Cynically, I expect a continued growth in climate bureaucracy, where various office jobs get set up in the name of tackling climate change, but for the most part are just doing the usual stuff you'd do in a bureaucracy.
It would be nice (despite the irony of suggesting a bureaucratic task) to see some analysis or thoughts about what jobs have the biggest real impact.
For example, I wonder how many people are looking at becoming farmers or builders or other sustainable trades, vs who wants to do software development or data science.
Hot take: The most important jobs are building and installing renewables (drives out coal, natural gas, and diesel/oil fuels), electrifying transportation (drives out petroleum), lab grown proteins and protein replacements (drives out emissions from factory farming emissions), and air source carbon extraction (paying back the credit card of CO2 we spent industrializing as a species).
Those are definately the most important technologies, but how are those going to get done without lawyers, and other boring not-saving-the-world-directly jobs, jobs that could generally be called "bureaucracy" if you wanted to make them seem bad for some reason.
As long as these young people vote out the climate change deniers, and society get serious about not rewarding people who generate externalities there will be jobs aplenty, that will be taken by people who just want the money. If they don't then it won't matter what they do.
other hot take: soil restoration, reforesting and ocean deacidification. We need to reduce carbon emission, but also restore natural carbon sequestration processes in a way that supports ecology.
How about nuclear energy? Germany's decision to do without a few years back was overreaction to Fukushima. Renewables plus batteries great, nuclear is a good base and fallback.
Hot take: The most important job is soldiers going to polluting countries and beating the shit out of them until they fall in line. As long as compliance is optional it wont matter how green you personally are.
I'm also cynical because a bunch of "top minds" in my graduating high school class have gone on to work at think-tanks and other climate policy NGO's. As far as I can tell, they haven't made much tangible progress beyond mere punditry. The few kids that went off to become electricians have probably done more to reduce carbon emissions by installing home solar panels than any of the climate advocates.
Policy is important though. For instance, designing an HOA policy or local law allowing for solar panels for instance is way more important than the actual installation, drawing from my personal experience.
Indeed. A lot of companies are talking about environmentalism and sustainability, but a lot of that is just people figuring out how to market what they already do.
I'd say humans, we're still in the assessment phase, slowly coming right out of denial. Data science would be very useful. A recent economist article shows how polluters skirt EPA rules for instance.
There's an interesting viewpoint that comes through in these comments that seems to imply that the policy and regulatory side of climate isn't "doing", and that engineering or science roles would be more beneficial to make tangible progress. I'd like to challenge that view -- it's my belief that at this point climate is really no longer mainly an engineering or science problem. If we allocated our money and effort correctly, we could tackle a huge part of the problem NOW, with current technology. And this lack of will is ultimately a policy and regulatory problem at heart.
This isn't to say there aren't many engineering challenges or potential engineering solutions. But for the most part I see those as only being necessary if the desire to fix things stays at its (very low) current level.
I'd agree, it's always been a "collective action" problem, we could all have adopted a carbon tax years ago and the problem would have solved itself. But, if one country or one political party defects, then they can profit themselves at the expense of everyone.
I'm also a big fan of the effective "regulatory funny business" that have been regularly maligned, like seperating the carbon and electricity components of electricity production, and offsetting carbon for flights with easy wins of replacing kerosene with solar in developing countries.
It's the simplest and easiest solution, and it's not primarily technical, just about creating a market. But it's been viciously attacked for so long it's all gets done quietly when reactionary voters aren't paying attention, even though it's worked really well wherever it's been used.
Policy and regulation are indeed extremely important, at least as much as engineering. Implementing a carbon tax would probably be the single most effective thing we can do.
However, I do not agree that climate change is no longer an engineering/science issue: Even if we were to magically stop emitting any GHG tomorrow, we would still be in for a pretty rough time (albeit much better than our current trajectory). And realistically, even with the best imaginable policies in place everywhere around the world we will still need to emit GHGs for decades no matter what. Developing carbon removal technologies is absolutely essential to solve this problem.
My college had a pretty large environmental engineering and sustainability programs. It may have even been one of the first to have sustainability as a major.
Many of the people found out that if you go the "save the planet route", you usually end up doing some boring regulatory job. Lots of energy auditors and EHS managers. These are important jobs, but I don't think they are very fulfilling, and they certainly aren't doing anything great for the climate.
Anecdotally, when talking with my advisor toward the end of college, I was essentially given the choice between choosing a career that's really meaningful (working on data mining for climate projects was the example) and pays less, or a career that pays more but doesn't mean as much. I chose the latter for now, but I still think about it often. Maybe I'll regret it in time.
Your choice doesn’t have to be permanent. It’s perfectly fine working for a few years in high paying jobs to build a cushion and then work on something that you find meaningful. Now the hard part is deciding when your cushion is big enough as it is very easy to always want more.
Saving the world and making a living are not guaranteed to align well. So I'd argue that it makes sense to first work to become financially independent, then spending that freedom in pursuit of making a difference, without being influenced by which path has paying jobs at any given time.
If it's any consolation, I did the same. Skipped on the academic career partly because I hate the pretentiousness of academia with a passion (while loving science), partly for a desire to get hands-on with industry and "the real world" quicker.
I think either path is fine and we can still develop to do meaningful things. Working for a paycheck to increase some random companies profit feels less and less enticing though.
In general, people in my bubble seem to gravitate towards more free time than increased salary. 32h weeks are not that rare anymore and for many jobs 37hrs is the normal full time nowadays.
Working 5 days a week will die out, as most office jobs will have people wasting time anyways just to match the clock.
I can relate to this. Keep your eye open for new opportunities and eventually you may find something that both pays well and contributes to solving the climate problem.
The good news is that more people are finding ways of doing meaningful work while also turning a profit. An obvious example is working at a place like Tesla, but there are an increasing number of lower-profile for-profit companies that need tech + data talent to execute.
The grass is always greener on the other side. Who knows how you’d feel about your choice if you were struggling financially in a more meaningful career?
What is meaningful? You can live life the way you find meaningful, you can even spend the extra money you now make on something meaningful. I think it is a false dichotomy to begin with.
Btw way, aren't you in a better position to change the climate for the better when you are in, say, a car company? From the inside? I wouldn't listen to this BS. It's a road to a skewed market full of unhappy people, imho.
Good for them, although like most passion careers market forces are guaranteed to turn it into something quite undesirable for anyone wishing to make a steady living. Why treat your staff well when more are always knocking at the door?
The fact is the willingness to do the work isn't the problem, the issue is always whether there is sufficient capital on the table.
In the past they build a continental railroad, cities, industry and inventions for fun, those were at least useful. I’m not sure what we get out of billionaire space flights really, maybe some safety and viability data.
I’m not sure I’ve seen Zuckerberg, Bezos, Branson, et al expressing interest into the next transistor.
Maybe our generation’s robber barons aren’t as interesting as ones of the past?
You can have a "climate career" doing pretty much any job you would like.
You can be an IT, a dev, a mechanical engineer, an accountant in a startup working on carbon removal [1], you can be a chemist researching new ways of producing cement with less CO2 impact [2], a farmer specializing in multistrata agroforestry [3], a technician installing solar panels etc.
The article has some data, but IMHO it's a bit too sparse to support the title's hypothesis. It says "33% of survey respondents say they participate in sustainability activities “daily” and 27% report weekly sustainability practices." referring to a survey[0], but this survey doesn't appear to specify what exactly these practices are. From looking at the questions, I'm lead to believe that even merely using a recycling bin qualifies.
It then goes on to say that the director of the Environmental Studies program at USC has seen "an uptick in student enrollment within her department, particularly over the last five to 10 years". It'd be interesting to see what enrollment looks like in other departments for comparison since an uptick due to, say, population growth is a non-story (and it's also worth noting that USC is just one university, and in California - a very liberal-leaning state, to boot)
The one piece of data that seems encouraging is the part about median salaries (they're reportedly above average), but at best that merely supports the idea that environment jobs are no longer gambles as they had a reputation of being in the past. This is good, but it's a pretty big stretch to go from that to "students are flocking to environment jobs".
> California is facing a drought so devastating, some publications call it “biblical”.
California is in a great place to address most (all?) of the ills plaguing it through sustainable infrastructure investments, such as mass solar (we are at what only 14% as a state?!), solar storage, desalination, etc.
Fire situation can be helped with controlled burns and better overall management.
Readit News
It would be nice (despite the irony of suggesting a bureaucratic task) to see some analysis or thoughts about what jobs have the biggest real impact.
For example, I wonder how many people are looking at becoming farmers or builders or other sustainable trades, vs who wants to do software development or data science.
As long as these young people vote out the climate change deniers, and society get serious about not rewarding people who generate externalities there will be jobs aplenty, that will be taken by people who just want the money. If they don't then it won't matter what they do.
https://www.shell.com/energy-and-innovation/carbon-capture-a...
https://www.worldoil.com/news/2021/7/13/shell-sees-a-profita...
Dead Comment
This isn't to say there aren't many engineering challenges or potential engineering solutions. But for the most part I see those as only being necessary if the desire to fix things stays at its (very low) current level.
I'm also a big fan of the effective "regulatory funny business" that have been regularly maligned, like seperating the carbon and electricity components of electricity production, and offsetting carbon for flights with easy wins of replacing kerosene with solar in developing countries.
It's the simplest and easiest solution, and it's not primarily technical, just about creating a market. But it's been viciously attacked for so long it's all gets done quietly when reactionary voters aren't paying attention, even though it's worked really well wherever it's been used.
However, I do not agree that climate change is no longer an engineering/science issue: Even if we were to magically stop emitting any GHG tomorrow, we would still be in for a pretty rough time (albeit much better than our current trajectory). And realistically, even with the best imaginable policies in place everywhere around the world we will still need to emit GHGs for decades no matter what. Developing carbon removal technologies is absolutely essential to solve this problem.
Many of the people found out that if you go the "save the planet route", you usually end up doing some boring regulatory job. Lots of energy auditors and EHS managers. These are important jobs, but I don't think they are very fulfilling, and they certainly aren't doing anything great for the climate.
So in that sense they are important. However, given the trends in climate change, these jobs don't do much to change the trajectory of climate change.
I guess saying they aren't fulfilling is more a personal judgement, but I thought it was boring work.
I think either path is fine and we can still develop to do meaningful things. Working for a paycheck to increase some random companies profit feels less and less enticing though.
In general, people in my bubble seem to gravitate towards more free time than increased salary. 32h weeks are not that rare anymore and for many jobs 37hrs is the normal full time nowadays.
Working 5 days a week will die out, as most office jobs will have people wasting time anyways just to match the clock.
The good news is that more people are finding ways of doing meaningful work while also turning a profit. An obvious example is working at a place like Tesla, but there are an increasing number of lower-profile for-profit companies that need tech + data talent to execute.
Btw way, aren't you in a better position to change the climate for the better when you are in, say, a car company? From the inside? I wouldn't listen to this BS. It's a road to a skewed market full of unhappy people, imho.
The fact is the willingness to do the work isn't the problem, the issue is always whether there is sufficient capital on the table.
I’m not sure I’ve seen Zuckerberg, Bezos, Branson, et al expressing interest into the next transistor.
Maybe our generation’s robber barons aren’t as interesting as ones of the past?
Urban farmer
Environmental consultant
Environmental scientist
Environmental lawyer
Environmental activist
Or joining the proposed "Climate Corps", a federal jobs program for young people to help fight the climate crisis [doing what though?]
You can be an IT, a dev, a mechanical engineer, an accountant in a startup working on carbon removal [1], you can be a chemist researching new ways of producing cement with less CO2 impact [2], a farmer specializing in multistrata agroforestry [3], a technician installing solar panels etc.
[1]: https://carbonengineering.com/careers/
[2]: https://drawdown.org/solutions/alternative-cement
[3]: https://drawdown.org/solutions/multistrata-agroforestry
Deleted Comment
https://xkcd.com/1987/
\s
It then goes on to say that the director of the Environmental Studies program at USC has seen "an uptick in student enrollment within her department, particularly over the last five to 10 years". It'd be interesting to see what enrollment looks like in other departments for comparison since an uptick due to, say, population growth is a non-story (and it's also worth noting that USC is just one university, and in California - a very liberal-leaning state, to boot)
The one piece of data that seems encouraging is the part about median salaries (they're reportedly above average), but at best that merely supports the idea that environment jobs are no longer gambles as they had a reputation of being in the past. This is good, but it's a pretty big stretch to go from that to "students are flocking to environment jobs".
[0] https://green.usc.edu/files/2020/03/2028_Survey_Results_3192...
California is in a great place to address most (all?) of the ills plaguing it through sustainable infrastructure investments, such as mass solar (we are at what only 14% as a state?!), solar storage, desalination, etc.
Fire situation can be helped with controlled burns and better overall management.