With the hottest days in recorded history, oceans reaching 100°F, droughts, and wildfire air turning the sky orange, it takes little more than walking out your door to be reminded of the ongoing climate crisis we are experiencing. As an academic, you may understand why this is happening. You may also be frightened, angered, or depressed about it. But you may fall short of knowing all that you personally can do about it. If so, this article is for you.
The first step is to learn the basic mantra of tackling climate change: It’s happening. It’s us. We can fix it. That is: the world is undeniably warming, as a result of greenhouse gas emissions from human activity, and we have a variety of methods for reducing those emissions and adapting to the unavoidable changes.
And as you can guess, it’s incredibly important that you act. The effects are already here and already troubling. But there is a lot more and far worse damage on the horizon that we can prevent by acting now. Every fraction of a degree matters. Every ounce of avoided emissions helps. And many of the needed solutions have secondary benefits, like cleaner air and cheaper energy. To serious people, there is therefore no space for doomerism or complacency. An incredible amount of necessary change is already happening, driven by people like you who care about fixing this problem, and they need your help to do even more.
What an academic can do ranges from the universal—personal actions anyone can take as a consumer and citizen—to the specific—use of hard-won expertise to advance technology and practice. I will cover the full range here, but, fair warning, I am going to try to convince you to change what you work on.
No matter what options you choose, to make the most impact, you will have to be bold. You will need to do things that haven’t been done before—things that aren’t the norm, or part of the typical academic path. Things that some people who don’t understand the situation as well as you might even think are weird. But that’s ok, because doing research and discovering new knowledge is inherently about working on the edge of what is known and comfortable. If you can forge new paths in your research, you can forge new paths in your personal and professional life as well.
Unprecedented action is needed because we are facing unprecedented conditions. Imagine you were conducting a study in your field and saw these kind of outliers:
It would make you sit up and take notice.
For the past century or so, we have been conducting a large-scale experiment (that did not get IRB approval…) on our planet and our civilization, and the data are coming in with strong results. We are in a new era and a new world. The way systems functioned and how people behaved before this period of climate upheaval is not a relevant guide for how things should be done in this new era. We have to be different. You have to be different. As Alex Steffan, a writer who focuses on how to grapple with a rapidly evolving world in crisis, wrote “Being native to now demands finding insight, not just receiving it.”
In addition to being bold and creative, to have the most impact, you need to be a “force multiplier”. For every action you take, try to get 10 other actions out of it. This can be done by getting whole systems you have control over to change or by convincing other people to make the same changes you are making.
So what can you do from where you are now…
As an academic, there are levers you can pull that will help reduce emissions and change the expectations and standards in your field. Much of the tips provided here come from Anne Urai and her colleagues whose extensive efforts help academics, and (neuro)scientists in particular, act on the climate crisis. Check out their papers and videos for more information.
First, you have certain affordances due to your position within a university. Universities are large systems that can play important roles in their communities and even internationally. Working with (or putting pressure on) your university to take bold and necessary action is one way to be a force-multiplier. Resources that are particularly relevant on university campuses are campaigns to divest from fossil fuels, the work of your sustainability office (these can sometimes be hubs for greenwashing, but it is your job to make sure they are not by offering input), and activist organizations like Sunrise Movement.
Efforts to change university policies are also part of a general movement of people lobbying their employers for climate action under the notion that “every job is a climate job”. General resources for climate action at work include this Project Drawdown guide and the UK-based Work for Climate organization.
You can also do an accounting of the emissions that come from your research. Think about materials used, the energy needed for computing power, and the emissions that come from flying to conferences. To make changes in these areas, you may need to: petition companies to offer more sustainable products, ask your university about where the energy for computing clusters comes from, or lobby your academic societies to offer distributed conferences (either through several local hubs or remote virtual participation like neuromatch). MyGreenLab and the Laboratory Efficiency Assessment Framework may be good starting points. But in general, be creative. When you find lower carbon alternatives to things you use and do regularly, make sure to share your knowledge, like Anne has in her publications for neuroscientists. This makes you a force multiplier.
Also consider what you teach. The causes of, effects from, and solutions to the climate crisis touch nearly every topic taught at a university. Teaching the physical science behind climate change is just as important as explaining the psychological tendencies that prevent action or the economic incentives needed for change. Try developing a new course on “Climate Change and X” for your department (for example, I teach Machine Learning for Climate Change as part of the Data Science major at NYU). Or at least see where in your existing lectures a connection to climate change and its solutions can be made. Not only does this open the eyes of students to how their interests connect to this global problem, it also normalizes talking about it and may encourage them to focus their career on it.
Professors, scientists, and academics are usually considered respected members of the community and therefore communicating from a place of authority can also be a useful option. Writing op-eds, appearing on podcasts, or helping provide input for policy efforts are ways academics can contribute to the conversation. Research on how to communicate on climate has provided many tips. In general, this communication can be particularly effective for targeted audiences, for example when commenting on how green efforts on your campus will be beneficial to the local community. Many scientists already engage in various forms of outreach, and including discussion of the climate crisis in these activities can be an easy way to get others talking. Scientists can even consider joining Scientist Rebellion to participate in coordinated action and activism. Getting the word out and normalizing the idea of taking climate action can be a force multiplier (for example, I’m force multiplying right now 
).
But you can also change what you do
An academic’s identity can be very tightly wound up with their area of expertise. To suggest that someone change what they work on can be shocking, offensive even. But what you do during your working hours determines in large part the impact you have on this world. If you want to increase your effort and expand your impact, pivoting your research to a climate-relevant topic is a great choice.
This pivot will admittedly be easier for some areas of expertise than others, but you may be surprised by the overlap in skills and knowledge that you have and what is needed for some specific corner of the climate crisis response. As mentioned above, it’s difficult to find a university department that has no relevant connection to climate change, and forging new connections can be incredibly important as well.
I wrote previously about my change from pure neuroscientist to neuroscientist/remote-sensing-of-climate-impacts-scientist. Did I think when I got my PhD in computational neuroscience that I’d be analyzing satellite data as a professor or developing content for a course on computational climate science? Of course not. But entering this new field has been exhilarating and expansive. It also gives me clear purpose and a place to put my energy when the news has me frustrated or depressed. And it provides me the time and space to stay up-to-date on climate topics, which otherwise would be a job of its own.
As an academic (especially if you are a tenured one), you have an uncommon degree of freedom in what you pursue. You also have a useful set of meta-skills—the ability to survey complicated literature, teach yourself new things, and manage multi-faceted research projects—that have value even outside of the domain you learned them in. This puts you in a rare position to explore and build and forge and test across a range of topic areas, and guide students into these areas as well. If you have the desire to make an impact on the climate crisis, don’t let the traditions of academia or a fear of what might come hold you back. Use the freedom and skills you have to do what you think is right.
But how do you figure out the best topic areas for you? If you’re a novice, The Climate Book is a decent place to start; it is a series of expert-authored essays that together provide a thorough lay of the land. Solutions-oriented frameworks like Project Drawdown and the UN Sustainable Development Goals can also point you to concrete areas that need attention. There are a host of podcasts to provide informal introductions to areas of interest and the people working on them; I prefer Catalyst and My Climate Journey.
I also highly recommend joining the Work on Climate Slack. This is a very large community of people either working on, or hoping to work on, climate change problems. It was started with the explicit goal of getting people from all backgrounds into climate work. It was a big influence on me as I made my transition and provided several concrete opportunities. The community of people working on climate is also incredibly welcoming. You can even join the #role-academics channel, which I created to help shepard academics through this process!
If you want to skill up with some online courses check out Climatematch Academy, Airminers (on carbon dioxide removal), Climate Change AI summer school, or a wide variety of options on websites like Coursera.
If you’re currently at a university, see what kind of climate work is already going on and who is doing it. Ask to attend meetings and seminars and see what kind of help you can offer or if your colleagues have any pointers to resources that are a good match for you. Some universities, like NYU, have established clusters of climate research and are even aiming to fund it more. Columbia University has an entire school dedicated to climate change, which accurately reflects the importance of the problem and its highly interdisciplinary nature. If your university doesn’t have any hubs of climate work, make one.
Remember, you don’t have to completely abandon your past work and go 100% on climate change (though please do if you’d like!). You can explore on the edges at first, dipping a toe into a new topic and see how it feels before taking a deeper plunge.
You may also conclude that you want to leave academia
For all its perks, academic work can sometimes feel like fighting with one hand tied behind your back; resources can be sparse and the chance to truly directly create something or make change can be hard to come by. If you want to leave academia, there are many resources that will help you make this switch.
First, know that you are in good company. Many academics have left their university to start or join companies working on climate solutions. Companies are usually happy to find smart and motivated people who want to work on their problems. So all you have to do is convey that interest and know how to market your skills.
Recent years have seen a healthy increase in acknowledgement of the fact people with PhDs end up in other jobs. Many resources exist to teach former academics how to identify their skills and passions outside of the ivory tower and get a job that suits them. Such resources include From PhD to Life and What You Can Be with a PhD and a variety of articles and conversations under the heading of “alt-ac”.
For resources specific to finding climate jobs, check out:
- Climatebase
- Terra.do
- Climate Jobs List
- Climate Tech List
- Climate People Recruiters
- Leafr freelancing
- Get a Job Starter Pack and Work on Climate
- How to get a data job in climate
And of course, the Work on Climate Slack and community are great places to network and learn more about what jobs are available and what they entail.
Thinking of starting your own company? Great! The world needs radically new ideas and ways of doing things as we undergo a massive climate transition. Climate Founder provides resources for entrepreneurs and Subak provides assistance and funding especially for non-profits. If you are still at a university, there may be a Tech Ventures office responsible for helping academics found start-ups. Funding agencies, like the NSF, also have programs to get scientist’s ideas into the real world. And you can check out the Scientist Founder Hub.
The past few years has seen the development of quite a healthy climate startup space. The money is flowing, the work exists and you are wanted there.
And don’t forget personal action
The most important personal action you can do is vote, and otherwise organize politically, perhaps even through targeted civil disobedience, to make sure that people who have the interest of future generations at heart get into power and make the right choices. US-focused political organizations include Citizen’s Climate Lobby, League of Conservation Voters, and People’s Climate Movement.
Other personal action is important too—without individual change we wouldn’t get collective change. Changes in consumption habits regarding meat alternatives and electric vehicles, for example, have allowed companies pioneering these climate-friendly options to thrive and sent a message to the makers of emissions-heavy products that they are no longer wanted.
Individual choices, while having a small but real impact on their own, are also important as force multipliers because of the conversations they start. When it comes up at dinner that I eat chicken and fish but tend to avoid dairy and beef, I can explain that this is due to the heavy carbon footprint of food that comes from cows. Similarly, when I decline an invitation to an international conference out of a desire to avoid too many flights, this may spur others to consider their own avenues for action as well. In Saving Us: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World, Katharine Hayhoe discusses how climate-friendly behavior can spread by seeing others do the same, and how conversations amongst people with shared values are the most effective.
Another personal action that matters is donating. This gives the people dedicating their life to important fights in courts and on the ground the resources they need to do their job well. My preferred organizations are: Clean Air Task Force, Earthjustice, Conservation International, Carbon Fund, and Environmental Defense Fund.
But just do it
Whatever of the above options resonates with you, just make sure you do it. Do it now and do more later. There is no reason to wait, and there truly is not time to. Action begets action. And action begets conversations that beget more action. Start the ball rolling now and reap the benefits that you sow.
If you have more resources you’d like to share, please post them in the comments or send me a message.