About this episode
Eugene Kirpichov’s journey is a classic Climate Swings origin story—15 years as a top-tier engineer in Big Tech (including Google), a viral 2020 goodbye note that detonated into a global call from thousands who wanted to act, and the founding of Work on Climate as a community that turned climate grief into collective momentum. But this conversation goes far beyond “career pivot”: Eugene lays out a startlingly detailed, systems-level diagnosis of the polycrisis—climate, inequality, democratic backsliding, AI risk, geopolitical fracture—not as separate fires to fight, but as one underlying failure of human collaboration, a modern tragedy-of-the-commons that rewards extraction and punishes regeneration. With bracing honesty, he argues that “more climate jobs” and market-only solutions won’t be enough—that what we actually need is a new kind of movement: professionals across every industry organizing as transformation leaders, building coordinated power, and rewiring incentives toward a genuinely regenerative economy. If you’ve ever wondered what real leverage looks like, Eugene offers something rare: a philosophy that bites, a strategy that scales, and a path from anxiety to agency—together.
Notes and resources
- Eugene Kirpichov’s LinkedIn
- Work on Climate
- Eugene’s Google farewell LinkedIn post
- Climate Swings interview with Astrid Atkinson, founder and CEO, Camus Energy
- Climate Swings Substack
Full transcript
Michael Ethan Gold (00:01)
Eugene Kirpichov, welcome to Climate Swings. It’s wonderful to have you here.
Eugene Kirpichov (00:05)
Thank you for having me. Glad to be here.
Michael Ethan Gold (00:08)
So the standard opening question that I like to lob at my guests is to ask you for a brief self-introduction, a couple of key points about your background and what you’re doing now in a nutshell.
Eugene Kirpichov (00:20)
Sounds good. So by background, I am a big tech guy. I think I used to say that almost all of my career was in big tech, but that’s not the case anymore. Now only three quarters of my career were in big tech because I’ve been running Work on Climate for five years now. So yeah, basically my path was that I spent about 15 years in different flavors of big tech between Russia, where I’m from.
And the US about half of that I was at Google. I was working on Google’s data processing infrastructure and spent some time at Google AI as well. And over time, I learned enough about climate that I had the moment of awakening and decided that it is morally and emotionally intolerable for me to keep working on something that has no bearing to solving the greatest problem that we’re facing.
And so in 2020, in summer of 2020, I met my colleague Cassandra, who was in the same boat, also at Google AI. And within a week of starting to talk about this, we talked each other into quitting Google together. And then I published a goodbye note. And the next morning, I see that half a million people have read my goodbye note. And hundreds of them are emailing me and saying that they want to work on climate too
because they are also feeling a lot of despair or grief or fear about climate and they want to do something about it. So that’s why we decided to start Work on Climate. We wanted to help these people and harness this passion. And we started a little online community. It looks like we struck a chord or hit a nerve or whatever you want to call it because the community rapidly grew to be the largest community in the world of this sort.
And that is still what I’m doing today. But there have been a lot of, you could say twists or swings in what that work actually means and how we do it. So I think we’ll get to that later today.
Michael Ethan Gold (02:21)
Eugene, I’m so happy. You might be the first guest that actually adopted my vernacular of swing rather than like pivot or twist. You said twist, but the swing is what I like to emphasize, especially in this podcast with guests like you. So we will get to Work on Climate, of course. And I think a lot of my listeners will probably be fairly familiar with it or maybe they’ve heard of it, they’ve come across it in their feeds, but let’s go way back
to your early days, you’re obviously born and raised in Russia, you were essentially a big computer geek basically in your college and education days and then in the early part of your career. So ⁓ what were your career motivations like? What did you see your career becoming in those early days in your education and you know, setting out your professional life?
Eugene Kirpichov (03:10)
Yeah, I was just having great fun. It was so I think by now that I’m no longer a software engineer. It is not so, you know, arrogant of me to say that I was a really fucking good software engineer. So I really, really liked doing it. I was very good at it. ⁓ I really enjoyed the experience of, you know, solving problems once and for all, like really, you know, cracking straight at the heart of a complex mess of problems. And then you find like just the right spot to hit it and the whole thing breaks down
into a thousand much simpler pieces. And, you know, it’s almost a spiritual experience when that happens. So I was having the experience over and over and over in different contexts. And I was really enjoying, you know, learning, ⁓ solving unsolved problems in the areas that I was working in. So my motivation was basically to keep doing that, you know, keep having, keep building, you know, my mastery of this, keep
doing things that haven’t been done before in that space. And certainly it wasn’t hurting that Big Tech plays absolutely obscene amounts of money that nobody should be making. But when you’re there, you don’t realize that nobody should be making that. So for me, it was nice to have, obviously, as well.
Michael Ethan Gold (04:28)
Yeah, Russia has a pretty strong culture of technology and especially computer programming, I think, right? So when you were growing up, I presume there was a strong element of the community that you were in sort of driving you in that direction, presumably, as well.
Eugene Kirpichov (04:45)
Yeah, for sure. I was, I studied at ⁓ one of the kind of main schools focused on, focused on math, physics and computer science in St. Petersburg. And I think this was really a big part of it. So we were all nerds about this at the school. So I did carry that sense of identity of, you know, being a nerd about math and computer science and bonding with my math and computer science nerd buddies about problems in this area. So
yeah, this is, it’s a really big deal, this sense of identity, I think this is really what keeps people ⁓ in their current jobs as opposed to impact work probably even more than golden handcuffs.
Michael Ethan Gold (05:26)
Yeah, I mean, I presume at the time there wasn’t really a sense that ⁓ you were interested in kind of doing something from a broader societal perspective, even though doing computer programming can obviously plug into many different aspects of solving societal problems. But like, what were the like early, I guess, like sort of roles that you actually held, say before you ended up at Google? What was kind of like ⁓ the main texture of your work at the time?
Eugene Kirpichov (05:56)
Yeah, it was really all software engineering roles. So when it comes to paid work, all of the paid work I did was software engineering. I did a bunch of it at Yandex, which is Google’s competitor in Russia and now much of Eastern Europe. I did some work at another cloud company. But ⁓ when it comes to impact work, so I think for a long time I had some inclination to the good. I think I inherited that from my grandma, like really a visceral sense of duty.
I was channeling that sense of duty into extracurricular activities. For example, while I was back in Russia, I was quite active in basically serving as an election observer during elections and seeing all the stuff that the Russian government is doing to falsify election results right there in front of my eyes. ⁓ Donating to different charities related to causes that they care about here and there.
But yeah, nothing that I was really going all in with my professional strengths.
Michael Ethan Gold (06:58)
And when you moved to the US, was that for the Google role or did you come prior to joining Google?
Eugene Kirpichov (07:06)
It was before Google. It was for my role with another company that I was with called Mirantis. And then about, I think, pretty shortly after coming, ⁓ I ended up moving to Google.
Michael Ethan Gold (07:12)
I see, and… go ahead.
I see, okay, so you came for a job basically and then that job became the Google job which is kind of very prominent on your resume obviously still and something that you’ve talked about quite a bit. ⁓
Did, when, I mean, when, I guess comparing the Russian context and the American context, and you said, obviously at that time in Russia, things were quite different and you could do things like, you know, probably go observe elections and whatnot. The sense of ⁓ your career being about impact and trying to do good, was that sort of when you started to cultivate that or was it still mostly about, I wanna just be the best damn software engineer that I can be?
Eugene Kirpichov (08:05)
I think it was more about the latter, but I think I sincerely believed that what I’m doing is good. Certainly I understood that I’m not saving the world with my work, but when I asked myself, why am I doing this? Why am I building this big data stuff? And I told myself, well, I’m doing it because it could be used for science. Or why am I doing this work at Google AI that is about efficiency of software systems? Well, because the systems that Google builds are good.
And if I make them more efficient, they will serve the world even better. So that is how I was justifying it to myself. And like in retrospect, that sounds ridiculous, but I really believed it at the time.
Michael Ethan Gold (08:45)
Well, I’m sure there are plenty of people who continue to, you know, still at Google or at these big tech companies who believe these, you know, these kinds of, ⁓ mantras, essentially these kinds of ideals about, about the work that they’re doing. And obviously when you moved over to Google, you believed it too. And Google has a, a, you know, highly vaunted, ⁓ sense of purpose among, you know, kind of its corporate history, at least maybe in recent years, things have changed a little bit, but at least in, in the time that you moved over, which I
Eugene Kirpichov (08:48)
Yeah. ⁓
They have.
Michael Ethan Gold (09:15)
I it was 2013, is that right? Yeah, so I think it was still among employees, the general public, leadership still considered a highly idealistic company. That’s pretty accurate to say.
Eugene Kirpichov (09:27)
Yeah, it’s,
yeah. And by the way, I don’t mean to, you know, cast dirt at Google. I still have a lot of respect for it. And I think a lot of my, a lot of my maybe work ethic, or maybe, you know, my sense of what is good actually was built through contact with really, really good and highly ethical moral people that I met at Google. ⁓ Just, you know, in retrospect, as I’m reflecting on like, what kind of force is Big Tech out there in the world?
And my perception of that is very different than when I was on the inside.
Michael Ethan Gold (10:01)
Now, so tell me about that move over to Google and the kind of work you did there.
Eugene Kirpichov (10:09)
Yeah, I joined Google in 2013. So I joined the team that builds Google’s large scale data processing tools. And before that, I’ve been reading their papers and basically all but praying to the stages of people who wrote those papers. So I was absolutely in awe when it turned out that this is the team Google wants me to join.
And it was pretty much just as fun as I thought. We were building new generations of data processing technology. Really fascinating stuff. Lots of problems that other people, for some reason, haven’t solved, probably because they don’t have Google’s unlimited resources. ⁓ Yeah, I don’t really know that there is much more to it. That’s what I was doing there.
Michael Ethan Gold (10:57)
And then you snap your fingers and seven years just like goes by in a flash basically.
Eugene Kirpichov (11:02)
Kind of, yeah. So I think the main, the only really transition point work-wise was when I shifted from that to working on Google AI. ⁓ I think I kind of concluded that I have done what I wanted to do in the data processing space and started looking for what else can I do. And at the time ⁓ machine learning and AI were really starting to pick up. So I like…
My partner had a big health issues at the times. So I spent a bunch of, I had a bunch of free time while taking care of her. And I did a lot of reading about it. And I was like, that’s cool. I really like it. And I think now I know I’ve learned enough that maybe I stand the chance of getting in one of those teams. And that is exactly what happened. So I applied to one of those teams internally and got the job. So then we were working on building.
We were working on building infrastructure that basically automatically makes all kinds of systems more efficient.
Yeah, most of it.
Michael Ethan Gold (12:02)
Alright,
yeah.
Right, but you didn’t end up staying at Google, obviously. You mentioned how in 2020 you went through a pretty significant career change. But I guess there were, I mean, these kind of like climate swings, as I call them, right? Like they seem to kind of like emerge out of nowhere, but they’re obviously like the product of like, know, everything that’s kind of built up from you basically, you know, since the very beginning. So can you talk about some of like the early exposure that you had to climate change, either in Russia or here,
Eugene Kirpichov (12:06)
I’m not a-
Mm-hmm.
Michael Ethan Gold (12:33)
in and out of your career, just what you were thinking about it up until, say, you know, the few years before that you decided to leave and found Work on Climate.
Eugene Kirpichov (12:43)
Yeah, so for a long time until maybe like 2016, 2017, I didn’t know anything about it. ⁓ Or at least I don’t remember thinking about it at all. Then I think my first contact with this was that my partner at the time was an environmental scientist. ⁓ And she held a lot of very strong opinions. And I think my reaction to those strong opinions was a little bit defensive on the inside. So I got exposed through that, but it didn’t propel me to any kind of action. I was like, that’s cool. You know, very interesting. Tell me more.
but I wasn’t really paying much.
Michael Ethan Gold (13:13)
And just to clarify, her
strong opinions were obviously like, this is a huge crisis, we need to do something about it, we need to take action. And you were like, alright, fine, go do that in your little bubble or niche or whatever, like that kind of thing, right?
Eugene Kirpichov (13:16)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah,
pretty much. It was fascinating to listen to, but that’s not how I developed a sense of caring about it. And then at some point I was flying on a plane from San Francisco to Zurich and I watched The Inconvenient Truth by Al Gore and started scratching my chin. Then I was flying back and I watched the sequel to The Inconvenient Truth and started really scratching my chin.
Then a few other things. I started learning more about it. For example, at one of Google’s internal trainings, I met Dave Fork, who is one of the climate energy scientists at Google. Google has people like that in house. So I met him and I asked him, like, Dave, is it really true what they say that it’s that bad? And he was like, yeah, it’s really bad. Somebody better do something about it. So I came in contact with Dave. I read some books. I read some pretty
you know, even more strongly opinionated books about it and just the whole thing added up to a sense of despair. Like, wow, ⁓ things are really falling apart. They’re really falling apart and it felt emotional, like it felt like I was, you know, staring Moloch in the eye. Moloch is the mythical deity that I think some people interpret this deity as like the force that makes
that creates evil out there in the world through actions of no one in particular. There is a famous essay called meditations on Moloch by Scott Alexander and it also made a big impression on me. So it felt like staring Moloch in the eye like I see this force that is destroying us through the actions of nobody who is in particular who is trying to destroy us and it was scary and really it was you terrifying and I didn’t know what to do.
So then COVID hit in the middle of that COVID hit. And like everyone else, I was also feeling very anxious that we’re all going to die. There’s this terrible virus going around. Everybody’s dying. ⁓
Michael Ethan Gold (15:29)
Like, Moloch’s
squared, basically, I guess, right?
Eugene Kirpichov (15:32)
Yeah, yeah,
Moloch squared. And then ⁓ I came across an open source project focused on building an affordable ventilator for the lungs. And through that project, I met some climate people, some of whom actually have been with Work on Climate since day zero. And then also around the time is when I…
saw that my colleague Cassandra from Google AI posted something on Facebook implying her interest in climate. I didn’t know she was interested. So I hit her up and we started talking and really basically one-upped each other into quitting very, very quickly.
Michael Ethan Gold (16:15)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We’ll get on to what happened next in a second, but I kinda wanna go back a little bit because I find it interesting how you characterize, you really didn’t have much of a conception about it until…
basically the Inconvenient Truth came along and then it became something that you really started to care about. And I mean, I don’t want to be presumptuous, but most of my guests are like American or educated through the American college system, basically, or Western European educated through that system. And I presume growing up in Russia, there’s ⁓ maybe like ⁓ a less of an understanding, less of an awareness about climate change essentially in the standard education and higher education systems there.
Eugene Kirpichov (16:56)
Yeah, I have, I don’t think I’ve met anyone who has uttered the word climate while I was in Russia. Yeah. There was zero, ⁓ nothing at all about it anywhere in my education system. And I think to this day, like most many, if not most of the people I know who live in Russia and who I have not indoctrinated myself, they think that it’s not a big deal or they think that it’s fake.
Michael Ethan Gold (17:01)
Right.
Hmm.
Interesting, yeah, well, if I can ever one day have Al Gore on this podcast, I’ll have to talk to him about how many people, you know, he’s caused the scales to fall from their eyes because, you know, people like you basically who didn’t come up in these kinds of systems where climate change was like part of the background noise almost, you know, maybe something that would be far off. Now it’s obviously not far off, but something that we should still care about. And so you really swung into it mentally at least through kind of this exposure, essentially like this one moment, this airplane ride
that
you took, which is quite unique. Now, let’s go back to that moment in 2020. So you’re working at Google still, we’re all working remote, people are feeling very lost, adrift, don’t quite know what’s coming next, uncertainty, and you worked for a ventilator. How did you find that opportunity? Like, where did that emerge?
Eugene Kirpichov (18:15)
Yeah, actually, that was actually when I already started starting my climate path. So I remember the cursor to that was that I was talking with my I was talking about my newfound climate concern with my teammate. And he said, like, I heard about this company that’s doing something about climate with AI. The company is called Camus Energy. So I like, that’s interesting. So I applied to them. And then I, you know,
Michael Ethan Gold (18:20)
⁓
Eugene Kirpichov (18:43)
I didn’t get the job, but I met some cool people through the interview process. And one of those people, ⁓ actually shortly after they interviewed me, they fired him. And he was like, Hey, Eugene, like I got fired from Camus Energy, but you know, enjoyed connecting with you. I’m actually involved in this ventilator project now. Do you want to join me?
Michael Ethan Gold (19:04)
Oh interesting.
You know, Eugene, just had Astrid Atkinson of Camus on my podcast recently. So I’ll have to send you that and we can link to that episode in the show notes too. She’s a very impressive, incredible, incredible inspiring person. ⁓ But anyway, that’s how the ventilator project got started. I mean, you can imagine a world in which you quit Google, decide that you’re kind of like gonna go straight into helping, I don’t know,
Eugene Kirpichov (19:20)
They’re also excellent.
You know?
Michael Ethan Gold (19:34)
⁓ improve public health or something, right? Because that’s like where the mission lies. But you said you’d already sort of started this climate journey, but were you still at Google at the time, like as an employee?
Eugene Kirpichov (19:43)
Yeah, I was still at Google,
so I was basically moonlighting on this ventilator project as a volunteer. And actually the reason I bring it up is that ⁓ the moment I started working on that project, my anxiety about COVID went away. And all of a sudden, instead of worrying how we’re all going to die, I was worrying about the bugs in the ventilator that my code has introduced and how to fix them. So completely different vibe. And I thought, wouldn’t it be nice if I felt that way, but about climate.
Michael Ethan Gold (19:48)
Mm-hmm.
Eugene Kirpichov (20:11)
If rather than thinking how we’re all going to die from climate disasters, if instead, you know, I was actually doing it. And, know, that’s kind of where I am now where instead of worrying about how we’re all going to die, I worry about California labor law and fundraising.
Michael Ethan Gold (20:26)
Yeah,
I feel like that’s really the magic key in a way. I mean, you know, we can all sort of point to the work that we do as ⁓ a ⁓ part of the solution to climate change, even if the individual job is not necessarily going to necessarily move the needle all that much. But for ourselves almost, when we think about how do we translate anxiety and fear into action, it’s the doing rather than the thinking, essentially.
Eugene Kirpichov (20:57)
Yeah, it’s the doing and it’s the being with other people.
Michael Ethan Gold (21:00)
Right, right, exactly. So, okay, so you and a colleague decided that you were basically going to take the plunge together. Did you feel like you wanted to start Work on Climate together or was that your project and then she had her project and how did that interaction ⁓ proceed?
Eugene Kirpichov (21:19)
Yeah, when
we quit, we didn’t know what we were going to do. We just knew that we’re going to dedicate some time to finding what we’re going to do. So Work on Climate came together organically. Basically, when we saw that so many people want to switch their careers into climate, we figured, why don’t we do something to help them? And we thought that it probably would be cool to create a community. So ⁓ Cassandra, with whom I was quitting together, she is…
⁓ absolutely superhuman at doing things quickly, like doing simple things quickly that are disproportionately effective. It was her idea and a lot about how we run it was her idea. She’s really brilliant. And we, yeah, so we started it and it took off.
Michael Ethan Gold (22:10)
Yeah, it took off from basically a LinkedIn post, is that right? That you said got half a million views.
Eugene Kirpichov (22:16)
Yeah, so that is how we very quickly built ourselves a climate network because among these people who were reaching out, maybe 80% of them were people who also want to work in climate, but 20% were people who are already doing something important in climate and they were like, how can I help? So yeah.
Michael Ethan Gold (22:35)
Right, yeah, yeah, I
mean, lot of the people that I talk to kind of have to get over their imposter syndrome, I guess, you know, to put it bluntly. Did you feel like you were kind of ready for this when you first started? I mean, how did you kind of like become a climate practitioner, get the knowledge and the sense of expertise ⁓ to make yourself feel comfortable, to really take that hard swing?
Eugene Kirpichov (23:02)
Yeah, so honestly, I’m not a very humble guy. So I didn’t feel that much imposter syndrome at the time. I felt that this is new and exciting. It’s like a candy store of things I can learn and people I can learn from and possible things I can do. And I think I had a lot of actually misplaced confidence in where I can really make a contribution. It took me a while to really unlearn that the confidence of an experienced software engineer
about just how much they know about the world and how to fix the world’s problems. At the time, I had not unlearned it. So at the time, it was just really exciting talking to people and learning stuff. And I think I built most of my ⁓ understanding of how climate-related systems really work just from talking to people. There was actually not even that much reading. It was mostly talking and then maybe like reading a paper or two related to what they just talked to someone about.
Michael Ethan Gold (23:58)
Was this talking and learning that you were doing ⁓ when you were still at Google or you kind of left already but like what was there I mean I presume like there’s kind of a gap between the work on following full-on Work on Climate you know sort of inception and your exit from Google is that right?
Eugene Kirpichov (24:14)
It was basically immediate at the same time. So both of these happened in July 2020. I think maybe we like, maybe I, you know, my formal last day at Google maybe was in August, but before that was a period of not working, just a period of vacation. So it was basically immediate. Yeah.
Michael Ethan Gold (24:35)
How did you decide who to talk to, where to turn to, the people that you wanted to connect with? I mean, was it mostly just incoming from that LinkedIn post or how did you structure that?
Eugene Kirpichov (24:47)
Yeah, was incoming from that LinkedIn post plus asking them, you know, who else should I talk to? And just using our judgment about what seems interesting. For example, at some point we thought that like maybe there is something in climate finance and climate risk that software engineers like us could make a difference in. And so we like started paying particular attention to people who are in that space and asking, you know, following their leads more closely.
And throughout this time, actually Work on Climate was more of a hobby project. We were spending maybe like 50% of our time on that and 50% exploring what we’re really gonna do. And then it was not until the end of 2021 when actually Cassandra Lerde left Work on Climate, she ended up taking a software job in climate. But me, I realized that like what kind of force, positive force out there in the world it could really become.
If it goes beyond just helping individuals in the community, it kind of dawned on me the kind of systemic impact it could have. And then I went all in and then it was 100% of my time from then on.
Michael Ethan Gold (25:54)
Gotcha. Well, do you still have that LinkedIn post? I’d love to share it in the show notes so people can take a look at it. Excellent, great. Well, we’ll handle that after the recording. So between 2020 and 2022, it wasn’t a full-time thing for you. I mean, how did Work on Climate actually form as a group, an organization, a community? I mean, I don’t even know what you really call it now.
Eugene Kirpichov (26:01)
Go for it.
Yeah. Yeah. The way it formed is so we decided that we want to do it. And then as we met some people we liked throughout this process of constant networking, we asked some of them, like, do you want to do it together with us? And several people said, yes. So that forms the original Work on Climate team, which later became the Work on Climate board. And just over time of its development, it was ⁓ an escalating level of organizational development. It started from this,
you know, tiny volunteer team of people who have never even managed the team, none of us, much less been involved with a nonprofit. And then at some point, you know, we recruit more volunteers. At some point, there are so many volunteers that we need to form teams of volunteers. At some point, we start needing team leads. At some point, when I go all in, I start fundraising. And now, you know, it’s time to hire the first staff person. At some point, it’s time to hire the first full time staff person and so on.
So it’s a hobby project gone way too far.
Michael Ethan Gold (27:20)
Yeah, mean, ⁓ you as a software engineer who never managed a team suddenly found, it’s a nonprofit, right, like 501c3 officially. ⁓ Was it just, you know, like drawing from the wells of self-confidence that you have and learning by doing, just starting to like, you know, Google a bunch of like, how do you start a nonprofit or like was there, yeah, just walk me through that process a little bit more. ⁓
Eugene Kirpichov (27:42)
Yeah, it was
a lot of it was drawing from the wells of very misplaced self-confidence. I think only now I’m starting to actually understand how to really run a nonprofit. So there was a lot of falling on my face and there was a lot of falling on my face where everyone else sees that I’m falling in the face, but I don’t see it. So it was, it was a rocky path for sure. But yeah, throughout this path, like how did I learn? Yeah, I learned by doing, learned by talking to
much smarter people that I’ve met, learned by having people on my board who were at least kind to point some of the things that I’m doing wrong and that I could be doing better. I had a board member, Richard, ⁓ who I think among all the people I worked with, he’s probably in top three people who have influenced me the most. He has the wonderful combination of being very kind, but very direct, very direct.
If I’m messing up, he’s going to tell me exactly how I’m messing up and he’s going to tell me that I should be doing it differently. So it often would take him many times to get something to get through to me. But eventually it got through to me. A lot of it got through to me when Richard was not no longer even on our board, but I’m very grateful to him.
Michael Ethan Gold (28:56)
Do you remember a specific piece of advice? Actually, mentorship is one thing I like to explore sometimes in this podcast when I have time to ask a guest about it. So this sounds like a really interesting case study. I mean, you brought up Richard. Richard, can you share his last name? Richard Kim, okay. What did he actually tell you that you feel like ⁓ was the game changer if there was anything like that?
Eugene Kirpichov (29:09)
Kim. Richard.
⁓ let me think there, there were, there were many things. So, ⁓ there was, ⁓ I think he helped me get into the mindset of prototyping and experimenting while in my, my whole engineering career, I was solving things, you know, once and for all, ⁓ I come up with a, you I look at the complex problem. I realized how to really solve the whole thing. And then I just build that.
And I thought that that would work in the realm of building a nonprofit that serves people. Obviously, it doesn’t work. So there were many, many times when Richard was telling me, Eugene, you have this ground strategy, but how do you know it’s going to work? And I’m like, well, I just know. I think it’s going to work. ⁓ Get off my back, Richard. And then it wouldn’t work. And eventually, it got through. So that was one thing. I think another one was just ⁓ pointing out how basically, ⁓
Richard was not the only one who was having those questions and I don’t think that at the time I was reacting in the most healthy way to other people’s critique and Richard was pointing out that like Eugene like this person they actually have a good point, you know, quit steamrolling over them.
Michael Ethan Gold (30:35)
So I
guess that sort of leads me to ask the question of like, was your vision for Work on Climate at the time? I mean, you know, when you first started, seemed like this kind of snowball effect, almost an accident, if I may say so. How did you envision like the first five years of the organization, you know, when you first were starting it out and getting your board together and whatnot?
Eugene Kirpichov (30:53)
Yeah.
Yeah, so the moment when I decided to go all in was probably in December of 2021. At the time, was actually doing a little bit. I was trying to do a climate and AI startup together with someone else and then later by myself when our working styles didn’t align. And I was thinking, no, I really need to go all in on this climate AI startup. And therefore, I need to hand over Work on Climate to someone else. I even told my board, like, guys,
I’m going to do the startup, I’m leaving, I’m going to help you with the transition. And then I spent two weeks just sitting and thinking, how do ⁓ I should write the strategy for Work on Climate so that the next person doesn’t mess it up, so that my infinite wisdom does not get lost. So I sat for two weeks and thought about it. And what I thought about at that time is that,
like, wow, if we ask ourselves how many people need to be doing something different in order with their work to solve climate change, that is measured not in a few thousand people, but in hundreds of millions of people. It’s really, you know, the whole workforce needs to be doing something different and rebuilding their industries. And then the vision came to my mind that like, imagine if every school taught people about how to work on this, right? Like if it didn’t just teach people about climate, but if it’s
taught people about how to build solutions to climate, to the climate crisis. If every conference in every industry had a climate track, if every job had a filter for climate jobs and a job board have the filter for climate jobs. So I wanted to integrate climate work into the world of how people find work and how people get ready for work. So I got really inspired by this vision and came back to my board and said, no, just kidding, I’m back. I’m going to be doing this for the rest of my life.
Michael Ethan Gold (32:49)
So it was in
the process of getting ready to hand it over to somebody that you realized, wait a second, wait a second, I’m actually the right person for this.
Eugene Kirpichov (32:59)
Yeah, yeah, it was pretty much that.
Michael Ethan Gold (33:01)
It was the, again, drawing from that infinite well of self-confidence, very admirable trait. ⁓ So how did funding work, especially in those early times? I mean, you said it was essentially volunteers at first, people just putting in their time. How did you actually start to get a proper self-sustaining business model together?
Eugene Kirpichov (33:06)
Thank you.
I started asking my buddies for money. ⁓ yeah, it did not come easy to me. I think we probably got our first check ⁓ in probably in April of 2022 from somebody who was a longtime member of Work on Climate and the founder of a climate startup. So that was our first check. If I remember correctly, maybe $10,000.
Michael Ethan Gold (33:25)
That can work, I suppose.
Eugene Kirpichov (33:46)
⁓ which you know, it’s something. Then I started, it was a lot by the time. And I started thinking about how to really fundraise for this. So recruited some volunteers in the community, one of whom later ended up working with us for a period of time as our first paid staff, Nicole. And then, ⁓ yeah, then it just became clear that I need to go around and ask people for money.
And I would, you know, we made a pitch deck. I started going to people and telling them like, imagine if the whole workforce ecosystem had climate embedded in it. And many people were inspired by this vision. They were also inspired by what the community has accomplished. And they would give us money. This was also still largely during COVID when a lot of people were, you know, their minds were on social impact. So there was that. And we raised some money. And then at some point we came across the
Cisco Foundation who really liked our work. And that was our first six figure check. ⁓ yeah, that’s basically how. And ⁓ fundraising also took me a long time to learn how to do it. I’m still, I don’t think I’m anywhere near the people who are good at it for now, but you know, we get by and I’m learning and I’m now in the company of people who actually are good at it. So I’m learning from them.
Michael Ethan Gold (35:10)
So you continue fundraising through, I guess, you know, philanthropic kind of concerns and just those kinds of avenues, essentially. It’s like a regular cycle still for Work on Climate, is that right?
Eugene Kirpichov (35:17)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. We’re currently maybe like 99% philanthropically funded. We’re trying to grow the 1% to something like 20%, but given the type of work that we do, it’s never going to be 100%.
Michael Ethan Gold (35:33)
Right, so let’s talk about that 1% then. What is the other sort of aspect of Work on Climate that is sort of actually business model oriented?
Eugene Kirpichov (35:43)
Yeah. So right now we have a program for Work on Climate members. That’s called Find Your People. It’s a program that helps people find, helps people who are new to climate build a community of peers and like-minded people around them. So it helps them meet the right people for them. And it costs $15 a month. And right now I think we have, if I’m not mistaken, like 22 or 25 people paying for it. So it’s certainly not anywhere near Work on Climate $700,000 per year budget,
which is, you know, ⁓ it’s a small nonprofit. It’s not a lot, but it is a lot more than we’re currently making in earned revenue.
Michael Ethan Gold (36:21)
Yeah, and then obviously, you you talked about the $700,000 of your budget. Let’s talk about the full scope of the Work on Climate programs and initiatives now. So you have like the one essentially revenue generating piece and then what are all the other? I know you have a jobs board, you have a Slack channel, like, yeah, paint that picture, please.
Eugene Kirpichov (36:26)
All right.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah. So really ⁓ what we do for people through our programs is we help people meet the right people and get the inspiration, the knowledge and the exposure to opportunities that they need to turn their work into lever for climate. And that happens through a variety of programs. So yes, we have a ⁓ Slack community where people can talk to each other, can ask questions, introduce themselves or talk to people who have introduced themselves and so on.
We also run hundreds of events and workshops and thousands of people come to them that are featuring success stories of people who have started using their work as a climate lever or founders and so on, various kinds of educational events and workshops. We have a mentorship program where you can simply come and book time with people who are ⁓ experts in some area of climate for free. It’s right there on our website. It’s called Expert Office Hours.
We’ve been experimenting with a few other programs. We have been running a peer mentorship program. Basically, you huddle up in a group with a couple of buddies, and you go through a structured cadence of activities together. We have some programs for founders, also piloting them. And so that’s what we do now. ⁓ That’s what we have been doing until this point. But right now, we’re going through a significant change in how we approach our work.
And this change was also precipitated by a big change in how I see and what it takes to solve climate change that happened over the last year for me. So maybe it will be interesting to talk about that. Yeah, sounds good. So a year ago, I think almost exactly a year ago, I came across a podcast by Daniel Schmachtenberger.
Michael Ethan Gold (38:13)
Don’t leave us hanging, please.
Eugene Kirpichov (38:26)
So Daniel Schmachtenberger, I don’t know what to call him. I think the best thing to call him is a philosopher. But he talks a lot about the concept of the polycrisis and meta-crisis. ⁓ For those in the audience who don’t know what this is, basically the polycrisis is the idea that we’re facing so many crises at the same time, climate change, breakdown of democracy, rising inequality,
existential risks of AI, breakdown of global collaboration that could lead to a war and so on. So we’re facing so many crises that we stand zero chance of solving them all one by one, at least if we solve them one by one. One of them is gonna kill us all. The concept of the meta-crisis is the good news to that, which is that they’re really the same crisis. So they’re all the same crisis, which is our ⁓ lack of ability to solve collaboration problems as humanity.
So all of these are really just different instances of the problem that I know the prisoners dilemma or the tragedy of the commons where there is a big problem. And if it’s just you acting, it makes sense for you to screw everyone else over. If everyone does that, everybody is screwing themselves over. And if people just collaborated, it would be good for everyone. So this is the good news. Anyway, so that plus. ⁓
The other things that he talks about in his podcast really gave me a better view of systems thinking. And I again, you know, stared Moloch in the eye, but this time it was a lot scarier because this time the answer of, we just got to get enough people into climate jobs was not adequate to the task. We’re not going to solve this by getting people into climate jobs. And we’re not going to solve this by building climate companies. This, is
not really counteracting the kinds of forces that we’re dealing with. An analogy that comes to my mind these days is, you know, if you’re trying to, if you want to fly and you approach flying by, you know, growing a lighter horse without realizing that what you really need is an airplane and building an airplane requires an entirely different approach and technology. So ⁓ for some time I was wondering, am I even doing the right thing?
Should I even be working on Work on Climate? Or should I be, you know, should I again, hand it over and find a way to work on something that has the potential to counter the systemic forces? You know, the forces of extractive capitalism. And I imagine some people in the audience, you know, they might do not like, oh, this guy’s talking about extractive capitalism. Here we go. Another activist. But like, seriously, that’s what it is. This is the gravity.
You know, the gravity that pulls things down on Earth. This is the force that makes it make sense for everyone to destroy systems instead of ⁓ and just extract profit while we can, as opposed to banding together to restore the health of the systems that everything depends on. And ⁓ no amount of building profitable climate startups can change this. You’re not going to point the gravity upwards by building a lighter horse.
It requires a different technology. So after some amount of soul-searching, together with our board and team, who all were really resonant to this idea that, yeah, what we’re doing, not going to work, we realized that there is a couple of answers to what we can do about this after all. So one answer is that rather than helping people find existing opportunities,
in climate, we need to help people become leaders of ⁓ transformation leaders of systemic change within their companies within their industries and within their communities and other spheres of influence. Because really these you know, 35,000 people that are in our community and you know, anyone who is listening to this podcast, you are more than a talent pool, right? You’re not just a place that startups can hire from you have so much more to offer. Because people in all industries, they know
it’s not just skills that they bring to the table, but also authority, influence among their peers, understanding of how to make things make business sense in their industry, knowing the right people in your company and in the industry and so on. So what this really is, it is a source of power. It’s not a source of skill, it’s a source of power, not necessarily in the political sense, but in the sense of moving things in the world.
Not just doing something that somebody pays you to do, but really transforming things. And so our new approach is all about that. And then you ask, we ask ourselves, you know, power to what end to build what kind of world where really, you know, where gravity points up and where the economy is not extractive, but, you know, something that constantly regenerates itself. And the answer is a regenerative economy. This is a fascinating concept.
When I came across this concept for the first time, I ignored it because I didn’t get it at the time. Just, you know, how screwed we are and how important is the concept that I’m looking at. The second time I came across it, it was at the right time when I was soul searching. And this is the idea that, ⁓ and in an economy, all economic activity must strengthen the health of the systems that the economy rests on. The economy that we have today is built in the
⁓ assumption that it’s sufficient that, you know, transactions are good for one person and good for the other person. And it assumes that if we just do that, you know, the health of the systems will follow, or more like what it really assumes that if we just do that, let’s not talk about the health of the systems. We don’t talk about it here. And the regenerative economy, it’s based on the principle that no, like the economy must be structured so that all activity does this by nature automatically.
Not because people want it to be good, but because that’s the only kind of activity that makes business sense in this type of economy. Just like, for example, in our body, the purpose of ⁓ all activity in our body, all metabolic activity, all other kinds of activity, its purpose is to keep our body healthy and alive so that we can accomplish meaningful things. ⁓ The point of activity in our body is not to make blood go as fast as possible,
and it’s not to grow a very large kidney. In fact, if you grow a very large kidney, there is a good chance that you’re going to die and your kidney is going to die with you. Right? So the regenerate, the concept of regenerative economy takes this concept to the whole economy. And how can we build an economy where this is true? And it’s not really, you know, that hypothetical. It’s not that much of a pie in the sky idea. We have had economies like that for most of the history of when humanity had economy.
The modern Western economy is not like that. But for example, ⁓ you know how many indigenous societies lived, that’s what they did. You know, their economies were constantly regenerating the health of the systems that they live in. That was a core principle. And there have been many, many principles throughout humanity, many cases throughout humanity’s history, when we solved these tragedies, tragedies of the commons. In fact, an economist named Elinor Ostrom
got the Nobel Prize in economics just for documenting how we did that. It’s doable. We have simply lost the art of how to do it, or more like we’re simply not doing it. And we could do it. And if we did it in combination with the incredible powers that we have developed now, the technology that we have, the infrastructure we have, the way that AI can accelerate, all of that, ⁓ we’re
stand a real chance of solving this thing, but we got to apply the right tool and the right tool is the concept of regenerative economy. So ⁓ I apologize for talking so long about this. I hope that this is helpful. So what we’re doing now with Work on Climate is asking ourselves, how can we mobilize the power of people across all industries to together transform their industries to be regenerative, to have this trait of improving the health of the systems in which they exist?
Michael Ethan Gold (46:48)
Wow, well that was ⁓ quite a a discursion I would say. ⁓ I guess, I mean the goal is worthy and big. What are the actual practical steps that you and Work on Climate are taking?
Eugene Kirpichov (47:05)
Yeah, the steps that we’re taking are roughly as follows in order from very concrete and understandable to the longer term vision of how it will really create that kind of transformation. So what we’re doing right now is we’re changing our programs to changing our programs from helping people find existing opportunities to helping people become leaders and helping people ⁓ build relationships with each other because it’s impossible to lead alone.
And as cliche as it sounds, it really is impossible. You’re going to face too many setbacks. So you need to do it together with other people. You need to do it together with other people who are in the same ecosystem as you, in the same industry and in the same place. And you need to be collaborating with each other. the first layer is this ⁓ leadership development and ⁓ community building, relationship building to an even greater extent than we did it before. The next layer is coordinated action.
So getting groups of people who are in the same ecosystem, in the same industry and in the same place, but in different parts, at different leverage points in the system, getting them to act together towards a common vision. And this is how systemic change happens. If you read one of the very few books about how to actually do systemic change, this is how, like this is the methodology. You get people in the same ecosystem to act in coordination and really this is it. That’s what you do. So this is the next layer.
And then the next layer after that about how do we create, you know, systemic change with this level of transformative potential to, you know, not just, you know, decarbonize buildings, but to make buildings, the whole area of buildings regenerative to make the economy regenerative to really flip the incentives upside down. Well, that requires something more powerful. So that requires us to build these kinds of coordinated action networks that are not simply about reducing emissions, but are about changing incentives.
And for that, we need different or new types of networks. We need the types of networks that Elinor Ostrom was writing about. And I think we’re going to need many types of networks and ecosystems that have not yet been invented, but that is the task ahead of us. So the path for us lies like this, you know, activate people and like weave this fabric of the movement. Then, you know, demonstrate that we can get things done together through the power of this movement and then start getting really powerful and innovative things done together through these networks.
Michael Ethan Gold (49:32)
So it really sounds like the whole concept of working on climate is a little bit of ⁓ a red herring in a sense. I mean, what you’re saying is that it’s not about finding a climate job, starting a climate company, putting climate in the top of your LinkedIn profile. It’s really systems change at the fundamental root and branch level.
Eugene Kirpichov (49:55)
Yes. Yes, I will actually say a little bit more about that. So to those of us who think that the way to make the biggest difference for climate is to find a climate job, really to win a climate job, considering how competitive they are and how few of them are remaining. I say, don’t do it because this is like restricting yourself to this choice. It’s bad for you because you probably won’t find one.
And it’s bad for climate because even if you do, all you did is make sure that someone else doesn’t get the job. So there are some rare cases where it really is a good idea for you to be looking for a kind of a pure climate job at a pure climate startup, working with pure climate people. And the case when that is true is when you really bring something unique where if the company hires someone else, they will be really missing out. For example, if
let’s say it’s a climate startup doing the carbonization of making low carbon concrete. And you are an experienced salesperson who has spent your whole career in the construction industry. And you have relationships with everybody who buys cement and you know how to sell to them. You know what they need. So if it is you in the position of the salesperson of the company, it will be a game changer for them. With you, they will be successful.
Without you, they will have to do with something less. Then, yes, by all means, go and you are the unicorn who should be looking for a pure climate job. ⁓ If you are, for example, a UX designer, I promise you that climate startups who need UX designers, they can find a UX designer. It’s a disappointment for you if you don’t get the job, but climate is going to be fine. And I don’t know if I’m going to make some enemies by putting it this bluntly, but really, they’re going to be fine.
So it is ⁓ much more important for you to ask yourself, where can I make the biggest difference compared to someone else who would be doing that work? And let me give a couple of stories. I know, Michael, we’re going to be over time, but hopefully that’s okay. So one story, ⁓ my friend Kyler. Kyler, he’s a finance guy. And when he was looking to do something about climate,
Michael Ethan Gold (52:04)
Totally fine.
Eugene Kirpichov (52:18)
certainly, he could have been looking for a finance role at a climate startup. But most of the time, ⁓ for those roles, they’re going to be fine. Most of the time, it’s not the hardest part. Sometimes it is the hardest part. For example, CFO level people who know how to do project finance for first of a kind manufacturing facilities. Yes, if that’s you, you’re worth your weight in gold, go please find the best company that’s going to use your talents the best.
But most of the time, that’s really not the hard part. So what he did instead is he joined the building inspection company that wasn’t doing anything about climate. And as part of joining them, he got them to start a line of business focused on inspecting buildings for the possibility of energy efficiency retrofits. If they hired anyone else, they wouldn’t be doing that. But because they hired him, he has made the difference. Because they hired him, now they’re doing this. Another good example,
our vice chair of the board, Zoe Samuel. She was a UX content strategist at Google, nothing to do with climate, nothing to do with being an executive or anything like that. So she didn’t have any appreciable degree of power in the naive sense of the word there. And what she did, she started Google’s community of employees focused on climate called Anthropocene. And they weren’t simply making strongly worded statements to executives to please do less AI
or please recycle our trash and compost our food waste in cafeterias. Instead, they were working and still are working with Google’s business executives to help incubate climate-focused features, products, and lines of business. And they’ve played a big role in the fact that today, over half of the projects at Google X actually are focused on climate. So Google is using is not just being less harmful
because somebody led a successful campaign to recycle your trash or because somebody convinced Google to do less AI or like to invest in energy efficiency of that. But Google is using its power to drive climate solutions. Certainly, I think everybody would wish that they’d used it even more. It’s using a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of its power, but it’s still a lot. So great example as well. And the third example I’ll give
so somebody I talked to is an architectural photographer. And also she was looking for a way to make climate impact. If she was looking for a climate startup that really needs an architectural photographer, but just can’t find one. And you know, if not for her, they’re going to be left without an architectural photographer to die out there in the cruel world. It’s not a thing, you know, nobody’s, no startup is hiring an architectural photographer most of the time. So.
She was wondering like, what do I do? Am I, you know, shit out of luck here? And the answer is no, because as an architectural photographer, she works with architects and she works with asset building owners and so on. So what she can do is ⁓ learn how do green solutions, climate solutions look like in the built environment. And then next time she comes to a client, she can be like, you know, nice building you got here.
⁓ Did you know that actually if you install a heat pump in this kind of building, will probably in this kind of climate, it will probably save you this much money. I have five other clients who have done this, I can connect you. So this is an example of how somebody who, you few people would associate an architectural photographer with power and influence, but it is right there. That power and influence is right in front of our eyes there.
Michael Ethan Gold (56:00)
So you are essentially trying to create the well of self-confidence and self-starterism within people to not just sit around and look at job boards all day, but to actually do the work immediately in a tangible way that they can touch and feel today, tomorrow, right away.
Eugene Kirpichov (56:21)
Yeah, we need to make things happen that aren’t already happening. Right? If there is a job out there, that means somebody has already done the hard part of making it, you know, integrating into some kind of business model that can fund the job. That was the hard part. Most of the time, filling the job is not the hard part. So if you want to make a difference for climate, you need to be doing something that wouldn’t have happened at all if not for you.
Michael Ethan Gold (56:45)
Yeah. So given the very broad canvas upon which you work and Work on Climate operates, what is your vision now for the company? It sounds from this long discussion about the systemic change, you know, like that’s great in a manifesto, but like, what do you actually want to see Work on Climate evolve into? Like, what does success look like for you in five years?
Eugene Kirpichov (57:12)
Yeah, we’re a movement builder. We were previously calling ourselves a workforce developer. We’re a movement builder. So what we’re talking about, mobilizing lots of people to lead some kind of change. In our case, the change is transformation of practices in their companies and in their industries. This is what the movement is. So the vision for Work on Climate is to build this movement. And these movements are always more effective if they are organized in many chapters that do
very particular kinds of context dependent work in their own area. So our job is to help people do this kind of action from wherever they are and help ⁓ facilitate the formation of these chapters. So we’re essentially doing two kinds of leadership development, helping people develop themselves as leaders of transformation of their industry and help people develop as leaders of chapters that organize this kind of work. And then as we do this,
⁓ eventually it takes on a life of its own and the people who organize this work no longer need us to help them.
Michael Ethan Gold (58:17)
And we’re in a time right now where…
The political cadence is obviously quite different than when you sent that LinkedIn post, like five years ago or so. And the social cadence is also somewhat less friendly toward these kinds of engagements and these kinds of initiatives. How do you and the people that Work on Climate and kind of how do you feel like the community can and should overcome this? Is this temporary? I mean, yeah, what are your thoughts on that?
Eugene Kirpichov (58:50)
Yeah, when it comes to the political times that we live in, so this was really the catalyst for us to shift our role from essentially implementation support for climate policy, you know, getting making sure that there are enough people to work on the jobs that it has created to realizing that no policy is not going to save us. Even the policy that was there, like in retrospect, it’s obvious that it was going to be taken down at some point. You know, it simply was not resilient.
All right. So what we are doing is essentially an answer to that, which is it’s a new source of power for the climate movement. So our contribution to the climate movement is to create a new source of power for it so that we’re not dependent for systemic change on begging politicians to do it for us. And then hoping that it will stick. It will not stick. Eventually when the industry develops, maybe it will stick, but only when
you know, it’s going to be a while. It’s not going to happen under Trump. It’s not going to happen on a timeline that is at all satisfactory to us. So, ⁓ yeah, that is my relationship with the political climate of the times. Basically, the relationship is, yeah, policy is not happening. We need to do it ourselves and we can. So that’s how we do it. And that’s how, you you the audience do it.
⁓ When it comes to the social cadence, I don’t know, Michael, are you referring to the fact that it is becoming less fashionable to do something good as opposed to hiding in your cave and just making money or referring to something else?
Michael Ethan Gold (1:00:21)
I guess
so. I mean, the fact that climate and woke and DEI, they’re all kind of lumped together in these sort of like, you know, it’s like, who cares about that stuff anymore, right?
Eugene Kirpichov (1:00:33)
Yeah, well, we work with those who care. And I think that in order for somebody to be a plausible leader for the movement, they need to be the kind of person who keeps caring. So yeah, if somebody dropped out, ⁓ fine, you’re not one of us anymore. Come back when you are.
Michael Ethan Gold (1:00:51)
Right, right. And you, you know, having thought deeply, acted a lot, working hard in this, you know, very mission driven and very difficult kind of space. What is your, I guess like you wake up every day thinking I need to do X, Y, Z.
Eugene Kirpichov (1:00:56)
Mm-hmm.
I wake up every day thinking I need to raise money. Yeah, so that is 100% of my job right now, maybe 95%. But ⁓ yeah, so like honestly, right now my mind really is with operational concerns because what we’re doing now is it’s big and it requires more resources than we have right now. At this stage, it doesn’t require 10 times more resources, but it does require two times more resources.
Michael Ethan Gold (1:01:11)
Okay.
Eugene Kirpichov (1:01:35)
And that is now a doable but time consuming task for me to do. So that’s what my mind is busy with. In terms of what next, I mean, my mind is clear. My mind is clear that pretty much what I just described is what we need to do. So we need to raise money for this and then put this money to work to help people become leaders, help create chapters of people who lead together. And then in a couple of years, start creating innovative forms of these chapters that…
you know flip the incentives in the economy.
Michael Ethan Gold (1:02:06)
Yeah.
And I imagine, I mean, there are many people out there who have leaned on Work on Climate, who have encountered the organization, ⁓ who really admire what you’ve done so far and I presume would admire the vision that you have for the organization and for what you want to do personally going forward. What are some points of advice that you give people now? I mean, aside from, don’t just look on a climate job board anymore and take that job. What are advice people that actually
want to do what you do, essentially.
Eugene Kirpichov (1:02:39)
⁓ I think, yeah, I give people basically two pieces of advice. One is what you described, which is look for places where you can make a difference and make something happen that if not for you, it wouldn’t happen. And then I give people more detailed advice about how that applies to them in particular. ⁓ But the other piece of advice I give people is ⁓ build a community for yourself. So meet other people, don’t try to do it alone. And again, it may sound like a cliche, but ⁓ it is very, very, very important. ⁓
like do not overestimate yourself, ⁓ a community of other people who care about the same thing and who have your back, that is what’s gonna keep you in this movement. Right, so.
Michael Ethan Gold (1:03:19)
Yeah,
and looking back, mean, like it sounds like, you again, with the sort of boundless well of self-confidence that you don’t really have regrets. You basically saw every step as kind of leading to the next and, you know, every role, even though the pre-climate ones have been worth it for you to build up to the Eugene you are now. But if you could go back, you know, and I want to say, you know, sometimes I ask the guests to go back, really early on and tell themselves something that they would want to know. But maybe like right at that time, that maybe right after you watched Inconvenient Truth
and were thinking about climate or you were starting to think about working with climate, you were writing that LinkedIn post and getting all these reactions like tell yourself three, you know, two or three things that you would have wanted to know about the road ahead.
Eugene Kirpichov (1:04:01)
Well, I certainly wish that I knew a lot earlier that market-based climate solutions alone are not going to do the trick. So I do regret that it took me five years to realize that, or four years to realize that, and another year to figure out what to do about it. ⁓ Yeah, I wish that I understood that earlier, though I don’t know if I would have been prepared ⁓ to deal with that.
Yeah.
What else? I mean, I do also wish obviously that I had started doing something about climate earlier than I did, because every single year makes it not a little bit worse. It makes it like really it reduces our chances of survival period. So I do wish that I had started it earlier because, you know, if I started, you know, even a year earlier, I probably would have in the grand scheme of things, my impact would probably have been twice the amount that it’s going to be.
Michael Ethan Gold (1:05:05)
Yeah, and I guess, you know, how do you think about building the biggest possible movement too? I mean, like, what does it mean to like get Work on Climate, especially this new aim in front of people and really getting them thinking about that? Because for a lot of people, even people who want to work on climate, they’re in this sort of market-based system as you were talking about. And there are plenty of people who just don’t really think about it, even if maybe they’re concerned or it’s in the news, but they just, it’s not part of their thinking.
Eugene Kirpichov (1:05:33)
I think there are enough people for whom it is part of their thinking. ⁓ I mean, on one level, you’re right, we actually did research that shows that even among climate concerned, climate alarmed Americans, only 12% of them even understand that you can do something about climate through your work. And that’s the 12% that we work with. And then among those 12%, very few understand that you can actually lead, or rather, even if you’re not an executive, rather than just, you know, competing for a job.
So, I’m sorry, Michael, I forgot the question you were asking while I was on. I think that that’s not something that we need to be concerned with right now. There’s still a massive amount of professionals who do care about climate. So they are ⁓ eager, they’re yearning for to be empowered to actually do it. They’re yearning for someone to come and say like, do this, ⁓
Michael Ethan Gold (1:06:07)
Building the biggest possible – bringing people in who are not your target audience basically.
Eugene Kirpichov (1:06:31)
here are the people you can do it together with and then things will start flowing. And uh we, you know, like you don’t need a hundred percent of a population to participate in the social movement. You need several percent and we have that several percent. We just need to equip them.
Michael Ethan Gold (1:06:47)
Yeah. And as a final question, I like to ask all my guests, and this is sort of back to Eugene, putting on your navel gazing hat as much as you can right now. Thinking to the end of your career, Work on Climate has essentially become what you want it to become. What would you want people to say about your contribution specifically, and what would you want your, I guess, climate epitaph to be?
Eugene Kirpichov (1:07:12)
Yeah, I would want to think my climate epitaph to say that, you know, thanks to the work of Work on Climate, ⁓ industry transformation through the action of professionals became a mainstream form of climate action and ended up making a big contribution to the movement as a whole. So I hold no illusions like it’s not going to be the thing that saves us. Work on Climate is not going to be the organization that does it.
And I’m not necessarily going to be the person inside Work on Climate that makes our contribution either. Like systems change does not happen through ⁓ solo heroes. And that’s also something that I had to realize probably way too late. But I do hope that I can look back and see that at least it has happened. And then I can fantasize, good Eugene, it happened thanks to you, while understanding that it didn’t really happen thanks to me.
But I do hope that it will happen and that we will have a broad movement of people transforming their own industries rather than waiting for, you know, for a politician to do it.
Michael Ethan Gold (1:08:15)
Well, and like they say, if you’re gonna dream, dream big, right? May as well. Great, well I think that’s a wonderful place to end. This was a really fascinating and rich conversation. So Eugene Kirpichov, thank you so much for appearing on Climate Swings.
Eugene Kirpichov (1:08:30)
Yeah, thank you for having me, Michael. This was great.