Every Job Is a Climate Job
by Sonam VelaniSustainable Cities (buildings, energy, and trash included), eco-jobs, eco-art, eco-games, and even eco-dance all in a week!
My mantra: every job is a climate job!
There’s no question that we’re going through a huge shift in the global economy. Inflation reached 9.1% last year, the biggest year increase since 1981. There are layoffs across the tech industry, with household names cutting back and watching their share prices drop. The era of low interest rates making money virtually free is gone.
The bright side: The Age of Climate Industrialism is in full swing! New talent, innovation, founders, funders, and government action have all mobilized to develop the real solutions that we need to respond to climate change. This is the optimistic, action-oriented response to climate doom and gloom - a bet that climate solutions rooted in abundance and progress will create value for people in their daily lives and more broadly across their communities.
This is the new face of Climate Industrialism - building new technologies, learning new skills, and putting climate solutions to work in our streets and neighborhoods! Credit to Lyn Stoler for the fabulous drawing!
I believe this is going to be a significant driver of economic growth over the next decade. These are the boots-on-the-ground jobs that will help us truly decarbonize and adapt our society to climate change → and this labor transition is already happening!
The transition to clean energy is expected to generate 10.3 million new jobs globally by 2030 per a recent study by the World Economic Forum. Wind turbine service technicians make up the second-fastest growing occupation in the U.S. behind nurse practitioners, with a 44% growth rate projected in the next decade. According to electrification nonprofit Rewiring America, the US needs a million new electricians to complete the new wiring needed for the energy transition. We need to be spending $9.2 trillion per year as a globe to get to net zero by 2050 - all in all, that translates to A LOT of jobs!
There’s a job for everyone, really. Stats: Visual Capitalist/IEA World Energy Outlook.
So, where can you start? Take an inventory of your skills, think about what problem you want to solve, and most importantly, find your people. There are TONS of resources out there to help you along the way, and I want to highlight a few of them:
Climate Career Week (happening as we speak!) - a free virtual event with 17 sessions, 40+ speakers, office hours, and more.
Terra.do - online cohort based courses to learn about climate tech, policy, and vc, career fairs, and a community of climate enthusiasts
Climate Draft - on-ramp to connect the climate curious to learn about various industries and connect them to early stage companies
Work On Climate - slack channel and resource network with 10,000+ members (fourfold more than last year!)
Climatebase - list of 40,000 jobs from more than 3,000 climate tech companies, with more than 600,000 people using the resource globally
Greenwork - training thousands of field staff to install everything from solar panels to HVAC systems, helping to solve a significant skilled labor shortage
BlocPower’s Civilian Climate Corps - provides training and job opportunities to New Yorkers in neighborhoods impacted by crime
Climate People - climate tech recruiting group matchmaking between people looking for jobs + companies hiring
I’ll end with my giant twitter thread on some of my favorite climate tech companies hiring. You'll work with nice people, and you'll save the world (literally).
by Sonam Velani