Climate Careers: Chris Adams

What is a climate career to you?

I honestly don’t know what a climate career is per se — the closest concept I have come across that I find relevant is in the book by Cory Doctorow, “Walkaway”, when you essentially have two parallel economies – one called ‘default’, and one called ‘walkaway’.

In ‘default’, people basically continue along on business as usual, doing their day to day jobs, and largely working to concentrate the wealth of billionaires even further at the cost of the environment, climate, and, well, most forms of justice we might recognise.

In ‘walkaway’, the idea is instead not to play the game and try to invent a new model that addresses some of the systemic issues in the first place.

The climate crisis is what I see as the largest challenge facing my generation, and a fair few coming after it. I guess a climate career is one where the majority of one’s time is spent working on addressing that problem ahead of other wider goals, like rising GDP, or making the richest people who have ever existed even richer. I don’t think climate and GDP or climate and creating wealth are fundamentally at odds with each other, but looking around, you do get an idea which of these tend to be prioritised ahead of the others.

How did you get started and what changes did you make in your career to work in this space?

Probably in university when I started to learn about climate and environmental issues. After university instead of joining a big company, I set up a company with a friend, and we worked out of a social innovation co-working place called “The Hub” in Islington, which then later became known as Impact Hub, as it expanded globally.

So I was surrounded by people more established than me working in this field already, and learned loads via osmosis. I also actively started learning to run events, to learn how to build a community.

This helped when I took a job in ‘default’ for about 18 months, before going back into climate focussed work, and then freelancing in and around the sector .

This helped when I joined the organising team in CAT to help grow it in 2018, and the Green Web Foundation in 2019.

What challenges have you faced in making this transition?

I’m not gonna lie, when I left university, we worked on some fun projects. But early on in my career, it was hard to make money when you’re inexperienced at managing projects, managing budgets and managing clients.

After 2-3 years out of university, I ended up taking the job in ‘default’ where I was working in an agency in London for 18 months. It helped me understand the value of the skills I had developed, and I used it to then work in AMEE (Avoid Mass Extension Engine) one of the climate tech startups in the first wave of cleantech startup in the late 2000’s – you might think of this as my first job where I was consistently earning market rates AND working on a project with a direct link to climate.

I left the company after it went through multiple pivots as it tried to figure out how to make a return on the 20m USD in VC money it had raised, while retaining a convincing climate angle. This was a key lesson for me: how funding mechanisms for a project influence what you are incentivized to do in the short term, which may go against its original long term goals, and often close off many paths you’d like to stay open.

Any advice you’d like to share with others on their own climate journeys?

These are the ones I shared when asked a similar question in a recent interview, in a magazine Design Whine.

Find a community.

If you can’t find a geographically located one, then there are ones online you can find, or see if there are others already interested in your own existing communities.

Learn about the new laws affecting your work.

These will often provide the pretext for experimenting in this field, because getting ahead of changes in regulation is almost always cheaper and less stressful than finding out about changes at the last minute

Acknowledge the emotional side of dealing with the climate crisis and use it to give you purpose.

We’re in a stressful time right now, and thinking about climate will often be emotionally exhausting. Learn to acknowledge it, because ignoring it won’t work as you learn more.

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You can connect with Chris on LinkedIn and listen to his podcast on Environment Variables.

If you’re interested in contributing, we invite you to share your own story on #climate-careers or reach out to Elisa or Jon on Slack for guidance.