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“All forms of climate activism are valid and needed,” says Drew Wilkinson. And he should know. Wilkinson started his climate journey as an eco pirate with Sea Shepherd Conservation Society before jumping ship to build a corporate climate community of 10,000 at Microsoft. “I've spent a lot of time meditating on that word ‘activist’, and depending on the circles you run in, it means very different things.”
RELATED: Meet the man who turned 10,000 Microsoft employees on to climate action
'Activist' isn't a dirty word
While it makes some people uncomfortable to consider their work aligned with, say, the recent graffitiing of Stonehenge, activism takes many forms. “The official definition of ‘activist’ is quite milquetoast,” Drew points out. “It’s simply a person who campaigns to bring about social and political change.”
Why are so many people worried about calling themselves an activist?
“The dominant culture wants certain words to feel negative and taboo,” says Drew. So by framing the word “activist” as something extreme it makes people hesitant to use it. “It can carry a lot of stigma,” he continues. “A lot of people in corporate environments are not going to identify as activists at work for very legitimate reasons. But, many of these same people will tell you they have something they are particularly passionate or vocal about in their life – they just don’t call it activism.”
"The dominant culture wants certain words to feel negative and taboo."
Activism, but not as you know it
The word activist also invokes something else: power. It helps you apply principles, passion and drive into all aspects of your life, making it an incredible force for good. “What many people consider activism – for example direct action, like chaining yourself to a tree – is actually a tactic,” says Drew. “This is a really important distinction to make. Activism can look a lot of different ways depending on the tactics. When I was with Sea Shepherd, I was literally putting myself between a poacher and an animal. That was our tactic for preventing animals from being killed. But another tactic is emailing your benefits team or your HR department and saying, ‘I don't want my pension invested in fossil fuels.’ That is also activism. It just looks different. It sounds different.”
This is important, because broadening the definition of climate activism means we suddenly have a multitude of ways to tackle the climate crisis. “If we can understand the difference between activism and tactics, there will be a lot more people who would be willing to do activism at work,” says Drew.
A little courage goes a long way
“I feel like I'm doing activism pretty much from the time I wake up to the time I go to bed, in some form or another,” says Drew. “It's an intentional process of thinking about how I show up in every sphere of my life.”
In this sense, Drew views taking climate action at work as just one more natural step. “If you have these principles about the climate, you usually start by applying them to your life: where you shop, what you buy, who you affiliate with, how you vote,” he says. “Once you start applying that lens of advocating vocally and passionately for the thing you care about to all spheres of your life, you need to consider work.”
It’s estimated we spend a third of our lives at work, and we know that businesses and corporations have an outsized influence on the climate. So, taking action in the workplace can be far more impactful than all the smaller individual changes we make. It’s just a matter of becoming more open-minded about what activism looks like and how it can sit just as comfortably in our workplace as it does in our homes or social lives.
“As part of my mission to make sustainability part of everybody’s job, I want to give people a different image of what activism can look like,” says Drew. “It can be professional, courteous, maybe even a little bit corporate!”
Drew says it's up to the individual how much they are willing to commit themselves to the cause, but it helps to keep questioning your decisions every day and considering what might be stopping you taking that next step. “All tactics are valuable. If we've learned anything from studying how change and social movements happen, it’s that you need a variety of tactics all being performed by different people. That's how you make a movement. All you need is to have a more expansive view of what activism looks like. And some courage.”
Drew Wilkinson provides consulting services for employee engagement, helping organisations make sustainability part of everybody's job. Learn more on his website or connect with him on LinkedIn.
Want to be a climate activist in the workplace? Enrolments are now open for the next WorkforClimate Academy cohort, due to kick off at the end of August. Head here to register.
