Welcome to Climate Workers Anonymous, where those working in climate share their anonymous and unverified experiences, feelings, and analysis about their labor.
Today’s show has submissions covering both the highs and the lows. But even in saying that, I wonder if I start to cross my own editorial standards that I discuss in the podcast version of this episode.
Someone left a review on Apple Podcasts that made me think—should I be commenting upon the submissions? So far I haven’t been. I’ve been publishing them and letting them stand on their own. I worry that if I say too much I might misinterpret, or point people away from their intended meaning. Or, potentially worse, distract from their truth with my own commentary.
One of the other creative projects I work on is Carbon Removal Memes. It’s biggest on LinkedIn but starting to stand it up on Substack. I started it and built a writer’s room while at my previous company, Nori. It continues on with a rotating cast of meme writers where we workshop our pitches.
While I do occasionally have to reign in an editorial take on an issue I think is beyond what is supportable, I mostly try to help people find their funny. I’m not trying to grind my own ax more than theirs. Even if I don’t connect with something they made, if they find it funny and stick up for it, I’m willing to give it a shot. If it connects with them, it will likely connect with someone else.
It’s one of the few rules of making art that I know of—if you don’t like what you made, it’s unclear who else will. Or at the very least, you will be unable to tell if it is good or not unless someone tells you. That is a difficult aesthetic position to be in.
And while I don’t agree with the editorial line every meme takes, I don’t view it as my role to be the final arbiter of truth. My job is to help others express themselves and make work of which they are proud.
That ethos has also prepared me for Climate Workers Anonymous. These are unverified takes people send in. I’m not checking for corroborating sources. This is impressionistic; not journalistic. My work here is to enable others to create and share what they have experienced as true. That leads me to think I should minimize the amount of direct commentary on post submissions.
If you think I’ve made a wrong turn, feel free to comment or send a message. I’m still figuring this out and I want it to be the best version of itself that we can make it.
Submissions
I get incredibly frustrated listening to industry experts and scientists because they are among the worst communicators.
Coming from the healthcare space there are very few absolutes when talking about scientific intervention. Both industries like to go on and on explaining nuance, trade offs, unintended side effects, and all through the well intended belief that people should make informed decisions.
In reality the important go/no-go decisions are made because of well thought out marketing campaigns, tribal dynamics, and incentives.
If carbon removal is going to be taken seriously we need to bring in the worlds best communicators who aren't just posting on Linkedin. They need to be out in the real world finding ways to connect this to peoples everyday lives.The climate companies I worked at were, hands down, the most toxic cultures I experienced in 15+ years. It feels like the previous gold rush in climate tech funding (RIP) attracted really narcissistic personalities, even by tech founder standards. Some of those "impact tech founders" have now pivoted into AI; follow the money, I guess.
I'm much more content now day to day after switching into working on a climate-adjacent topic that doesn't self-glorify the way carbon companies did. I'm working on something that helps real people. However, I still get a front row seat to how close to collapse our systems are. And I struggle with guilt about having participated in what I now consider to be greenwashing efforts.
I used to be way more technocratically optimistic. Unfortunately these experiences have convinced me we are truly f*cked. The private sector seemed like the only front of the war where things were moving for awhile & now I have no faith. Everyone's in AI psychosis and staying really busy in the remaining normal years we have left, while our governments enable crazy men extracting whatever we have left before their bunkers are ready.
Whereas it used to feel powerful to be driving these topics in the tech economy, it now feels taboo. Overall I feel incredibly lonely; there are very few people (just a couple friends and former colleagues) who I can talk to about this stuff openly.I may be more group therapy-ing here than confessing. But forgive me nonetheless. Also I did dictate to and then put it through an LLM in an attempt to anonymise it a little more (which I would argue is a fair use of an LLM, by the way).
So:
I increasingly think that in the work of carbon removal, of climate action, and of tending the wider bounds of this Earth, that we must keep faith with people.
Faith with humanity.
It is easy to lose it. One looks upon many institutions, upon quite a few ‘fashionable’ organisations, upon some leaders of the hour, strutting and fretting their brief turn upon the world stage.
One often sees ignorance, vanity, fear short reckonings, and the cold arithmetic of the zero-sum game. One sees much that would invite despair.
Yet as the years pass, I find myself believing the opposite about my fellow Homo sapiens.
I think these harmful behaviours - vivid and gravels they can seem, are not the rule, but the exception.
The rule is that most people are decent.
As Rutger Bregman and others have written, the true tale of humanity is often not the one we tell. The real Lord of the Flies (and I recommended looking up the real Lord of the flies) is not a descent into savagery, but people cast ashore who learn to help one another. They quarrel. They disagree. They grow angry and must walk apart for a while. Then they return and speak again.
They resolve things, they heal, they carry on together.
The cruel person, the sociopath, the one whom old myths would call wicked, is rarer than we think. They command attention because they are loud. And because, annoyingly, they still seem a bit too good at getting into positions of power. But they are not the multitude.
I could offer many examples from my own brief passage upon this Earth, but I shall leave you with one.
For a time I volunteered as a musician at my church. Between songs, we would stand at the back and listen to the sermon. One day I found myself and my band mates off to the side near a water point.
There was a young girl, seven or eight years of age. She kept coming to fill up cups of water, and then go back and give them to other children and parents in the kids areas. It was such a small yet immeasurably kind act. Nothing remarkable, perhaps, except that it was.
Later I learned that she and her siblings were refugees. I learned also that she was being bullied at school.
I can take care of myself, and these days my heart can often feel quite hardened. But I still feel very moved thinking about that vivid example - and frankly many tens of thousands of interactions I’ve now had with others that basically reflect that game-theoretic structure.
In my least-worst moments, I work to remember that the vast majorly of humankind would have once been like that little girl.
Even the hardest among us was once a child.
Even the ruthless executive. Even the cut-throat trader. The corrupt politician. Even the squanderer of tomorrow who spends the future as though it were petty cash.
Even the person who wounds others and, perhaps, themselves.
Chances are that once they, too, tried to be kind. Once they, too, desired only to belong. Once they, too, were a small child trying to bring some water to others.
I know this is not always so. There are dark things in the world. One of the great tasks of our age is to solve our problems of coordination and to help the collaborative, helping majority prevail over the predatory, harmful few.
Yet I believe with all my heart that most people, when given knowledge, opportunity, and agency, wish to help.
They wish to care for the carbon cycle and the climate. They wish to protect the living systems upon which all lives depend. They wish to leave a fairer inheritance than the one they received.
Give people the chance, and most will not turn away.
Give them the tools, and many will do beautiful things.
And when I am cynical, when I am frustrated, when I am feeling just so very tired and alone, I try to remember all this.
Then I try again to do my small part towards helping nurture a more safe and just future for all, and - where possible - reversing climate change.
If you are truly a completist, here’s a link to Gertrude Stein.1 I am not sure if this is in fact an apt comparison, but it stands as a thought.
Thank you for listening to and reading Climate Workers Anonymous. Subscribe to Substack below, and be sure to subscribe in whichever podcast app you use. An amazing rating and review on those podcast apps does a world of good. Would you please do that for me now? Here’s Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.
If you’d like submit your anonymous hopes, fears, or experiences to Climate Workers Anonymous, you can use this Tally survey or email climateworkersanonymous[at]protonmail.com, though I believe the Tally survey is more secure. Do not communicate anything you wouldn’t want a hacker to have access to, including an email address that could be linked to you if you email the account on Protonmail.
Thanks so much for reading and listening. I am glad you’re here.
Sincerely,
Ross Kenyon
Namechecking her sent me down a rabbit hole of her potentially being a Nazi collaborator during World War II.
