Care or Career

Once I wrote an essay about the correlation between being poor, economically or socially, during upbringing and the tendency to feel responsibility for the environment later in life. The material was in itself too poor for me to make any conclusions and the essay didn’t pass the scrutinising eye of the nature science teacher that was supposed to give me the thumbs up. But – I still thought it made a good point, namely that among the people I interviewed, there was a feeling of responsibility for the environment, that the more fortunate didn’t acknowledge. Although it’s not up to me to judge the individual hell of every person (no doubt we all have our own), let’s pretend there is a division between us for now.

So, take a closer look at these people that so fervently fight for the rights of the environment, the human rights and the generations to come. What else do they have in common?

I don’t know much about other generations; I had a job at a place where the environment was in focus, and I didn’t understand at all where they were coming from. Flying everywhere, printing papers en masse, talking behind each others backs, constantly competing for affirmation of their work and being devoted to the old fashioned phenomena of hierarchy – how they execute their business doesn’t follow my thesis at all. But, hey, they weren’t all bad and there might be loads I don’t understand about governmental institutions. Point being, I felt lost being there, because I had expected them to be different than they turned out to be. Alas, don’t take my thinking too seriously; I don’t have any scientific support for it.

There are also those who have discovered the environment coming up on the agenda as a career opportunity. You can now pursue an exam in environmental studies like you used to do with, say, economy studies. There is no need for you to like it, or put your heart in it. Complete it, be a good student, and you can get a job with a big income. Start your own firm, call it something with “green” and it doesn’t really matter how good or bad you are at what you are supposed to be doing, because all your clients will be in such a desperate need of your services, they won’t bother checking how serious you are as long as they get some kind of certificate in the end. That’s nice, provided you are not the environment, a people in great need or among the generations to come.

So, what about those who actually care, who have a fire burning within them?