Climate quitting: should you leave your job?

Climate quitting or, more broadly, conscious quitting: leaving a job because your employer's values don't align with your own, or because you think you could make more of a positive difference somewhere else.

I climate quit two jobs, and the data says I'm part of a growing trend.

In a podcast from the BBC, Luke Jones interviews others who quit their job because of the climate crisis.

In the first episode, we meet Catherine, who left her career as a food writer after the 2018 IPCC report on the climate crisis led her to despair. She started a business helping local communities create green spaces.

Gina worked as an air steward before locust infestations affecting her home town in Kenya made it impossible for her to continue working in a polluting industry that was making little effort to change. She's now training as a counsellor to help young people with their mental health.

Darlon worked as an engineer for Exxonmobil. As a grad in 2003, he was sure the company would transition from fossil fuels to renewables pretty quickly. Years later, he was still being asked to work on maximising fossil fuel extraction, with little organisational ambition to drive the transition. Darlon moved to an eco home and left his job; four years later, he works at a start up retrofitting homes.

Perhaps you've head of Luke's final guest, Paul Polman, former Unilever CEO turned sustainable business campaigner and author of Net Positive. Leaving his job wasn't as clearly linked to the climate crisis, but now Polman promotes the idea (which sadly does still need promoting) that businesses should have a net positive impact on the world around them.

For me, it was during lockdown that I started to get itchy feet. I didn't work in a particularly polluting industry; for years I'd looked after legal and compliance in-house for a group of property services companies. The job was interesting, well paid, flexible, and I worked with great people. I just couldn't shake the feeling that I could be doing more to help in the climate crisis.

In 2020, I started a degree in Environmental Science with the Open University. It was to indulge my love of the natural world rather than with a view to a career change, but spending so much time thinking about the effects of the climate crisis pushed me to leave a great job.

First, I followed Catherine's approach and the approach I associated with people dedicated to a cause: I quit my senior corporate job to go and work for a small non-profit.

For eight months I worked with local communities restoring rivers, ran apprenticeship schemes and looked after outreach. It was wholesome. It was also a mistake. The role was entirely wrong for me: it wasn't challenging me or making the most of my skills and experience. The pay cut and long commute were tough.

My brief stint in rivers

I started looking at how I could combine law with taking action on the climate crisis. I knew there were roles out there, but I didn't think they were accessible to me. The first in my family to go to university, I didn't have any connections and I couldn't afford to work for free or low pay to find an 'in'. So, I found a good recruiter, and it turns out the number of green jobs is growing. I climate quit the non-profit job.

Now, I work at an international law firm and specialise in renewable energy and sustainability. My clients and counterparties range from climate-related start-ups to multinationals, NGOs and states. The work is varied, challenging, and better suits my skills than wading through rivers (as enjoyable as the wading was).

And I'm not alone. As the climate crisis worsens, more people are joining work on reversal, mitigation, and adaptation. It requires privilege to be able to choose to change your job based on ESG considerations, but those lucky enough to have that privilege are voting with their feet.

KPMG recently surveyed 6,000 people and found that ESG factors are influencing employment decisions for almost half of UK office workers. Perhaps unsurprisingly, millennials and younger workers are driving the climate quitting trend. 92% of 18-24 year olds place importance on alignment of personal and organisational ESG values, and 14% of that age group are actively looking for an ESG-related job. 20% of employees (and 33% of 18-24 year olds) had turned down a job offer because of ESG concerns.

Another survey of 4,000 people by Polman's Net Positive found that 35% of employees (48% of Millennial and Gen Z) had already quit a job because the organisation's ESG values didn't align with their own, and 45% of employees would consider resigning for the same reason.

In the salary war between law firms, perhaps this finding is important: 48% of Millennial and Gen Z employees surveyed would work for lower pay to work for an organisation that shares their ESG values.

As conscious quitting gathers steam, organisations that offer ESG-focused roles, take ESG seriously and set ambitious targets (and deliver on them!) will have better employee retention and will be able to recruit talent from organisations that aren't making the same progress.

In the second episode of the podcast, Luke asks guests for their advice to people considering climate quitting. Here's mine: don't worry if you don't have connections in the field, and don't abandon your skills and experience - there will be a way for you to bring what you have to the climate movement.