Achi news desk-
As the climate crisis becomes more and more serious, the fossil fuel industry is struggling to recruit new talent. And now many current employees are deciding to leave their jobs, some quietly, some very publicly, because of concerns about climate change.
In this episode of The Conversation Weekly podcast, we talk to a researcher about this phenomenon of “climate giving up”.
My name is Caroline Dennett and this is my resignation.
In a video posted on LinkedIn in 2022, Caroline Dennett, a senior security consultant working at a major oil company, announced that she was terminating her contract because of what she called the company’s “double talk” on the climate.
When Grace Augustine and her colleague Birth Soppe saw the video, which went viral, they decided to start looking for more people who had left their jobs due to concerns about climate change.
Augustine, associate professor of business and society at the University of Bath in the UK, and Soppe, associate professor of organization studies, at the University of Innsbruck in Austria, have so far conducted interviews with 39 people from around the world in their research continuous Most, but not all, of the interviewees are young people working in white collar jobs in the oil and gas sector.
One man they spoke to explained the feelings that led him to leave his job.
On Friday afternoon traveling home, I will feel physically uncomfortable. And I wondered: why do I feel physically uncomfortable? I had a good week, I’ve done a good job. And then you realize that, you may have done a good job, but the goal you are working towards is bad in a way; it doesn’t fit your moral scope.
Many referred to having a sense of cognitive dissonance – the idea that your behavior doesn’t match your belief system. And they couldn’t live it anymore. Augustine explained:
They increasingly felt a sense of urgency around the climate crisis … something they thought might be happening ten, 15, 20 years down the line, like heat records being broken or climate-related weather events. They felt a growing sense that it could not wait much longer for them to leave this industry.
Listen to Grace Augustine talk about her ongoing research on The Conversation Weekly podcast, which also includes extracts from her interviews and an introduction by Sam Phelps, commissioning editor of international affairs at The Conversation in the UK.
A transcript of this episode will be available soon.
Thanks to Grace Augustine for allowing The Conversation to use clips from her interviews, and to her interview subjects who agreed to let us use their voices and statements in this podcast.
This episode of The Conversation Weekly was written and produced by Katie Flood, with assistance from Mend Mariwany. Gemma Ware is the executive producer. The sound was designed by Eloise Stevens, and Neeta Sarl is our theme music. Stephen Khan is our global executive editor, Alice Mason runs our social media and Soraya Nandy does our transcriptions.
News clips in this episode came from PBS News Hour.
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