Monday 16 March 2009

Career environmentalism

I’m just back from my sixth Msc module, and the first I’ve attended for a while. The modules are 5 intense days' long; lectures and practical work all day followed by evenings in the pub of fired-up debate and discussion. Most of the people on the course are what you might call scientific idealists – hugely idealistic people suggesting far-fetched solutions that they actually have thought very deeply about, rejecting some of conventional green thinking because they don’t think it stacks up, and adopting other innovative solutions. There is so much experience from a wide range of professions, so much knowledge and so much enthusiasm that I look forward to each module as much for the inspiration it gives me as anything learnt in lectures.

It was a bit of a surprise then, in the middle of a long and involved debate about carbon trading, when the guy I was discussing it with admitted that the only reason he was on the course was because he thought it would be good for his career. My first reaction was indignation – how dare he dilute this bubble of ecotopian optimism with his career environmentalism! But thinking on it a little deeper I should have welcomed the news that people were signing up for this Msc simply because they see it as a way to make money. It will never be possible to educate sufficient numbers of people to make the magnitude of changes that are necessary to avert dangerous climate change, so we need market solutions that drive people, who otherwise would be indifferent, to seek work in the environmental field. And we need thousands of these people. That this is happening already – that people see the environmental sector as a growth area, that people are becoming what is sometimes disparagingly referred to as “career environmentalists”, is grounds for celebration not derision.

No comments:

Post a Comment