In an ideal world I would be a potter. Depending on how ideal we are talking, I might not even take commissions. I would sit at my wheel in the mornings, the bright sunlight dancing down through the broken shade on the skylight in the studio, catching the glittering particles of clay dust that swirl with my breath. I would organize and reorganize the shelves of tools, boxes, underglazes, and clay until they were perfect. I would even reprint the labels with my good label maker on the clear tape. I would fill whole kilns just with experiments from just one project, and I might even consider finally reclaiming the clay that sits in the ever-growing cluster of buckets in the corner of my studio.

I would also spend more late nights kiln-sitting with my face flushed, lulled late on a summer night by the muffled roar of a blazing, 2000 degree fire. The hushed sound of the kiln would be punctuated only by the occasional cricket, and the shrill beep of a thermocouple, reminding me I need to stoke the flames yet again. 

The first time I said out loud why I couldn’t be a potter was in this exact setting.

It was mid-June in the Delaware Water Gap, around half past one in the morning. I sat around the Noborigama kiln at the Peters Valley Craft School with three of my classmates and our instructor Bruce. We all might have drifted off if not for the ravenous kiln before us.

Then, a voice broke the quiet. “What do you want to do with your life, Isaac?” asked Bruce. 

I chuckled. It wasn't the type of question that I felt suited to answer, my eyes drooping from the lack of sleep. The other students perked up - I was the youngest member of our class by at least 20 years, and I could tell they were curious about the college kid. 

“Well I guess I want to stop global warming,” I said after a long pause. In hindsight, it might have been slight delirium that allowed me to speak with such succinct clarity. I don't think it was the answer my classmates were expecting. The irony wasn’t lost on me that dark smoke billowed into the night sky from the chimneys above us, as we burned thousands of pounds of wood for our art. But neither was the fact that we don't live in an ideal world - one where I could be a potter. 

In the discussion that ensued, I fielded questions about my time at school, and how I came to environmental studies. I explained that I had inherited my passion for the environment from my father – the eco-investor – and my mother,  the farm-to-table chef. I explained why I felt members of my generation were put in the position of scrambling to secure a livable climate, and why I personally felt drawn to mitigating climate change in my career. 

The next day, after some much-needed rest, one of my classmates asked, “what can I do to help the environment?” 

I was surprised that I couldn't come up with a simple answer. “What can I do? What can I do?” I asked myself in my head. I racked my brain, whizzing through the conventional responses, and none seemed quite right. Many people swap to reusable straws (I have a few of these, which probably used more energy to manufacture and ship from China than hundreds of plastic straws would have used to end up in my iced coffee… I have also since realized I can drink basically everything without a straw, and often without a lid, too). Others go to the farmer’s market (extra points for bringing your canvas tote bag, which, see above, will probably never get used enough to undercut the emissions from manufacturing the paper and plastic alternatives. Also FYI, if your local farmer drives small amounts of produce in her pickup truck 50 or 100 miles to the city, the transportation emissions for your cabbage might actually be lower in the highly efficient supply chain that ends on the crowded, automatically-misted shelf in your local supermarket). Some drive a hybrid or electric car (which gets manufactured using energy-intensive and environmentally-costly rare earth metals, and then gets plugged into an electric grid powered predominantly by fossil fuels). 

I knew just enough by that June in 2019, a year-and-a-little into my degree, to understand that conventionally-touted individual actions have marginal impact, and can sometimes even have negative repercussions. I knew just enough to come up short when asked the most basic question that I was ostensibly devoting my life to answering. 

In the years since that workshop, I have settled upon a number of different answers to this question: literally, what can I do? Starting to plan my career has helped in that regard; I can help to develop and implement policy in urban areas to make public transportation more accessible, efficient, and user-friendly, lowering the amount of energy (and effort) it takes for people to get to work, to meet their friends, or to travel across town to visit a loved one. I can help companies critically examine their supply chains and identify key areas where they can lower emissions, drive efficiency, and promote sustainable sourcing, manufacturing, and distribution. I can help communications firms develop campaigns that educate people about the climate and understand the impact their actions have, which might be marginal but collectively make a difference. I can write this essay, to try and help a few people answer that question for themselves. 

In the time since I sat around the kiln in June 2019, I have also learned that many people don't actually think they can do anything – that climate change is inevitable, that we can't stop it, and that our children will die of thirst in an arid wasteland in the dried-up remains of somewhere lush like the Delaware Water Gap. As terrifying as these images are, they are largely inaccurate. And don't get me wrong: we should be afraid of climate change. But we should not be paralyzed by it. 

What people often struggle to grasp is that climate change isn't an all-or-nothing threat, regardless of how Leonardo Dicaprio might try to explain it that way using an allegorical meteorite. We can wait at the water's edge looking for climate change on the horizon, biting our nails and peering through binoculars for the coming tidal wave. We would be blinded to how the slowly lapping waves at our feet, year after year, are already reshaping the shore beneath us. Climate change is happening now, and it will probably get much worse – but how much worse depends largely on what we do today. The outcome will be something in-between slightly muggier summers and deserts everywhere. Understanding this is key, and has helped me to realize that “stopping” global warming isn't really the type of goal that I can realistically achieve in my career.

We can, however, minimize the impacts of global warming during my career.

That timeframe – the next 50 years or so, and especially the next 30 years – is pretty short relative to the scale of transformation our economy and society needs. A lot of people will need to rethink how they understand their lifestyles, their careers, and the environment. They will need to look critically at their future (no matter how long that timeline might be), and identify what they CAN do, individually and with others to help preserve a livable climate and equitable outcomes. I cannot emphasize enough that this isn’t just an issue for people planning their careers now, but that it must also guide the decisions of those already mid-career or nearing retirement. A company can rethink, reorganize, and improve its operations alot faster when upper-level employees push for improvement, rather than entry level college graduates like myself. 

We must also keep ourselves from being overwhelmed by the “doomsday” event that looms but will probably never come, or getting stuck on the things we can’t do - for lack of time, energy, money, ability, or anything else. The reality is simply that we all can do something – or many somethings – to make a difference, and that it will be enough if we leverage our collective strengths and careers to do so. The good news is that we already have all the solutions needed to curb the worst effects of climate change. New solar is cheaper than new coal across most of the developed world, and we can already electrify pretty much everything of consequence. We just need people to implement these solutions, and to make it their literal job to do so. But don't think that you need to change your whole career to do that. Whether you work for an environmental NGO or in private equity (more on that in another essay), as a prep chef at a local restaurant or a barista at the coffee shop on your corner, you can make a difference (I've done all four, so I promise). Whether you have spent 40 years or 40 minutes at your job, you can (and should) think about ways that you can use your hours on-the-clock to make a difference. Your planet (and probably your bottom line, too) will thank you. 

More good news: I can pick any of the jobs I mentioned above and still catch the morning light in my ceramics studio sometimes. Asking what I would do in an ideal world doesn't answer the question of what I want to do in the real one. Moving from one passion to another purpose doesn't mean giving up what you love doing.

And accepting contradictions can help to move us in the right direction, even if it might be incremental. I still love sitting by the kiln late at night, weighed down by the summer humidity and the thick smell of burning logs, but I also want to try glaze firing my work in an electric kiln, even if the results aren't always quite as spectacular. I still love bringing my tote bag to the farmers market, especially if it helps me eat more vegetables and cut back on meat consumption. I still park illegally in the university parking lot to charge my plug-in hybrid for free, even if its battery has a high emission profile, but at least my university has committed to supplying the chargers with 100% renewable energy. And I did stop using my reusable straw, though I do still carry it in my backpack for the straw emergency that probably won't ever come. As is true for many things, including climate change and said smoothie emergency, its better to be prepared and act now than miss the opportunity altogether.