Finding voices

A little while back I shared a story about seeing someone “get bitten” by the climate bug, right in front of my eyes during a Zoom meeting.

He asked (another person on the call) for resources to get him “up to speed with climate stuff”, and was gifted quite the firehose of information: books, webinars, websites, videos, Twitter accounts, podcasts, and email courses to go check out in his own time.

To me, generous and amazing as the resource list was, it seemed like a hilariously impossible list of things for any one person to consume in any reasonable amount of time.

I never found out if he got up to speed, or bailed on that list of resources, or is still working his way through it 18 months later.

I also don’t have an answer for how to get up to speed fast in the climate space. But what I will say is take the recommendations that come your way, pick a few, filter for voices you like, and let yourself fall into a rabbit hole or two.

The news headlines might all be singing from the same doom and gloom songsheet, but the commentators, experts, podcasters, and “top green voices on Linkedin” certainly don’t sound the same. Like most things, there’s a style that’ll resonate with you.

If someone asked me today for recommendations to learn what’s happening in the climate space, I’d suggest these 3 resources:

Workonclimate.org – a network of around 30,000 people in a big Slack room either working in, or interested in working in climate (that includes turning existing roles into a climate roles). Lots of office hours, free mentoring, generous people, and conversations to watch and learn from.

Climatesalad.com – a directory (and membership, if you like) of Australian climate tech companies in various stages from pre-funded to scale-up to established. It’s like a direct window into what’s happening in Australia… thousands of climate-focused companies, just to see what’s happening.

Positive.News – a weekly newsletter about what’s going right in the world.

But again, find the voices that click with you, and keep searching til you find one. There are so many.