The climate
burnout report

Executive Summary

Climate Critical® rejects the stale assumption that we can achieve our plans for a habitable planet without an intentional and enduring investment in the people giving their lives to the work. It’s well and good to have a pristine vision for change and matching demands to halt investments in planetary harm. But underlying that demand is an essential need to make space for the messiness of human scale restoration and repair. That requires that we, the people, create some norms, language and practices that consider the emotional costs of doing work for everyone on earth. Climate Critical® comes to this moment as co laborers, with you, who carry the need for care as indispensable to how we win.

This first report on burnout in our movement is the labor of a beloved community. Folk from 108 distinct organizations, groups, foundations across climate and environment participated. We conducted the survey leveraging decades of home grown relationships, and worked with colleagues to develop questions and focus groups that would not further trigger a community we know is hurting because we are in it, for the duration.

With our combined lifetimes of experience we are seeing some disturbing trends in the state of work in climate . We are witnesses to the toxic toll on bright minds burning out, and in several cases dying, rather than staying in a movement that needs us all. And we are witnesses to the multigenerational loss that represents, especially for people of color. Climate Critical® partnered with Third Plateau to begin to test the assumptions in these trends. We conducted what we hope will be a useful examination of burnout that considers the triggers, conditions and solutions. This exploratory study is focused on burnout in the climate and environmental change workforce in the words of folk experiencing it, now. We took care and intention to ask participants about the experience, causes, and coping mechanisms that they used to prevent or recover from burnout. And we asked our community what the barriers are to accessing prevention or recovery support. The report outlines major themes from that research.