Sustainability professionals Nathan Kahre, Connor Dillon, Victoria Muharsky, Brent Webb and Max Rohr discuss how they cope with climate anxiety in their work. They argue that small personal commitments, peer conversations and improving clean technology all build momentum toward larger change.
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Nathan Kahre: Climate change is the existential crisis that we have to confront right now, and that we can work together to have impact. That's super valuable for my mental well-being, to know that the work I do has impact.
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Connor Dillon: So that I do is I try and kind of keep keep my eye on projects that come into the pipeline that are unique and interesting. Provide some really, really cool opportunities for learning personally and things like that.
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Victoria Muharsky: So I found that my generation can really become frozen with action due to their eco anxiety. And what I found is that usually stems from the fact that they know that GHG emissions are mostly caused by a certain industry or certain corporations, and they get this idea that individual contributions matter less. So I have like a different mindset and a different approach.
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Victoria Muharsky: I feel like the power of the masses matters. We just need one person to catalyze, catalyze that change.
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Brent Webb: What I've started doing is just showing them what I do, as in like the products that I buy, the processes I follow, things that I do on a daily basis, and I show them the benefits of it, and I show them the math, and I showed them the calculations of how I've done this. And then it kind of gives them the option to make those decisions.
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Victoria Muharsky: I have a lot of friends that are pretty environmentally savvy, and they do their own little things. And I think just keeping that conversation going and learning from through their actions and what they're doing kind of helps me like look at things a little bit different, and I'm constantly learning new things about the products I use. And then, you know, if I don't like being, you know, not just coming in plastic bottles, but some of the ingredients that they use and how that can affect things around me and then making changes based on that knowledge.
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Victoria Muharsky: And I just think it's kind of a ever evolving thing. And just to continue, you know, on your way and still having those conversations, I think make a big impact.
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Max Rohr: I have a generational code switch. If I'm going to have the same, you know, motive to get somebody to do something more green. If I'm talking to a group of, you know, older plumbers or something like that, that I pivot to more of a would you like to be competitive? Would you like to be relevant? Would you like to be rich?
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Max Rohr: These are things that I think even if you don't care about sustainability, I think realizing that while the buyer is us, the buyer isn't your obnoxious nephew who went on a trip to Costa Rica and came back. You're really, like, crunchy and, you know, eco friendly or whatever we are, you know, according to the research for Green Builder, we're building the homes and the majority of us care about climate change.
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Max Rohr: So if you want to be relevant, you need to sell to us now. You're not selling to your your other friends just as a generational statement. You're selling to millennials and we care about that. So if you're not doing something that wishes the industry in that direction, you are just less relevant. And I think that that's it's kind of cool to see.
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Max Rohr: One of the inspiring things for me is that we have the technology to do it, at least with my kind of small lens on the industry. But we have the heat pumps and we have the things that will make us more efficient. And even at the grid level, the solar PV is so much more. It's so much less expensive than it used to be, that you almost have to pay a premium to continue with coal or something like that.
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Max Rohr: If you're going to build a new power plant, think that that's helpful on that. Outside of what I do day to day that inspires me on a bigger level is like the fossil fuel industry, and have to work so much harder to keep relevancy because the renewables are just better. They're not just it's like week, you know, pinwheel spinning that can't, you know, power a light bulb anymore.
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Max Rohr: Like you could do it with this technology. And it makes a lot more return on investment sense for people. And kind of like the code switch thing I said before, I think that that's what some of the politicians would say. Do I want to, like, risk my career to push through this coal power plant for more money or just kind of cave to the the eco crowd, as well as the people who just don't want to waste tax money.
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Max Rohr: And that part I think is big picture helpful.
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Nathan Kahre: There's some research done around this that if you can get people to make small commitments, it will.
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Nathan Kahre: Dramatically increase the likelihood that they will make larger commitments in the future. So our goal was always, how do we get people to engage and engage in small but meaningful ways? And then how does that lead to larger change in the future? And so that's where I go back and forth on this, you know, small personal action versus pushing for, you know, large government action to impact the large polluters.
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Nathan Kahre: And it's like, well, we need both, because if we can convince people that their small actions have meaning, then they're going to want to be engaged. When it comes to big action, big action, having even larger, you know, how do we how do we help people do both? We as a country said we're going to the moon. And we did like confronting climate change as our next moon, but we've got to want it.