三年前，在Google担任软件工程师时，Eugene Kirpichov碰巧观看了Al Gore的不便的真理长途飞行。在返回的飞行中，他看了续集。之后，他无法停止思考气候变化。他说：“每当我遇到一个真正的[气候]专家的人时，我都会问他们，‘真的那么糟糕吗？'”“他们会说，‘是的，真的很糟糕。'”
The more he learned about the problem, the more anxiety and despair he felt. Then the pandemic hit, adding a new source of anxiety. But Kirpichov, now 34 years old, started volunteering on a project to build a low-cost ventilator, and it changed how he felt about COVID-19: He was focused on finding a solution rather than fear. He realized that he might have the same experience with climate. And even though he had a plum job in machine learning at Google—and had been there for seven and a half years—he decided to leave to find new work on climate solutions. Cassandra Xia, a friend at Google, decided to leave at the same time, as each convinced the other that it was the right choice.
“The reason I’m leaving is because the scale, urgency, and tragedy of climate change are so immense that I can no longer justify to myself working on anything else, no matter how interesting or lucrative, until it’s fixed,” Kirpichov wrote in an email to colleagues. “I’d be lying if I didn’t say that I think others, who have the privilege of being able to do so, should follow suit. I like to frame the problem positively as ‘how much can we save,’ and every one of us can have a hand in saving something.”
当他shared the email on LinkedIn, the response was overwhelming. “It turned out there were so many people in the same boat,” he says. Many, like Xia and Kirpichov, didn’t know exactly what direction to take as they switched jobs. So in July 2020,the pair decided to make a Slack workspace where anyone making the transition could talk. (They met their third cofounder, product designer Eva Illescas Sanchez, on LinkedIn.) “We just made this little experiment—let’s put everybody in a community and see what happens,” he says. “Two years later, we have the world’s largest climate community.” Kirpichov now spends all of his time running it.
懈怠的社区被称为Work On Climate—now has more than 8,500 members. Many have backgrounds in tech or design, and even if they liked that work, they were all ready to do more. “[I’m] done with putting what time and energy I have towards anything else—this is our Hail Mary moment, and I cannot make myself be okay with working a standard job,” Briana Montagne, a UX designer and developer, recently posted in the community’s “introductions” channel.It’s a reflection of a broader sentiment: Nearly a third of Americans now say that climate change is their “top personal concern.” Among Gen Z, thatjumps to 37%。尽管人们常常不知道该怎么做，或者对问题的规模感到瘫痪，但气候社区中的人们准备采取行动。
有些人也对技术界的当前状态感到幻灭。“至少直到最近，VC Money一直涌入三到四个领域 - E-Commerce，Fintech，社交媒体和加密货币/Web3，所有这些领域都表明，充其量是最少的，最糟糕的是，负面的社会价值, and the people working for those companies know it, even if some of them (but by no means all) have done reasonably well financially,” says Jed, a software engineer who didn’t want to share his last name with德赢提款因为他的雇主还不知道他正在寻找新工作。（VC对气候技术的投资现在正在迅速增长，record amount of funding entering the space last year。)
Many people in the community are entrepreneurs and looking for potential cofounders or early employees. Richard Wurden, who had worked as an engineer at Tesla, met former software-company founder Kenny Lee on Slack last year; they now have a startup calledAigen，它正在建造小型，轻巧的太阳能机器人，可以在没有化学物质的情况下自动杂草农场。这家初创公司在一月份筹集了400万美元的种子资金。
对于新移民，社区提供了“入门包” - 有关整体挑战，气候政策或清除碳的特定主题的资源清单以及有关求职的技巧 - 以及与气候专注于气候公司的演讲者进行的策划活动。一群人也可以加入学习小组，更深入地研究主题。该小组的一些气候专家自愿作为专家，向刚开始的人们提供建议。Slack Workspace中的一个频道列出了气候演出。在另一个中，气候初创公司在全职工作。
“From the start, we were just absolutely obsessive about keeping it actionable and motivating,” says Kirpichov. “For example, we really didn’t want it to turn into a place where people just exchange links, or sign petitions. We wanted to be focused 100% on helping people find climate work, and helping them take the next step.”
他说，有一种看法，在气候中工作意味着成为激进主义者或科学家。但是，Slack上发布的持续的工作流说明了多样性：工程师为货船建造碳捕获设备。数据科学家对树木中的碳存储进行建模。从事野火预测或清洁能源的软件工程师。电动汽车公司或气候技术VC基金的分析师。从事传统技术工作或其他行业工作的人可能不知道这些角色存在。基尔皮乔夫说：“即使有工作，人们也不会考虑寻找它们。”
维多利亚·德·阿兰兹塔（Victoria de Aranzeta）说：“我最初在气候上使用（在气候上）来学习与我所寻找的气候空间内的行业，这是具有广泛环境但文化和野生动植物影响的行业。”在森林碳市场NCX上工作。“一旦我对林业进行了磨练，我就开始巡游工作频道，以识别公司，研究并在与我共鸣的角色中寻找角色。”
There’s an extra layer of complexity when someone evaluates a potential climate job, as candidates try to understand how much their next employer might actually be able to reduce emissions. “People are evaluating the impact that they’re having a lot in a lot more detail than they would in any other purpose-driven space: Is this actually going to make any difference in the overall situation?” says Joshua Stehr, a service designer who has been volunteering to interview Work On Climate members to help the group learn how it can best support members.
该社区是501（c）3非营利组织，现在正在筹款，因此可以雇用员工。联合创始人Xia在一家碳金融公司工作时，Kirpichov计划继续致力于非营利组织。他说，目标不仅是为了帮助社区过渡到气候工作的人们，还可以帮助使气候工作成为总体主流。解决这个问题有助于缓解他的焦虑。他说：“我认为这些天我花了0％的时间来担心气候。”“我花了100％的时间来考虑组织内的下一步。这改变了我的看法，即资本主义和拯救地球是不相容的观念，以[认识到]知道资本主义如何运作的人正在大规模指导其所有权力，联系，技能以及行业知识，以解决内部的气候资本主义可以做什么。他们成功了。”