Our Future Work: a Labour Day reflection
My initial, off-the-cuff, response to a question about which job or field a child might look to work toward, in order to fulfil their emerging desire to meaningfully reduce emissions (whilst not getting depressed due to lack of action), was as follows:
"My short answer is that we are actually going to need climate-aware workers EVERYWHERE, leading in every field: we can't afford to have isolated specialists working in their small silos, when what we really need is an entirely new sense of what is 'normal' and good across a thoroughly recalibrated economy that has people and planet - and long term thriving - at the very centre".
I also suggested that I’d be keen to know more about the particular and unique human in question, such as:
What are their interests and passions?
What are they genuinely curious about.?
What frustrates them, deeply?
How are they 'wired'?
What motivates them?
In recent months I’ve come back to thinking about this question (as shared within the Parents For Climate community) time and time again. I’ve got two school-aged children of my own, and I’m STILL asking my own questions about how I can best contribute as I approach my late 40’s and navigate yet another career-pivot. Undoubtedly there are some PhD’s and research projects being conducted around these very topics, along with a range of useful careers resources for the ecologically minded (Career guidance for social justice might be a great place to start, if you want to dig a bit deeper).
But I’ve also come to acknowledge that this very question, which is focused on preparing young people for their vocational future, touches a bit of a raw nerve with me. The somewhat ironic backstory is that I ended up working as a careers advisor in part to AVOID working in the climate-action space. A decade ago I could certainly hear the ecological alarm bells ringing loud and clear. We’d implemented a lot of the obvious lifestyle changes (single car family, solar panels, water tank, growing veggies, offsets with Greenfleet etc.), and I written a bit and had summoned the courage to run a local rally. I’d even tried my hand at carbon accounting, which I enjoyed, however the work was at that time scarce and insufficiently flexible. Not only did I lack a relevant science or sustainability qualification (which had thus far doomed me to multiple sideways or backwards career moves), I’d honestly found it all rather tiring shouting into the wind. I felt there was an urgent message that people just didn’t seem to want to hear, especially around the time of the Rudd/Gillard/Rudd/Abbott governments <cue eye roll, followed by a deep sigh>.
Conversely, working at a nearby school helping students to secure work suitable experience placements, or to select the right subject-mix, or to choose the most appropriate educational pathway, seemed to provide some easy-enough on-the-ground-wins (when compared to the impending climate apocalypse, where every victory seemed small and fleeting and every loss was potentially devastating). This distraction strategy worked, for a time. Having had a background in HR, and a long-held interest in the world of work, there were several aspects of my role that I thoroughly enjoyed. I felt it a genuine privilege to sit with students and families and explore options, opportunities, and challenges. And despite not being a teacher, I even got school holidays off (hooray for flexible working conditions, when you can find them)! However then COVID hit. And successive lockdowns ensued. And we suffered through more and more interruptions to not only school-based learning but also to the world of work that these emerging adults were supposed to be navigating their way toward. And gradually I found myself staring climate change in the face, all over again, with a renewed sense of honesty, clarity, awe, and urgency.
The global action that was galvanised by the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated what a genuine emergency response can actually look like. It showed us how quickly governments can pivot and adapt when there is sufficient focus and pressure (and genuine concern, and even fear). Not to say it was handled perfectly, but change happened, and happened fast. And month by month, and year by year, as more and more scientific data has come in, and more and more global weather records have been broken, it has become ever more apparent that the climate impacts that lie in the pipeline for humanity, as we exceed two degrees of warming and beyond, will make various COVID disruptions look like an absolute walk in the park.
Parents and carers are overwhelmingly united in wanting very much the same kind of things for the young people who are entrusted to their care: to be successful, fulfilled, secure, and happy (or variations on those four themes). The reality is that without a stable, habitable, climate the new baseline for humanity will be one where nobody gets to feel secure. There may be a lucky few who get to feel successful, or even happy for brief moments or two, but I’d dare say that such privilege will be reserved for an increasingly elite few (perhaps including those who find novel ways to continue to ‘profit’ materially at the expense of a suffering and struggling world).
It became increasingly apparent that I’d tried to put climate change into the ‘too hard basket’, and to get on with other things, thinking I could leverage my own privilege to pursue something resembling a more ‘normal’ life. After all, there weren’t many people ready to step-up and take the baton from me (believe me, I’d certainly looked, hoping that perhaps we could all take it in turns, and that perhaps I’d done my dash).
Perhaps for a season I really needed to step back? I recall reaching a personal crisis-point when a fundraising email from an environmental organisation declared that the Great Barrier Reef was dying, and it all depended on me! I knew there and then, as my own marriage was unravelling, that the reef really was in dire trouble: I felt I had nothing left to give. There are seasons and reasons to step back, for the sake of our own health, but there are also times for once again leaning in and for doing our very best. I’m convinced we all have our small but significant part to play, if we’re willing...
It was only after taking some much-needed long service leave, and then stepping away from my Career Advisor role altogether, that I realised how much angst I had increasingly been carrying. As the lack of deeper alignment grew, I felt more and more like I was just going through the motions. I hadn’t felt that it was really my place to sound alarm bells about the climate crisis when well-meaning students and carers stepped into my office for assistance. But increasingly I felt I was being inauthentic, if not dishonest, in the advice I was being asked to provide. It had become the equivalent of moving deck-chairs around on the titanic.
Pope Francis is apparently fond of these two sayings: “Everything is connected” and “No one is saved alone”. Through this lens of our future’s being bound to one another, the madness of our individualism and materialism becomes quickly apparent. In our pursuit of wealth, and our accumulation of stuff, we’ve bought into the lie that we are what we have, when the deeper reality has always been that we are wired for connection (to quote Brené Brown), to the extent that I’d argue that restored relationships should be our new end-goal: not just restored relationships between one another, but with ourselves, and with planet earth.
Green-tweaking around the edges of our neo-liberal consumer economy will be insufficient to save us. And hiding out in one particularly ‘clean’ industry, where one can celebrate little ecological wins, will still not satisfactorily protect our mental health if the fossil fuel industry continues to boom, deforestation continues unabated, markets for new consumer goods continue to expand alongside our throwaway culture, and our agricultural sector verges on collapse. Our ‘business as usual’ approach to doing this thing called civilization cannot go unchallenged.
Yes, we’re going to need scientists and innovators, and engineers and technologists, but even more importantly we need to keep getting the message out that we are facing an ACTUAL CLIMATE EMERGENCY. We need to see every industry and organisation pivot accordingly, everything from education to finance to engineering to health. We need every paid and unpaid worker to join the growing movement for change. And we need leaders who are honest, courageous and clear-eyed across politics, governance, business and community. We need nothing less than a shift in human consciousness, powered by compassion and a sense of our precious and fragile interconnectedness, resulting in movement toward one another and toward a regenerated earth.
So, what really needs to happen, in order for our children and grandchildren to have a chance of being secure, successful and happy? What kind of world do they need, in order to pursue their interests and passions, not out of fear or a mindset of scarcity, but rather out of a sense of curiosity, security and abundance? Us adults, the ones who vote and who work and who have funds invested, and us adults who run households and who can model ethical and just consumer-choices everyday (especially the big decisions, but also the small everyday ones), need to step up and lead. And we need to dig deep and support each other on the way, like our very lives depend on it.
It might be incredibly costly, but when it comes to these precious future generations, the most important collective investment we can make is to continue to work for a safe climate and a lovingly restored natural environment.
P.S. It’s incredibly inconvenient, but true: there are no jobs on a dead planet.
Yours truly, and in solidarity,