‘The problem is not that young people are eco-anxious. It’s that people in positions of power are not’: activist Clover Hogan

Studies point to a world that is becoming increasingly climate-anxious. A 2021 survey of 10,000 young people in 10 countries found that three-quarters of them believe that “the future is frightening,” and most predict that “humanity is doomed”. A 2022 survey found a fear of climate breakdown impacting young people’s mental well-being in 32 countries. 

So how should people respond to climate anxiety?

Climate activist Clover Hogan founded non-profit Force of Nature to help young people turn feelings of climate anxiety into action. She says that climate anxiety is not a negative phenomenon, rather a healthy psychological response. It is evidence that “we’re awake in a culture that tries to numb us and switch us off from the climate crisis.”

The problem, she tells the Eco-Business Podcast, is not that young people are eco-anxious, but that people in positions of power are not.

We have to reframe our understanding of eco-anxiety. It’s not a negative thing. It is evidence that we are aware and we’re awake in a culture that tries to make us sleepwalk, tries to numb us and switch us off from this crisis.

Clover Hogan, founder, Force of Nature

All too often the climate story is told in a way that freezes people into inaction. “We are constantly reading doomsday headlines about what’s going wrong in the world,” she says. The media either fails to mention climate change at all, or fear-mongers, says the 24 year-old activist, whose views have had influence over the boardrooms of some of the world’s most prominent companies. “There is no consideration for the impact that these stories have on people’s collective consciousness.”

Hogan, who grew up in Indonesia and started out in activism campaigning against the palm oil industry, believes that more effort should go into telling the human climate story. “We’ve got better at talking about climate in the context of net zero and 1.5 degrees of heating. But those terms don’t mean anything to the average person. Jargon is like the death of agency and action,” she says.

The best response to climate anxiety is through focused action, she says. “Impact comes from focus. What’s the one problem that ignites a fire in my belly and what are the skills that I have that I can channel into solving that problem?” 

Clover Hogan, founder, Force of Nature. Image: Flickr/Marc Accetta

Tune in as we discuss:

• The birth of a climate activist
• Does the future look like a techno utopia or a dying planet? 
• Real versus “shiny” climate solutions
• How to communicate climate chaos to children
• Is climate anxiety hurting fertility?
• The media and climate storytelling
• How does Big Oil internalise climate anxiety?

The transcript in full:

You first became concerned about climate change from watching nature documentaries at the age of 11. You’re now 24. What worries you most about the way the climate story is unfolding now?

We are definitely in a different place than where I would have forecast when I first learnt about the climate crisis. I first learnt about climate change through documentaries [at the age of 11], and I remember having a real turning point in my life when I declared to my parents over dinner that I wanted to become an activist.

I remember off the back of watching these films feeling heartbreak, anger and grief. Also a lot of confusion. I didn’t learn about the climate crisis in school or see it on TV when my parents watched the news. I wondered what the big secret was that all the adults in my life were in on? I figured most people must not know what’s happening.

And so that is really the challenge we have to overcome. If enough people understand what’s happening with the climate ecological crisis, of course they will be compelled to act, right? Who wouldn’t? 

And so I made it my mission as a communicator to sound the alarm, to aid in the efforts of climate scientists who have been talking about this for decades, and activists on the ground.

And, bit by bit, I became a bit more disillusioned by that idea. And I started to lose faith in the institutions and systems that we have entrusted with to solve the climate crisis.

When it comes to any big global challenge we look to systems of power, whether it’s people in politics or increasingly to big business – those who have created this crisis and think, okay, you guys are going to be the ones to solve it.

At the age of 16, I attended COP21 in Paris. I remember going in with starry-eyed optimism still thinking, “Ok, these are the people with the power who can make things happen.” But when I showed up to the conference, it was just left and right greenwashing. It was sponsored by Coca Cola and Shell and BMW, iconic polluters and contributors to the climate crisis.

I met policymakers who allowed no space for human emotions or how terrifying and overwhelming climate change is. They were really scripted and great at making commitments scheduled so far into the future that they require no immediate action.

And that was the first time I started to feel quite powerless and question if maybe the system is too broken – maybe we won’t solve this crisis.

But coming out of that, it really forced me to look for hope and solutions elsewhere. We’re now approaching COP28, the 28th session of the Conference of Parties. Surely we would have solved this crisis by now?

I think we can recognise that the tools and instruments we’ve been using from the past are not going to get us to the future that we all want to imagine. But I think against that backdrop, we’re in a weird place right now. Look at the swing to fascism and the right wing in Europe. We have a really terrifying election coming up in America, that could strip not just environmental protections, but a lot of people of their basic human rights.

We are in a pretty precarious position, even the UK. We have this election that Labour is assumed to win by a landslide. But we’ve even seen the Labour party, which is meant to represent climate progress and sustainability, backslide on all of its commitments. [Editor’s note: The Labour party has since won a majority at the 4 July 2024 general election.]

So I think a lot of people around the world today are feeling very disillusioned and lacking in hope.

We did some research a few years ago with young people from 10 different countries. It found that 56 per cent of them believe that humanity is doomed.

I think people are looking for new narratives and new stories. We recognise that the story that we have all had imposed upon us – one of limitless growth, one of neoliberal capitalism, one that commodifies our value as human beings and that commodifies nature – has gotten us into this mess.

And we are at this inflection point where all of these crises are unfolding and manifesting together – which is known as the polycrisis. And there is a real desperation to look for heroes and people who are going to get us out of this mess. But this moment in time really calls for us each to look upon ourselves and ask: What am I going to do? Am I going to be someone who sits on the sidelines? Or am I going to be someone who does something to try and tackle what are increasingly overwhelming and scary problems?

You have said previously that adults, mostly baby boomers, often have a vision of the future that is one of a tech utopia and flying cars and resource abundance, whereas when you talk to younger people, they see a future that is overwhelmingly negative, one of resource scarcity and a dying planet. What’s your current vision of the future?

The answer changes day to day, sometimes minute to minute.

To be perfectly honest, I have been feeling pretty downtrodden in the past couple of weeks seeing what’s happening in politics.

We have seen regulation weakening and progress devolving. So it’s hard to hold out hope in those moments or to feel very excited about the future.

But it is so incredibly important to recognise that many of our movements are defined by what we’re acting against, and are quite negative as well. Yes, we have to call out the problem. Absolutely. But too often, we are told what not to do. Don’t eat meat. Don’t buy fast fashion. Don’t drive a car. As much as we need to do that, we also need to really ask ourselves: What are we working towards and what does that world look like?

When I ask that question, for me, it’s a world that centres community and centres connection.

And if I looked at where I live in London, it’s a very busy, bustling urbanised city. I imagine: What might the city look like if we didn’t prioritise cars, but if we prioritised pedestrians? What would it look like if we focused on micro-mobility, people cycling and walking everywhere? How would that improve the quality of our air? What if we focused on creating green corridors that brought back biodiversity?

And for me, that is really compelling. But I think that this future is at odds with the techno-utopian vision that I often hear from business leaders, which I think in many ways stems from not really wanting to acknowledge the elephant in the room – which is growth-based capitalism.

There is still a very dominant philosophy, even within climate movements, that we can buy our way out of this crisis. That’s where we got a lot of net zero commitments and carbon credits. A lot of companies say: “Oh, we just have to throw money at this problem. We don’t have to fundamentally address the way that we create value or how that value comes to be.”

And it is why I get really frustrated with the airtime that certain solutions like electric cars get. Obviously electric vehicles will be part of this future of solutions. But they are still massively inaccessible [for most people]. They are largely a solution that lines the pockets of billionaires like Elon Musk.

I think we could have much better visions of the future if we ask different questions like: How do we redesign mobility? Then we can focus on mass public transport and micro-mobility, as I mentioned earlier, things that are accessible to everyone that make our lives better right now. The solution is not always the shiniest one. A lot of the solutions are right in front of us.

One other place that I go to for hope on weeks like this one, when I’m feeling a bit despairing about the world, is this resource called Regeneration. You can find it at regeneration.org. It was created by a scientist Paul Hawken, but it’s the work of thousands of researchers around the world. It goes from industry to industry, from fashion to energy to palm oil, to say: What does a transition out of these industries actually look like? What does a just transition look like? It calls out the bad actors. But more importantly, it shows what the blueprint is to change these systems and what the solutions are and who is already leading them.

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Terms like ‘net zero’ and ‘1.5 degrees’ don’t mean anything to the average person. Jargon is the death of agency and action, because we are talking above people’s heads.

Finally, we need to think about the role of social media.

So much of the content on our social media feeds is incredibly negative. We are constantly reading these doomsday headlines about what’s going wrong in the world, and we are not actually seeing on the platforms the millions of people who are already leading on solutions at the grassroots. They don’t have the privilege of showing up in many of the air-conditioned conference rooms that I do, talking about climate. They don’t get that spotlight or attention. But they are out there doing the work.

We need to focus on those stories and not just allow my vision or perspective of the world to be defined by a social media algorithm, which has a vested interest in making me feel, angry and fearful and keeping me in a reactive state rather than a more long-term and visionary one.

We recently interviewed Steve Melhuish, the co-founder of Property-Guru, who has pivoted to climate tech. He said that in Southeast Asia, there has been an obsession with EVs and that actually to tackle the problem in terms of solutions, we’ve got to think ‘more grassroot’. We’ve got to think more about where the big emissions are. Are there any climate solutions that spring to mind that you find particularly interesting or inspiring? 

I think anyone who is focusing on integrated solutions that really bring together the protection of nature and biodiversity and people being able to thrive in community. I think it’s really the balance of those two things.

Palm oil is an issue that I’m very familiar with, because I grew up in Indonesia. There was three months of every year when the sky turned yellow and orange from the smoke. Huge corporations were not only deforesting, but burning down massive swathes of peat forest that was millions of years old. Palm oil feels very personal to me. And I think we have all seen the horrifying images of what’s happening, particularly in Borneo.

But it’s also really reductionist to just say we just need to end palm oil production. There is a demand. There is a hyperinflated demand, and maybe we don’t all need to be eating Kit Kats and have 30 different brands of shampoo to choose from in the supermarket aisle, all of which have palm oil in them. But there is a demand.

And so the question becomes: How do we enable a just transition?

One solution that I find really exciting is integrated agriculture. If we do need a crop like palm oil, how do we do it in a way that does not involve mass forest clearing and monoculture? Which completely strips the land of all of its nutrients and is a really short term solution. You clear and cut, you grow palm oil, and the land eventually erodes away. Which is why you are constantly having to move on to new plots of land.

If instead you focus on long-term regenerative and integrated agriculture, which is to grow multiple things in the same area, and ensure that communities that have been driven into poverty are able to finance themselves, and able to live lives that they feel proud of, and they can send their kids to school and they can build community.

This is the thing. There are a lot of palm oil companies that have destroyed lives, and particularly Indigenous lives in places like Borneo. And there are also companies that come in and say, “Hey, we know you’re in a difficult financial position. We are offering you this solution to be able to support yourself and your family.” 

That is why it’s really important in all sustainability solutions to really think about who’s in the value chain, who’s in the supply chain, and how do we ensure a just transition? 

And again, how do we make sure that we’re not getting drawn into shiny solutions?

Look at biodiesel. I remember when Indonesia a few years ago came out and said, “We’re going to move away from fossil fuels because we have biodiesel.” And everyone said, “This is incredible. Woo. Props, Indonesia.” And then you read the fine print… It’s through the absolute annihilation of the Borneo rainforest through the growth of palm oil.

You always have to have a critical lens and question who’s going to be most affected.

It’s the same thing with electric cars. The massive spike in demand has led to huge human rights abuses throughout the supply chain, including from the mining of lithium and cobalt. There are people in the Democratic Republic of Congo who are working on less than two dollars a day to be able to mine the stuff that not only goes into electric cars, but also into our phones and computers.

Whenever we’re talking about sustainability, we have to think about who’s not in the room. And how do we make sure that they don’t get left behind as they have been historically?

There are lots of examples coming out of South America of integrated agricultural practices.

Another amazing case study is from Uganda, where there is a big national park that is home to the silverback gorilla. Back in the day, when the numbers of the gorilla were dwindling, the response was “fortress conservation” [which is based on the belief that biodiversity protection is best achieved with protected areas away from people], which is a very colonial manifestation of conservation – to just build big walls around this forest or persecute the people who are poaching these animals. And obviously it was very short sighted and wasn’t effective.

Conservationists realised that the people who are hunting these animals are not the problem. They are the symptom of a much bigger issue – they can’t finance themselves. So they focused on integrated agriculture. They created new revenue streams for people who then grew mushrooms and pineapples, and were able to sell those crops into the local agricultural system. That meant that the people who had been poaching silverbacks had an alternative revenue stream. And the numbers of the silverback gorilla rebounded.

There are lots of examples of where nature can thrive alongside people. We definitely need to tell more of those stories. And really tell the story of nature’s resilience. We focus a lot on its depletion and its destruction. What is so amazing, whether it’s a rainforest or a marine fishery, is that an area that’s been degraded can bounce back if it’s given space and time. But we just need to press the stop button on destroying these places.

I want to change tack a little bit. I don’t have kids, but I have friends who do. What really interests me is: What do you say to children about climate change? How honest are you?

Young people are going to find out no matter what. In my generation and generation alpha – the next generation coming through – there is this feeling of betrayal and the wool being pulled over their eyes. I think that with parents it’s not born from an insidious place. But I think a lot of parents want to protect their kids. And want to shield them from it. And the only way they know how to do that is just don’t talk about it. Just pretend it’s not happening. Or if their kid comes home to them anxious about what’s happening [to the planet], just redirect their attention somewhere else.

One of my favourite authors is Glennon Doyle, who wrote Untamed. She talked about her own child coming home to her after learning about the plight of the polar bears in school. She said, “Isn’t it sad that the polar bears are losing their homes?” Doyle didn’t know how to deal with the situation. So she invited her child to write a letter to the North Pole, to Santa Claus, just to make sure that the polar bears were okay. Then she secretly penned a response back to her child, saying that the polar bears are all fine.

In the writing of her book, she realised what a mistake that was. How her child completely saw through it. We go to funny measures to try and shield children. But I think we have to reframe our understanding of eco-anxiety. It’s not a negative thing, it’s a really healthy psychological response. And that is what every climate psychologist I’ve spoken to has said.

The problem isn’t that more and more young people are eco-anxious. It’s that more people in positions of power are not. That anxiety is evidence that we are aware and that we are awake in a culture that tries to make us sleepwalk and tries to numb us and switch us off from this crisis.

So when I hear young people expressing those emotions, I want to celebrate. It’s like, oh my gosh, you have an emotionally aware and intelligent child who is conscious of what is happening in the world, who wants to do something about it.

It’s that wanting to do something about it that is key.

That is where It’s really important that we’re sensitive in the way that we have these conversations – that we don’t try to minimise these feelings but legitimise them, that we are very honest.

I think as adults, we also want to have all of the answers. It’s okay as a parent to say, “I don’t know what the solutions are”, or “I need to learn more about this, why don’t we do that together?” And then critically say, “Let’s focus on something that we can do within our home, within our power, our influence.” So that you can channel those very rational and healthy, feelings into making a difference.

Parents can focus on small actions within the home, whether it is recycling or going plant-based, all the way through to “hey, let’s create a group in the school community where all of the kids can come together and talk about these feelings and then ideate different projects that they can lead on”. So it’s really about having an open and honest discourse.

I think also that social media contributes to this feeling of overwhelm, because never before have we had a constant stream of information, news stories, and there is the pressure of “oh my god, I have to be informed about all of the things I have to care about all of the things, and do something about them. That is just a recipe for spreading yourself really thin, and feeling really powerless. Because there’s so much we can do, and none of us can tackle all of it alone.

My encouragement to people is to realise that impact comes from focus. It’s not “I’m going to tackle palm oil and the energy transition and fast fashion and media and all of these things – I’m going to focus on what’s the one problem that ignites a fire in my belly.” And then “what are the skills that I have that I can channel into solving that problem?”

Whether you are – a problem solver, an innovator, a communicator, a mathematician, a gardener – whatever comes to you naturally, there is a place for you in the movement.

I think that’s true within family dynamics as well. Coming around the dinner table and saying, “Hey, what’s something that we can all collectively focus on that cultivates not only the feeling that, yes, my emotions are valid, which is so important – that’s true of like all mental health challenges – but also, there’s something I can do about it. 

You mentioned family. What do you say to couples who are so worried about the future that they don’t want to have kids?

It’s a very personal question. I would never want to dole out advice, because I think it is so different for each person that I speak to.

I remember the first time I heard this was when I was working in a classroom and I was chatting to a group of 13- or 14-year-old girls. One of them piped up and said, “I don’t want to have kids. I don’t want to bring them into a world defined by climate change.” It was quite jarring because I was looking at a child, a young person, and thinking, wow, the heaviness and weight that you are already carrying at such a young age. That can be really painful and sad to sit with.

But that reflects how so many young women feel. I think a lot of my friends share that same sentiment. If you do honestly sit down and read the science and what has been coming out recently – the prospect of exceeding 3°C, and what that means for humanity – it is really, really terrifying.

If we look to the more immediate term, say if [current Republican presidential candidate Donald] Trump gets back into power, we’re potentially looking at a country where it’s illegal to get an abortion, where you don’t have the freedom to decide what you do with your own body. I think at these moments call people to really question: Do I want to bring a child into this?

So I think it’s a very normal and rational response. But I think it has to really come from your own spiritual reflection on what feels right to you. And I think the one caveat I would say is that we have to make sure that our decisions are not just born from a place of fear, but also born from a place of hope and possibility.

I don’t think those things are at odds with one another. I think they exist simultaneously. When I feel grief, it’s because I have such a deep well of love for the earth and for my community. When I feel fear, it’s because I also have a lot of hope for what the world could be. And I am afraid of losing that vision.

So I think it’s okay to hold both.

And I think we have to think, how do I act not only from a place of fear and anxiety about the future, but also the world that I want to choose. And maybe that is one with children or maybe it is one without. But I very much stand in solidarity with whatever people choose to do, so long as it enables them to show up fully, and lead their lives in a way that feels aligned with their values.

Another thing that I think about a lot is the way the media portrays climate change, and the way that feeds into climate anxiety. Our newsroom wrestles with the idea that our content might be too depressing. We trot out stories, day after day, about what’s happening to the planet. And rarely do we have a positive story to tell. What sort of job do you think the media is doing of telling the climate story?

I think a lot of the media is still not reporting on the climate, unfortunately.

I had a very jarring moment two years ago. The UK was going through huge heat waves. All of the grass was yellow because we hadn’t had rain in weeks. In my own circles, I’m talking to climate scientists and they are clearly explaining the relationship to climate change, and how this is impacting UK weather patterns.

I went on the BBC [a British television broadcaster] and there’s a news reporter sitting in a backyard pool eating an ice cream going: “Oh my God, isn’t this weather glorious?” And I’m scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, waiting for the mention of climate change, which did not come.

Meanwhile, we have people dying from the heat and trains are melting.

I go onto the next article, and there’s someone on the beach, saying, “Oh my gosh, aren’t you lapping up this weather?” And I was like, what is going on?

And I went through 10 different links – no mention of climate change.

And so I put the BBC on blast on LinkedIn.

Fortunately, it got enough traction that they revised all of those articles and included references to climate change and actually interviewed climate scientists about what was happening.

But it was one of those moments when climate change was right on our doorsteps and the media was still failing to tell the story.

Now, the flip side to this is that in the wake of the fossil fuel industry spending billions on campaigning to delay climate action and discredit science, more and more outlets are now trying to sound the alarm. And they’re saying, okay, we have a responsibility to tell the story – we need to report on climate.

And at the same time, that storytelling is very limited. It is apocalyptic headlines and very much fear mongering. I’ve had conversations with the New York Times about this. They tell me that the more scary it is, the more dystopian it is, the more engagement they will get. So that is what ends up on the front page on the website.

But there is no consideration for what the impact that that actually has on people’s collective consciousness.

I think we are at this moment in time – whether it’s looking at the genocide in Gaza or the elections in Europe or what’s happening in the States – where we are so full up of fear and anxiety that – although it might be a reflex to click on that headline – we can’t actually process any more of those feelings.

At this point in time, I really don’t think it’s aiding our movement or our momentum just continuing to sound the alarm.

I think we need to move away from climate being a headline to weaving it into everyday stories.

So whatever you are reporting on, what are the relationships to climate?

There are going to the obvious ones like, it’s really hot today. But there are the less obvious ones as well. Climate for me is interconnected to everything – the food we eat, the clothes we wear, how we get around the places we live, how we relate to one another on social media. 

And so we need to be doing a better job of weaving it into the lexicon, weaving it into people’s awareness.

Netflix has been doing some actually really cool work around this and centering climate in these stories, whether it’s a passing conversation or key plot point in a film.

The other part is seeking out the stories of grounded hope. So not just spotlighting or hero worshiping an inspiring young activist, which there has been quite a lot of over the the years. But who are the people who are just on the ground getting on with doing the work? There are so many of those people and we are not hearing their stories.

We really need to humanise the climate crisis as well.

Another thing is I think we have really failed to make climate a human story. We’ve got better at talking about climate in the context of net zero and 1.5 degrees of heating. But those terms don’t mean anything to the average person. Jargon is the death of agency and action. Because we are talking above people’s heads. We are not bothering to actually talk to them.

Understanding what people care about and how climate relates to their everyday lives, how it is already impacting them is another really important element of this story. 

Executives who work for Shell, Exxon and other big oil majors… do they feel climate anxiety? How, in your view, have they managed to process it? 

When I first started out as an activist, palm oil was one of the first issues that I campaigned on. I remember learning about the bad actors, whether it was Nestlé or L’Oreal, and I used to make mockumentaries about them. So, silly things like, instead of showering with your L’Oreal shampoo under a beautiful waterfall, which is imagery that features is one of their campaigns, you would shower with orangutan tears. My storytelling skills were very nascent at this point!

But I remember at that time thinking, oh, they’re just these like big bad corporations. The people inside them don’t care. If we could just get rid of those people then we could solve these problems.

But I’ve had to swallow this bitter pill the more conversations I’ve had within businesses. Because I’ve come to realise that there are people who do care – not just a little bit, they care very deeply. For them it’s become the reason why they stay within these corporations. Often their kids have come home to them and asked, “Mum, Dad, what are you doing about the climate crisis?

And that has been a catalyst for them to say, “Oh my God, I have to do something. I have a responsibility.”

But what I have seen so often over the past few years of going into the boardrooms of these big organisations, working with the young professionals and everyone in between, is just how quickly that energy can be stifled and extinguished by how strong the dominant business-as-usual and status quo is within these organisations.

We have seen visionary leaders like the former CEO of Danone who really prioritised sustainability, face the metaphorical guillotine and get pushed out, because they were too radical, they were too visionary.

And, Paul Polman, who used to be the CEO of Unilever. He is often heralded as a sustainability icon. He did amazing things within Unilever. But he was also able to do those things because he kept financially growing the business quarter on quarter.

So it’s very difficult for people within these organisations to meaningfully address the climate crisis. And that is within the context of fast moving consumer goods companies like Unilever, P&G and Nestlé.

I’ve had very few conversations with oil companies, to be honest. The ones I have had, they’ve just told me of complete and utter denial. And the people I have met within those organisations, all of them have left those companies.

Once they’ve had that moment of realisation, there is no way for them to really stick around. Maybe within a renewable department of the company, but even then they’re aware more than anyone of the extent of greenwashing and denial that is taking place. For their sanity and morality, they’re not able to stick around.

There is still a real unwillingness for businesses to own up to their responsibility.

I was just writing about an experience where I went to an award ceremony for business leaders a month ago in Paris. I was there to “inspire them”.

I go up on stage and I start relaying the latest climate science and people in the audience genuinely started to boo and heckle. I was completely taken aback by it. I abandoned my script right away.

What snapped me out of my reverie was a woman in the front row saying that’s not fair. I’m sharing this climate science. I’m saying business is not doing enough to tackle this crisis and she’s saying “that’s not fair”.

And it really triggered something in me. I turned to her and I said, “Do you know what’s not fair? The fact that millions of people are already on the verge of death, if not dying, because of the indecision and inaction of people in privileged rooms like this one.”

“If you want to talk about fairness, let’s talk about fairness,” I said.

It was so jarring.

Afterwards, I was in floods of tears, because it is every childhood nightmare come to fruition, standing on a stage and being booed and pointed at by people 30 years my senior drinking champagne.

Someone messaged afterwards and said that it was like sitting in first class on the Titanic. And I couldn’t agree more. I actually said, “Can I borrow that line? It’s really good.”

But I had a few people after that say, thank you so much for speaking out. And I was grateful that the message got through, but I couldn’t help but wish that those people had actually said something in the moment, because I was looking into a sea of faces who were hostile and didn’t want to hear the science.

It’s hard being that person, but it’s a lot easier if you know there’s even one other person in the room who’s in solidarity and who’s got your back.

So this is my encouragement to people within companies who are questioning if they should stick around and try and create change from the inside, or leave and create change elsewhere.

Usually my recommendation is the latter.

Wherever you are, make sure that you’re being that disruptive voice. And critically when you hear that voice, whether it’s in a colleague or in your child, make sure that you’re standing up in defense and solidarity of that voice. Because this moment in time is calling on all of us to be outspoken, to call out business-as-usual, to not entertain this kind of denial and sleep-state that society has been collectively in for the past few decades. This is the moment where we really need to wake up.

And that’s not a comfortable thing. Oftentimes it’s a really uncomfortable thing. But that’s what every people powered movement has had to do in the past, whether it’s the civil rights, the suffragettes, the Stonewall uprising – these movements weren’t entirely peaceful. They definitely weren’t quiet. They required that we use our voices. 

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Solving the climate crisis is not a sprint. It’s not even a marathon. It is a relay.

We did a story recently on chief sustainability officers in big corporations and asked the question: Is the role becoming unsustainable? Because there’s a lot of CSOs we hear about that are burning out. But we need these people in place, don’t we? We don’t want them to leave, do we?

I think it really depends on the industry. I don’t think anyone should remain working within companies like Exxon or Shell to be perfectly honest.

They’ve proven year after year that they’re not interested in actually transitioning, whereas there are very inspiring, sustainable energy companies that are out there who are leading the way. So I think, leave the big oil and gas companies, go join the cool startups.

Some people say, but think about the influence they have, think about the resources. These are companies that have multi-billion dollar budgets and employ tens of thousands of people. But again, I think it has to be a really personal reflection. Yes, if you’re inside a company, you can arguably make a huge impact there, and these organisations obviously need those kinds of activists and disruptors on the inside.

But if that is going to exhaust you to the point of like apathy, then I would instead encourage you to go and use those skills within an organisation that is actually going to value them, where you feel like you can really make a difference.

And interestingly, the exodus of employees from some companies is serving as a greater existential threat or fear than even climate change. Paul Polman coined this term “conscious quitting”. I’ve spoken to loads of companies who’ve said, “We are really struggling to hire young people out of university or sustainability professionals because they just don’t want to work for us. We don’t align with their values.”

So I think that’s where we can really exert our influence as people within these organisations – by saying actually, no, this doesn’t align for me, and I’m not willing to do this unless I see some really radical change.

Tell us a about what you want to achieve this year with Force of Nature, your organisation, and how hopeful are you that you’re going to achieve those aims?

Force of Nature is the organisation that I started about five years ago. It was really born out of seeing eco-anxiety in my generation and recognising that this is a very valid emotional response. But also a lot of young people were falling into despair and feeling powerless because they didn’t have clear pathways to channel those feelings.

Tthe first thing that we did was create a workshop, a classroom template where young people could come together, connect over those feelings and talk about the ways they could show up in their community.

That has since evolved into a whole series of programmes that we run with young people that take them on this journey – not just from anxiety to agency, but also to recognising the skills that they bring to this movement. What is the problem that I’m passionate about? And most importantly, how do I do this long term?

Solving the climate crisis is not a sprint. It’s not even a marathon. It is a relay. It takes ongoing work from lots of us all collaborating together. And so helping young people identify how they turn this into a career that sustains their activism over the long term?

We’ve now worked with tens of thousands of young people. We’ve led global research on this intersection of mental health, mindset and the climate crisis. What’s next for us is really just scaling up these programmes. Force of Nature is now 13 person team and we have a network of young people over 60 countries.

We want to make sure that we are responsive to the needs of young people and are working with the whole ecosystem of partners to make sure there are opportunities for young people to exercise their newly found skills, to platform their voices, whether it’s working with events organisers on platforming young people or setting up youth advisory boards within organisations or working with education partners to bake what we’re doing into curriculum.

We are at a very exciting moment. I’m very proud of what we’ve built. And I’m proud of the fact that it is very much an organisation that is an expression of the very diverse young people that we seek to serve.

This transcript was edited for clarity and brevity