The Climate Quitters
We've known for quite a while that young people prefer to work with companies and organizations that are environmentally responsible and take sustainability seriously. In fact, they are often willing to work for lower pay just to work for a green organization.
One of the latest surveys pointing this out was conducted by the Yale School of Management. This 2021 study of 2,000 students across 29 business schools found that more than half would accept a lower salary to work for an environmentally focused company.
But here's something we don’t hear a lot about.
Many people, young and old, are giving up comfortable positions and well-paying jobs to work for organizations that are not only green and sustainable, but produce products or services that promote sustainability and, even more critically, address climate change.
Bloomberg Green refers to these people as the "climate quitters." Let's take a look at three climate quitters and what happened in their lives to change their career directions.
Laura Brown
Laura Brown had her dream job. She was the publisher of a travel magazine. But then her life turned upside down. The first thing that happened was COVID, which brought the entire travel industry to a halt.
But the second was a tornado. On March 3, 2020, a tornado struck her Nashville community, wiping out her entire neighborhood. After the tornado, she said, "we were basically climate refugees… the tornado really put a fire under my butt, that climate change is sort of no longer an issue I can ignore."
She went back to business school to learn about sustainability. While it took a few months, she landed a new job working for a climate-focused company.
Her advice to others seeking climate-related jobs: "You have to make the decision and then stick with it. We're in this for the long haul. There's a lot of really great, profoundly empowering work to be done."
Catherine Cleary
Catherine Cleary became one of Dublin, Ireland's most respected and sought-after food critics. After dining at one restaurant, she wrote:
"The noodles, which are made in-house, have [a] gorgeous nutty bite and warmth. The broth is the best I've ever tasted, flecked with golden drops of meat fat and the color of light tea."
When a restaurant owner received a review like this from Catherine Cleary, you can count on it, their business would soar, with more accolades and awards soon to follow.
But then, she read the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's 2018 report, with its dire warnings if we don't take climate change more seriously.
"I burst into tears at my desk," she says. "My youngest son at the time was eight years old. He would be an adult, coming of age, in a world rapidly becoming uninhabitable."
She is no longer a food critic. Now she spends her time working in urban areas in this part of the world, helping them protect nature, plant native trees, and spread the word about the need to care for the environment - now.
Justin Kennedy
For 22 years, Justin Kennedy was an oil and gas attorney in Australia, often representing companies building new fossil-fuel projects. But then he read the International Energy Agency's 2021 report that pointed out that such projects were seriously harming the environment and should be replaced with green energy technologies.
He gave up his successful law practice to work for a company building a 2,600-mile undersea transmission line, delivering solar power from Australia to Singapore.
“I have some sympathy for people who stay in oil and gas,” says Kennedy. “But we're past the tipping point. The transition is happening, and the roles will be there."
How About You?
If you're a climate quitter and want to share your story, we'd love to hear from you. Please send me a message through this website.
Oh, and thank you for changing your life to help protect our environment.
