Climate Action, Will Travel

Speaker 0 00:00:01 Some people take a gap year and decide to backpack across Europe. Jenny's Ang opted to go a different route, spend a year away, making cheese. Okay. Speaker 1 00:00:10 Currently working on a very small dairy farm, uh, in Western Massachusetts. And I'm working in the Creamery. They're learning how to make cheese. While I work, I have the opportunity to listen to a lot of like audio. So I've been getting into a lot of like climate podcasts, like environmental science podcasts. That's definitely what got me into Speaker 0 00:00:28 Jenny is a student at UC Berkeley. She started her freshman year deciding to major in material science and engineering. But after a year on the farm, Jenny plans to switch your major to environmental science, Speaker 1 00:00:39 Full disclosure, I hated AP environmental science high school. So it's like really odd to me that I'm switching into that major. Next year Speaker 0 00:00:47 Generation Z grew up with an inconvenient truth. The environment is in dire straits, and it is up to gen Z to face and address climate change rather than fade away from the responsibility. Young environmentalist took up the cause long before they took the sat. They've sparked a national and international movements and push the conversation forward. Speaker 2 00:01:06 I went to school on a nature center for the entirety of my year of 16. Speaker 0 00:01:11 Margo Malinowski is a junior at Northwestern. She's a journalism major with a minor in environmental policy and culture, Speaker 2 00:01:19 Normal sixth grade school stuff like reading, writing, and arithmetic. But then like we learned to identify like flora and fauna in that's native to Michigan. And like, I'm sure I've lost a lot of that knowledge over the years, but that was kind of what got me through. Speaker 0 00:01:32 Well, she never took AP environmental Margot fuels equally as passionate about climate action. As Jenny now, as Margo and Jenny prepared to enter the workforce, countless other young adults are likewise looking to turn their passion for climate action into a career. But the process of achieving this goal remains unclear. Many are left with a set of unanswered questions. What careers in environmentalism are available? What path do you need to take to get there and is a career in environmental ism financially viable to begin with after all Superman may save the world, but it's Clark Kent who pays the bills to find out more. I talked to the experts on becoming experts. Speaker 3 00:02:10 It's always fascinated by the balances in the natural world. And you know, I would look at a highway with all these cars on it and think, man, that's not natural. Speaker 0 00:02:18 David Archer is a computational geochemist professor. Archer followed his interest in the environment and obtained a doctorate in oceanography. He since made significant contributions in understanding the global carbon cycle and its relation to climate change. Speaker 3 00:02:33 And I got to the university of Chicago and started to teach this, uh, global warming class for non-science majors that required that I broadened my horizons a lot because the question is much broader than what I had studied. Speaker 0 00:02:45 Environmentalism is a large field of focus and one that doesn't have a single job description. There are many occupations out there aiming to service and advanced climate action. For instance, take the field of the reporting. Speaker 2 00:02:59 It seems like that's niche, but that's actually kind of broad. That includes so many things like conservation reporting, like, um, climate change, reporting sustainability. And then also there's a whole trove of just like nature reporting like backpacking, um, like more national geographic type stuff. So there's a lot there, but I would be happy. I think in any of that realm, Speaker 4 00:03:16 Um, there's the sort of activist side policymaking business and then education. I would break it down into like those four broad categories. Speaker 0 00:03:25 That's John Opperman, he's the executive director of earth day initiative, a nonprofit from New York promoting environmental awareness. Speaker 4 00:03:33 We organize annual earth day events, which were really large scale engaging the broader public and sort of the climate conversation and calls for climate action and environmental justice. There's an environmental or climate activist work. So a lot of sort of government or government adjacent work that people could get into there's policymaking figuring out, okay, if we're talking about a green new deal, what does that actually look like? How do we craft policy around that on the business side, more and more businesses that are interested and either making their sole missions to sustainability as really part of their ethos, sort of like corporate sustainability, social responsibility side of things. Speaker 0 00:04:10 Although the exact details remain hazy. A career in climate change starts in higher education. The area of focus needed to work in climate action. However, isn't as clear cut and varies on who you ask Archer and Oberman each took their own unique educational path, both obtained an advanced degree, but now they're concentrated in environmental science. Professor, Archer earned a doctorate in oceanography and a bachelor's in biochemistry. Speaker 3 00:04:35 I guess I got into science as opposed to going into something more directly adversarial like law, because I didn't think I'd be able to serve by on charisma. You know, I'm just not Brad Pitt. I'd rather have the objective world be the arbiter following the lead of the outside world. And that's what appealed Speaker 0 00:04:53 Opperman went a completely different route as an undergrad like Margo and Jenny Opperman knew he wanted to work in climate advocacy. And wasn't sure about his path upon graduation. Speaker 4 00:05:04 And my plan was to go into the foreign service. So I was at Georgetown school of foreign service. And over time I kind of was like, eh, I don't really know that I want to work for the government. And I kind of wanted to do something more on the private sector. Speaker 0 00:05:16 Ultimately he decided to go to law school, attending Harvard law and earning his J D Speaker 4 00:05:21 I knew going in, I was not going to be a lawyer that I wanted to use the law degree for other things. I talked to a lot of alumni of my law school before I actually went about the environmental advocacy or policy work that they were doing. And I just basically asked them, I was like, do you think that going to law school helps get you where you are? And they all said, yeah. And supported the idea that you could use a law degree for very different things. Speaker 0 00:05:45 The public service loan forgiveness program is a federal nationwide program that helps to forgive student loans for those who plan to work in the public sector or for nonprofit. Additionally, some graduate have their own repayment assistance programs Speaker 4 00:06:00 That still doesn't really take into account. The vast more money that like you would still make. If you were at a corporate law firm, I could've had a lot more money if I had gone another path Speaker 0 00:06:11 For those worried about the finances, the reality is a career in environmental ism. Won't make you a billionaire, but financial stability is definitely achievable. Speaker 4 00:06:20 Money can come in different ways if you pursue the thing that you're interested in, there are ways to make a livable wage, um, much more than a livable wage to actually make some money at doing something that you actually really love to Speaker 0 00:06:35 As to how to get started on a career. Everyone agreed start reaching out Speaker 4 00:06:40 So much of the world is just about networking. I was just blown away by all of the alumni that I spoke to that were perfectly happy to talk to me for 30 minutes or an hour or even longer about what I should do. If you're just asking for a conversation, you're looking for advice, don't reach out when it's like, oh, I need a job at this minute. Just have like informational conversations with people all the time. They're going to think of you first because they're going to have you top of mind. And then I find that people are really eager to help. They're going to want to help Speaker 0 00:07:12 Pursuing a career in climate action. Doesn't mean you need to study law at Hartford. Like Opperman said, there are countless avenues available for those wanting to work in climate change full time. Identifying those routes can be difficult because many of them don't exist yet. According to professor Archer, the most critical occupations in the fight for the environment are waiting to be created Speaker 3 00:07:33 In terms of, you know, what jobs need to be done. It seems to me like we're going to have to learn to clean out CO2 out of atmosphere. You know, research into that. You know, it seems like it'd be really useful if you can improve batteries. You know, the guy who invented blue LEDs and enabled us to have all this energy efficient lighting, you know, you made a huge contribution to the world, Speaker 0 00:07:56 No matter what interests you landing a full-time career in any industry will never be a certainty. The job market fluctuates and changes from year to year. Yeah, for as much as the job industry controls one's career prospects, it's equally determined by that person's enthusiasm and passion for the job at hand. Speaker 3 00:08:15 Well, it's got to kind of come from whatever weird fascinations, you know, a person has. When I was a little kid, I remember being on a boat in the middle of lake Michigan and thinking about all that water under my feet, obsessed with wanting to know what was down there for no good reason in terms of what an individual person does. It's got to come from they're in there. They're got Speaker 4 00:08:36 The biggest factor for me is for whatever reason, I have a very low tolerance for doing things that I do not want to do. I get that this is a paycheck and that's a job and I want to do a good job. But if I do not care, I do not care my job now. And for many years it doesn't feel like a job I'm like excited to do it all the time. It never feels like, oh, I got to like drag myself to this place. Speaker 0 00:09:00 This summer Margo is working at an environmental nonprofit serving as an intern in the communications department. Likewise, Jenny will finish her year on the dairy farm. After that comes September, she'll start taking classes for her environmental science degree. Speaker 1 00:09:14 I don't know what area I want to go into. Maybe not specifically in the dairy industry, I'm open to the other areas. Speaker 2 00:09:22 I think it'll always kind of be a part of what I'm doing. Hopefully I'll get to a point where even if I'm not specifically reporting on the environment, like I'll have some sort of job where I'll be able to look at whatever I'm doing in that line. Speaker 0 00:09:35 That's what links those pursuing careers in environmentalist. They found their area of focus where any time spent working doesn't feel like work at all this underlying passion. It stretches beyond the office and to every facet of their everyday life. In this sense, Jenny and Margot have a leg up on their peers for Madell. I'm Nick song.