors are looking for these opportunities.

Tom: [00:34:07] Oh yeah, 100%.

Christiana: [00:34:08] They are really looking for these opportunities, these seed opportunities right. And they're willing to to take big risks because they know that we need more and more innovation and that maybe ten out of the ones that they put some money in, maybe one is going to actually make the run.

Tom: [00:34:26] But the rewards are huge when you're changing the world, yeah yeah.

Christiana: [00:34:29] But the rewards are huge.

Paul: [00:34:29] So this is the point about, you know, this taking a job. There's also being an entrepreneur, starting an enterprise, which is something we do less of, for example, in Europe than in the US. But it is a great way to kind of impact the world. And I mean, just one last question from, from me, from a listener was Maria Wingert. She said, you know, she was wondering about how to get hired and how to kind of prepare for an interview. It was quite a long question, which we can't read it all out. But she also said, I'm drawn towards habitat restoration, and she's studied in that area. And what I would say is it's the phrase I am drawn to right. I think it's what you're drawn to. You know, if you just go with that energy, I think it's one of the best ways to equip you to get the job you want.

Tom: [00:35:05] Yeah.

Christiana: [00:35:06] Now, is it not true that there are quite a few resources out there that we can put in the show notes for, for people who do want to look for responsible work, at least not I don't I don't think we have a list of entrepreneurs, or.

Paul: [00:35:23] We had Laura Ford, who said that she works at a business called Faith in Nature who have put nature on their board of directors.

Christiana: [00:35:29] Totally love that.

Paul: [00:35:30] So, you know, there's lots of innovation, but sorry I interrupted you. How would you how would we how would you go about finding this stuff, Google?

Tom: [00:35:36] I mean, I would say we can definitely do that. And also, if listeners are interested, write to us, we can do a, you know, we can do a show like a zoom show and invite people on and have more of an in-depth conversation. So I think this is an area where a lot of listeners to Outrage + Optimism, we know, work in and around the climate area. So this is something we.

Paul: [00:35:51] We talked about this before actually having almost like a resource list on the Outrage + Optimism website that's absolutely ready to be built, send us in and we will post it.

Tom: [00:35:59] Yeah, but I think the key message is make sure you talk to people about the climate credentials of the organisation you might join, demand the kinds of commitments that you're looking for. When you're there look for innovation and opportunities to leverage any position. All positions are needed to actually try and drive the outcome we want. And if you have to leave, leave but make a make a deal about that because that will in itself have a systemic impact. And this space is growing. So the jobs in climate are getting more and more as time goes on.

Paul: [00:36:26] One little personal story, because I know a lot of people that we know about in the show notes, well not the show notes but.

Christiana: [00:36:33] Sorry Paul, there is no such thing as jobs in climate. I thought we had already established that.

Paul: [00:36:40] Back of the class.

Christiana: [00:36:41] Can can we can we do that over again?

Tom: [00:36:45] There are more and more jobs in which you can have a big impact on the climate.

Christiana: [00:36:48] Much better, thank you Tom. Carry on Paul.

Tom: [00:36:52] You leave it in, I don't mind being corrected in public. It's fine.

Paul: [00:36:55] I'm here to be corrected. I grow each time I'm corrected. The more you correct me, it's like the reverse of an onion. It gets bigger and bigger and bigger. So that I wanted to just tell a tiny story from when I was probably 24, 25, 24. I also felt like many of the people that we've read about, that essentially the economic system was doomed. It was completely disastrous and was going to be our undoing. I got very, very interested in cooperatives, the big cooperatives in Europe, and the potential of the cooperative movement that had developed the Labor Party in the UK and was. Now, I also tried to get jobs in cooperatives. I never did get a job in a co-operative. I applied to all the different parts of it. I do kind of think where I'm going with this is I think that that that passion I had for cooperatives, then I still have it, but it carried me through. I think we should we should, you know, we were in a system. We might well want another system. We can dream of different systems, but you want to kind of keep moving with your beliefs and your dreams and not get kind of stuck that this society will never change because you can change it. But you have to believe you can change it. Or for sure you won't. You know that famous thing you know if you think you're going to succeed, or if you think you're not going to succeed, you're probably right.

Christiana: [00:37:59] Either way. Yeah.

Tom: [00:38:01] All right. I think that probably takes us to the end of this episode. This has been fascinating to delve into the issues of careers. I hope you found it useful. Thanks for joining us.

Christiana: [00:38:09] Bye. 

Paul: [00:38:09] Bye for now.

Tom: [00:38:15] So a big thank you for listening and we hope you're enjoying this series. These episodes were sparked by questions from you, our wonderful listeners, so we'd really love to hear whether you feel like we've answered your questions, whether you now have even more questions. We'd love to keep this dialogue going with you online and in future episodes as we navigate these difficult issues. So please do get in touch and let us know what you think.

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