Episode 60
The Future Of Work, Parenting And What To Bring To Mars
Episode Summary: In this episode, Karena shares with Jenn her insights on the future of work and how to talk to parents about climate change
Karena’s vocation as a Futurist started when she was trying to understand the future career path of her own kids.
Being ‘a span of seven generations’ and from the technical and societal changes she has witnessed in her own career, she shared some perspectives about what education and career choices mean in our increasingly uncertain world.
Among various topics, Karena and Jenn discuss how climate change will play out in the equation, the 17 UN SDGs, and what skills do we need to bring to Mars.
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Featuring Carbon Almanac Contributors Jenn Swanson and Karena De Souza
From Langley in British Columbia, Canada, Jenn is a Minister, Coach, Writer and Community Connector, helping people help themselves.
Karena is a Parent. Strategist. Futurist. Lifelong learner. World Citizen. Mother of Dragons. With a focus on the Future of Work, Karena teaches GenZ (born after 1995) the mindset and frameworks to make a smoother transition. Presently started a podcast TILT the Future, and do speeches to students and their influencers (parents, educators, employers and peers) on the Future of Work & Climate as an opportunity.
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The CarbonSessions Podcast is produced and edited by Leekei Tang, Steve Heatherington and Rob Slater.
Transcript
Hi, I'm Ima.
Speaker:I live in Scotland.
Speaker:Hi, I'm Jen and I'm from Canada.
Speaker:Hi, I'm Ola Vanji and I'm from Nigeria.
Speaker:Hello, I'm Leaky and I live in Paris.
Speaker:Hey, I'm Rod.
Speaker:I'm from Peru.
Speaker:Welcome to Carbon Sessions.
Speaker:A podcast with carbon conversations for every day with everyone
Speaker:from everywhere in the world.
Speaker:In our conversations, we share ideas, perspectives, questions, and things we
Speaker:can actually do to make a difference.
Speaker:So don't be shy.
Speaker:Join our carbon sessions because it's not too late.
Speaker:Hi, I'm Jen.
Speaker:Hi, and I'm Karina.
Speaker:Karina.
Speaker:Thank you so much for being on the show with us today.
Speaker:I'd like to start by asking you what lights you up every day?
Speaker:Oh, a beautiful sunrise.
Speaker:Snow melting.
Speaker:Oh no.
Speaker:A whole bunch of things light me up, but I'd say probably the
Speaker:biggest one in my three kids.
Speaker:Uh, three kids.
Speaker:That's a blessing.
Speaker:. Thank you.
Speaker:We're gonna talk today about the future of work and, um, can you,
Speaker:can you talk about how you came to be doing this kind of work and then
Speaker:let us know, uh, what, what it is.
Speaker:What do you mean by that?
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:So, um, As a career, I started off work, uh, my life as a programmer.
Speaker:I used to work on Wall Street and through that journey I ended up
Speaker:learning about strategy, but that was a very, very long time ago.
Speaker:Um, about a decade or so ago, I decided to get back into that work.
Speaker:Um, started off doing consulting work on the future of money.
Speaker:So this is at the time when bit Bitcoin was just coming out.
Speaker:Uh, people.
Speaker:The Apple Watch hadn't yet been announced or hadn't yet been, um, on the market.
Speaker:Uh, Countries like Canada were bringing in tap for credit cards.
Speaker:And so I would be talking about all those kinds of things.
Speaker:Um, I'd blog about them.
Speaker:I'd, uh, I'd been running small business and I'd just closed it down.
Speaker:And one of the things that I realized at the time was that I might have
Speaker:been money rich, but time poor.
Speaker:And so my blog was intended to give tips to other small business owners.
Speaker:to just save them back five minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes of their
Speaker:day, so they could actually either have a little more sleep or be
Speaker:able to read a book to their kids.
Speaker:Uh, because that's what I felt like I was lacking at the time.
Speaker:I was literally running a small business is exhausting.
Speaker:Um, so that was the intent behind my blog.
Speaker:But as a result, I ended up in a really wonderful space, um, and an opportunity
Speaker:to see what was happening on Bay Street.
Speaker:So Bay Street is the Canadian equivalent of Wall Street, and there
Speaker:were some indicators out there.
Speaker:That helped me see that algorithms and, um, AI was coming in and was, had, had,
Speaker:was having an effect on the career market.
Speaker:Um, it was really interesting because I had seen the financial
Speaker:industry as being a really steady, solid career path for my children.
Speaker:And so it was, and you know, given that I knew what I knew about it,
Speaker:it was, uh, an area that I was very interested in and to see it, having that.
Speaker:That really interesting inflection point and given that, you know, my interest
Speaker:in, in technology as well, I could see where the two were intersecting.
Speaker:I could, I could envision where this might be going.
Speaker:And at the same time I was advising my oldest child who
Speaker:was, uh, in 10th grade in Canada.
Speaker:So he was making his career decisions.
Speaker:And so as you can understand, you're like, my mind started going as any parent does.
Speaker:It's like, alright.
Speaker:No, you should be doing, you should doing accounting or you should be doing,
Speaker:you know, engineering and like going for all those steady middle class, um,
Speaker:career streams, which would give you security for the rest of your life.
Speaker:Yet in my work, I was watching these things get disrupted, so
Speaker:that's really where my interest in the future of work began.
Speaker:And I started just following that thread.
Speaker:Um, where it led me was very interesting because at first I
Speaker:began to imagine what, or i, I was envisioning what was happening as the
Speaker:equivalent of moving from the manual typewriter, the electric typewriter.
Speaker:So it was a technology shift.
Speaker:. But as I started expanding on where these dots were going and what
Speaker:was happening, what I could see happening after 2008, um, you were
Speaker:beginning to see Airbnb out there.
Speaker:You had Uber, in essence.
Speaker:You had, um, a different way of, of accessing the workforce.
Speaker:It had, it was shifting quite dramatically from full-time.
Speaker:To contract work or what we call gig work.
Speaker:And that was a very strong trend and one that I started
Speaker:investigating a little bit more.
Speaker:And I started realizing that if we do that, that work as a
Speaker:whole was gonna shift that way.
Speaker:There was a strong possibility that we were going to be less and less focused
Speaker:on individual careers for the, for our whole life, but more of a portfolio of
Speaker:careers, more, um, a blend of different things that would keep us interested, that
Speaker:fit into this contract work philosophy that most corporations were buying into.
Speaker:I dunno if you wanna put the rest, the, the next part that I'm
Speaker:gonna say to you in this podcast, because it's literally history.
Speaker:That's okay, but just say it anyways.
Speaker:, I'll just say it anyway.
Speaker:Um, only also because it's my version of what happened, but in essence,
Speaker:corporations started, started shifting a lot of, um, employment
Speaker:work off their balance sheet.
Speaker:So if you don't have someone who's full-time on your balance sheet, then
Speaker:you don't have to pay them pensions.
Speaker:You don't have to pay them vacation time.
Speaker:So if you are able to bring someone on as contract, you are shifting
Speaker:where they sit on your balance sheet.
Speaker:This allows your share price to go up, and that's why we've seen this huge increase
Speaker:in the DAO and like all the various markets is because they've actually moved.
Speaker:Where they focus their attention.
Speaker:Uh, so you'll see this happen with Apple, with i b m, with, you
Speaker:know, every single bank out there.
Speaker:And what they would do is instead of having a market de marketing department,
Speaker:a team of say, 10 people on staff all year round now, they would just buy
Speaker:them in for the three weeks They needed them to create a special project.
Speaker:So, Conceptually, this makes a lot of sense if you're a corporation, but on
Speaker:the flip side, if you're the employee, this leaves you very open to market
Speaker:conditions and, and swings and roundabouts and you know what's happening in the in.
Speaker:Um, In your, in your work cycle, you don't have a guarantee of consistency.
Speaker:So that's where my, my, my headset was.
Speaker:It was like, you know, what can my kids expect?
Speaker:If this is what the world is, this is the kind of work that's gonna be out there.
Speaker:So that was what the future of work was around 2015.
Speaker:It was about a strong, um, focus towards gig work, a strong
Speaker:focus towards using technology.
Speaker:Um, anything.
Speaker:I'm a programmer, so any, anything that you can.
Speaker:, you know, more than three times becomes a routine, a computer
Speaker:program, an AI robotics.
Speaker:So if you can flip a hamburger the same way, well a robot can do that
Speaker:If you know on your, on your Excel spreadsheet, if you always add the same
Speaker:three numbers in the same way, well, you can write a little routine for that.
Speaker:So these are little bits of automation that were designed to help us, but
Speaker:over time they become the things that take away in quotes, easy work from.
Speaker:, and that makes sense when it's easy work that we want to let go of.
Speaker:But if you are a young person who's looking for a job, um, like you,
Speaker:you're getting your foot in the door.
Speaker:All those easy steps have now been taken away from you.
Speaker:So we are having a whole bunch of conversations now.
Speaker:Now, this is where my ripple starts, right?
Speaker:So it started off with, okay, what happens with gig work?
Speaker:What happens with all these things?
Speaker:And then it began to be, all right, what happens next?
Speaker:Once gig work comes in and takes these, what happens?
Speaker:16 year old, 18 year olds who are looking for internship positions,
Speaker:what work are they gonna do?
Speaker:How do they get that experience that, you know, someone wants when
Speaker:they come out of a university?
Speaker:And, you know, the uni, the, um, employers are looking for, show me what you've done.
Speaker:Well, if you've never had the opportunity to do it before, how
Speaker:can you show that you've done it?
Speaker:So all this started floating in.
Speaker:But there was also another thing that started worrying me, which is,
Speaker:you know, we both live in Canada.
Speaker:We both have access, thankfully, to healthcare, um, and pensions.
Speaker:And these are funded out of taxes.
Speaker:Taxes come from people having put money into the system, and that in
Speaker:essence means that the government is expecting a steady cash flow.
Speaker:The steady cash flow comes from people who are fully employed.
Speaker:. If you've got contract work and you can't decide when someone's employed,
Speaker:how do you guarantee a steady cash flow?
Speaker:So suddenly I started like bouncing forward like 30, 50 years and saying,
Speaker:what is the, what is the future going to look like when the government can't
Speaker:guarantee a steady income stream?
Speaker:What am I going to have a pension?
Speaker:Am I gonna have healthcare?
Speaker:So I suddenly started looking.
Speaker:This little change, this little shift in technology drifting through is
Speaker:rippling through and making so much more of an impact than the little
Speaker:bit that we were looking at in 2015.
Speaker:Uh, Should I stop there and I allow to ask questions?
Speaker:I, no, that's, that's great to, of stuff that's, do I, uh, uh, that's great.
Speaker:I had a, a ton of questions that came up, um, and, and thinking as a, as
Speaker:a, a career coach and one of the, the jobs that I do, um, I'm, I'm looking
Speaker:at, you know, the implementation of.
Speaker:Uh, applicant tracking systems where people apply and the resume goes
Speaker:through an automated, uh, system.
Speaker:And, um, so you're eliminating the first round of human eyes looking at all of the
Speaker:things that are coming in for the job.
Speaker:It's very difficult to get by one of those if you don't have, as you say, the
Speaker:experience, if you haven't had the exact things that are, are named and, and in.
Speaker:, you know, things have shifted so fast since that time.
Speaker:Um, and yeah, we are seeing in Canada right now, we have free healthcare,
Speaker:but we are seeing incredibly long waits in emergency rooms.
Speaker:Um, and, and for surgeries and things like that, because we have a lack of
Speaker:staff, we have a lack of training.
Speaker:Um, there's, there's an awful lot going on right now.
Speaker:as far as work goes, there are, uh, businesses and restaurants, um, that
Speaker:don't have staff, that can't get staff.
Speaker:Um, it's, it's not, it's shifted so much.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And, um, one of the, one of the things I was wondering about, um, in all
Speaker:of this, what is the climate effect?
Speaker:So how has.
Speaker:All of these online things for one thing because we think, oh, it's online.
Speaker:You're not driving, you're not doing all this stuff, but there's
Speaker:a footprint, um, related to data.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:and data storage.
Speaker:And, and then some of these gig things, uh, like Uber and like, uh, you know,
Speaker:the, the different delivery services and Amazon as we know, the things that
Speaker:are delivered all the time, the trucks that are driving around all the time.
Speaker:So where did climate come in for you?
Speaker:Um, so as I said, like I'm, I'm a futurist, so I tend to think about things,
Speaker:um, more like 15 years in the future.
Speaker:That's usually where my head is on a any given day.
Speaker:It's very rarely figuring out what's for dinner, unfortunately, for
Speaker:my kids who have turned out to be fantastic cooks, cause they were never
Speaker:a time, they're, they're amazing.
Speaker:Um, the, uh, I, so since 2015, like I, I.
Speaker:as a futurist.
Speaker:Actually, my sister says it beautifully because I, I struggled
Speaker:with this for a long time.
Speaker:I felt like no one was connecting the dots the way I was connecting
Speaker:the dots, and nobody was listening.
Speaker:And so one time she sat me down, she's like, Corrina, you're like a prophets.
Speaker:You're like that person in the Old Testament who would go out
Speaker:and say, this is gonna happen, and no one would listen to you.
Speaker:But then, 300 years from now, someone goes, oh yes, you
Speaker:know, there was this prophets.
Speaker:So she says, just be at peace with it.
Speaker:You know, just, you just have connected the dots ahead of some other people and
Speaker:when they're ready, they will see it.
Speaker:And so I can see that happening with the future of work.
Speaker:Right now.
Speaker:I don't have to worry.
Speaker:Every paper I open talks about the future of work, whereas I was one
Speaker:of a, a very few in 2015, right?
Speaker:So every.
Speaker:in the end, we'll catch up.
Speaker:Um, and because people have now caught up and Covid was one of the, um,
Speaker:accelerators of that whole conversation, people are more open to a wider
Speaker:conversation on the future of work.
Speaker:And I've got a lot more to say on that, by the way.
Speaker:Um, whatever you wanna connect, um, please do . Oh yeah, I will.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Um, so I feel like people are now stepping in.
Speaker:They understand that a little bit more.
Speaker:So my role.
Speaker:Breaching that conversation and making people more aware.
Speaker:I've, I've established that people understand the language.
Speaker:They hear, they, they hear, they hear the words, they understand what it means.
Speaker:Um, not as, um, there's still work to be done there, but not as, It, it is.
Speaker:I'm not the only person.
Speaker:And so I've decided to now step into climate.
Speaker:And climate is, um, I mean there are already a lot of voices in that space,
Speaker:uh, but I thought I'd bring to it what I also brought to the future of
Speaker:work, which is talking to parents.
Speaker:and talking to a younger generation.
Speaker:Um, what I decided to do in the future of work was actually to talk about all of
Speaker:these not from a position of fear, which is how most parents would approach me.
Speaker:They'd be like, well, if robotics is gonna take away my child's job, if
Speaker:algorithms are gonna take away, and everything I was hearing was about.
Speaker:um, deprived of opportunity, but I would then turn around to them
Speaker:and say, how many of y'all Dr.
Speaker:You know, rode in here on a horse and no one had the car park was full.
Speaker:So it was indicative of the fact that over time everyone moves into what
Speaker:technology offers you as an opportunity, and that's where the work would come for
Speaker:the children, you know, their children.
Speaker:Um, . What I wanted people to understand though, was that they
Speaker:should have a very different mindset.
Speaker:A mindset that is very attuned to change.
Speaker:We've got a lot of change coming in ahead of us, so I was focusing on mindset shift
Speaker:and also talking to parents because we parents are probably the last generation
Speaker:who are raised in the industrial era.
Speaker:These new.
Speaker:Have never known a world without the internet.
Speaker:So the world that they're raised in is completely different.
Speaker:They don't have loss, they don't have a sense of loss because
Speaker:they've never had the other world.
Speaker:We are the ones who are making that adjustment.
Speaker:And so very often when we speak, we speak from a sense of, oh, I wish you
Speaker:could have, or, you know, um, taking, you know, speaking to the way we were raised.
Speaker:So my role that I've selected for myself right now is to talk to parents and
Speaker:say, This is the way we were raised.
Speaker:These kids are gonna be raised completely differently or they're gonna be
Speaker:addressing a whole different set of, of, um, opportunities of challenges.
Speaker:What do you take from your old world that will still be true in the new world?
Speaker:Hmm.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:What tools can I, as a parent use or.
Speaker:Parent or an adult, if you like.
Speaker:But what tools can I take from my experience, from my ancestry and give as
Speaker:support to a young generation when we have absolutely no clue what's gonna happen?
Speaker:Now I have this phrase, um, , like I'm the span of seven generations and I, I have
Speaker:since discovered that it's actually the seven generations is a phrase that's used
Speaker:a lot in the indigenous cultures as well.
Speaker:But mine came because I actually know my great-grandmothers, I,
Speaker:they were alive when I was young and they used to cook for me.
Speaker:So I have, I have touched four generations past and if I'm lucky,
Speaker:I will touch my great-grandchildren.
Speaker:So I am the span of seven generations.
Speaker:And with that in mind, my great-grandchildren, there's
Speaker:a chance that they or their great-grandchildren will end up on Mars.
Speaker:What can I give my child today that they can pass along to that child
Speaker:to allow them to live on Mars?
Speaker:What are the tools?
Speaker:What are the, where's the confidence that I can give them?
Speaker:And what I decided that I can give them is the things that my great-grandparents.
Speaker:Through my family structure.
Speaker:Those are persistent skills.
Speaker:Those are not the skills that you learn in university that have a half shelf life.
Speaker:I grew up as a computer programer.
Speaker:I learned cobalt, I learned Pascal.
Speaker:You don't see those things anymore.
Speaker:, right?
Speaker:So those things, so a lot of technologies that we have today have a sh have a.
Speaker:Shrinking shelf life.
Speaker:But there are some qualities that have, or some, some knowledge that
Speaker:has an intergenerational shelf life is actually much more persistent.
Speaker:And those are the things that have been ch you know, gradually passed down,
Speaker:generation to generation, critical thinking, ability to communicate.
Speaker:Um, you know, like you'll see all these right now cluster under
Speaker:what we're calling EQ skills.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:, to me, it's no surprise that we're actually highlighting
Speaker:these skills, sudden.
Speaker:they weren't as dominant when we were going through university
Speaker:or in our early career years.
Speaker:They were important, but they were not focused on as strongly as
Speaker:they're being focused on right now.
Speaker:And the reason they're being f uh, strongly focused on right now is because
Speaker:we're going through a huge shift.
Speaker:And so when you're in a huge shift, it is these deep anchor
Speaker:skills that are gonna hold you.
Speaker:They're gonna tether you.
Speaker:And so that is what I choose to pass from.
Speaker:to my children in the hope that they all pass to their children.
Speaker:This is singing to my heart cuz I spend a lot of my time teaching these skills
Speaker:Um, coming out of a healthcare background and teaching communication
Speaker:skills to healthcare workers.
Speaker:So, okay.
Speaker:Um, yeah, there's, um, There's a lot there that is, uh, fascinating.
Speaker:I love, uh, the term persistent skills or anchoring skills.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:, I know the idea.
Speaker:It's got different phrases.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:, the idea that these would, would serve people well on Mars, for example, is.
Speaker:is fascinating.
Speaker:So when, when you're talking to people about that, how are you inviting parents
Speaker:to shift their thinking from that place of lack, that place of deprivation, um, to,
Speaker:to the place of opportunity and abundance?
Speaker:How are you getting them to make that shift?
Speaker:Part of it is me still working through it, but uh, where I've
Speaker:chosen to position myself right now is say, what is one of the biggest
Speaker:growth opportunities right now?
Speaker:You've probably come across the UN sustainability goals, right?
Speaker:The 17 UN sustainability goals.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:, um, and I dunno if you've come across JP Michelle?
Speaker:No.
Speaker:He's Canadian out of Ottawa.
Speaker:He does spark cards, but we share very similar philosophy and that is,
Speaker:The time of having a job is changing.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:, a job is no longer a position, but if you look at your job as, as
Speaker:solving a problem, That's actually got a much longer shelf life.
Speaker:You've got a lot more runway on something like that.
Speaker:And you can start those discussions with your kids when they're very young.
Speaker:You can start it over the dinner table.
Speaker:You can talk to them about things that they're passionate about.
Speaker:So when you're passionate about something, you get really engaged in it.
Speaker:As you can see, , I am about these topics, . Um, and, but the thing is each
Speaker:person's different, you know, so someone might really love frogs, you know?
Speaker:Uh, I remember.
Speaker:With Tanya, with a, with one of her, um, earlier podcast episodes.
Speaker:A gentleman, uh, a young, when he was a young boy, he loved birds.
Speaker:I still remember listening to that episode and how fascinated he was
Speaker:with the birds in his backyard.
Speaker:So each of us tends to have something that is almost formative.
Speaker:, but whatever it is, it tends to set the stage for where
Speaker:our lifetime interests lie.
Speaker:And if you lean into that and, and try and figure out which of the UN
Speaker:sustainability goals it pairs with, you begin to develop a deep, what
Speaker:I'm calling a deep body of interest.
Speaker:It's research that you instinctively do because you love
Speaker:it and you're interested in it.
Speaker:And if you start, um, solving the problems that you care.
Speaker:, you'll have a much longer runway on whatever you choose to do in life.
Speaker:So a different way of looking at it is, um, if you look at a
Speaker:school principal, theoretically a school principal is a teacher.
Speaker:A teacher is someone who stands in a classroom and
Speaker:teaches and shares information.
Speaker:But a school principal very rarely is in front of a class of students.
Speaker:Instead, they're running a group of adults.
Speaker:They're, you know, figuring out.
Speaker:Balance sheet.
Speaker:They're having to negotiate with people.
Speaker:They're disciplinarians, they're psychologists.
Speaker:They're probably doing every everything else except for teach and that, but
Speaker:they're still delivering on the objective of passing all information on from.
Speaker:One community to another.
Speaker:And that's essentially what I'm trying to get at, is like when you're trying
Speaker:to solve a problem, you lean into every position necessary to get the job done.
Speaker:Just like we are doing right now, we're all trying to solve climate.
Speaker:Hmm.
Speaker:And each of us is bringing the skills we have and trying to deploy it.
Speaker:The ultimate objective isn't that we are a podcaster or that we are a speaker or
Speaker:that, you know, whatever it is that we we choose to do, it's that we're trying to
Speaker:solve a problem and we're trying to bring whatever we can to, to make that happen.
Speaker:So, uh, that'll end ended up where I was expecting it to go with.
Speaker:That's what happens on this show, . We end up in the oddest
Speaker:places, . But it's wonderful.
Speaker:Um, it's wonderful to think of that as a, as a, rather than even an employee
Speaker:as a problem solver, I'll often say, uh, in job interview situations,
Speaker:you are the answer to their problem.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:. Yes.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And so, you know, how, how can you be that answer to their problem?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So I li I like that, um, that shift.
Speaker:And I love that you're aligning it with the 17, uh, sustainability goals.
Speaker:I think that's, that's brilliant.
Speaker:It just gives parents a place or it gives individuals a place to start, you know,
Speaker:it's, and, and I think un sustainability goals or a universal concept.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:or sorry, like, uh, global concept.
Speaker:So no matter where you go, you can talk about it, you can, you know,
Speaker:and very often when I interview people for my newsletter, I'll
Speaker:ask them, what are, what are the.
Speaker:, two or three UN sustainability goals that speak loudest to you.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:, and we'll use those because people can so quickly identify.
Speaker:They're like, oh, yeah.
Speaker:So that's, that's a person who's, you know, interested in economics,
Speaker:that's a person who's interested in clean water, and you can gravitate
Speaker:towards your, your people, your tribe.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:It just makes the conversation.
Speaker:, it gives you a better starting point for the next conversation you're gonna have.
Speaker:Um, and then you'd asked why climate?
Speaker:Climate, obviously, I mean, , it's funny, like my first question
Speaker:is what's not climate?
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:, it's like you can solve for everything else that's going on, but if you
Speaker:don't figure out the climate, What is the point of everything we're doing?
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:, like I really do feel that, um, we have, we had a window.
Speaker:It is shrinking rapidly.
Speaker:I'm hoping, uh, that we will sit up and pay attention, but, um,
Speaker:I've been in this space since 1993.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I know people who went to the, um, to the Rio Summit.
Speaker:So I've been watching what's been going on.
Speaker:It's just.
Speaker:really frustrating to, to watch how slowly do I wanna say, how slowly good
Speaker:people are making good decisions, and then other people are coming in and,
Speaker:and putting roadblocks in their place.
Speaker:And that frustrates me a lot.
Speaker:Um, and the pe and the, the person who's gonna pay the biggest price are
Speaker:the kids who are being born this year.
Speaker:Hmm.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:They will never have what we had.
Speaker:And there's some beautiful spoken poems out there that touched me a lot.
Speaker:. I just lean into that and say, all right, we really have to fix climate, but we also
Speaker:need to look at climate as an employer.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:. So where future of work and climate dovetail for me is when I talk to a
Speaker:parent who's saying, I don't have time, or I don't have money to put into this.
Speaker:You know, why should we, as a nation invest in this?
Speaker:Well, if you look at it as a, as the natural next.
Speaker:to take over, you know, like to fill the gap for where, um,
Speaker:we're losing jobs right now.
Speaker:isn't that a great win-win situation?
Speaker:, it's like we have this problem that needs solving and we have these people who need
Speaker:jobs and, you know, if we can get them to move closer towards each other, um,
Speaker:we as, as an, as a globe succeed, right?
Speaker:As, as a world.
Speaker:Hmm.
Speaker:And like earlier this year, I went out to, um, bc uh, to,
Speaker:um, Alberta did the, uh, the.
Speaker:Icefield Parkway an absolute gem.
Speaker:I had never been there before.
Speaker:Uh, so that's the, the road between, um, Banff and uh, Jasper.
Speaker:And you realize when you're driving that the earth is gonna continue to
Speaker:exist the earth, you know, unless an it gets hit by an asteroid and, and
Speaker:disintegrates, the earth is going nowhere.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:The question is, is it's us . It's like we keep saying we're gonna save the earth.
Speaker:We're not gonna save the earth.
Speaker:The earth will take care of itself.
Speaker:It's done that for, for millennia, . The question is, do humans wanna
Speaker:be on earth when it saves itself?
Speaker:And so that's the question I think people don't, don't.
Speaker:Lean into sufficiently.
Speaker:It's like we're protecting ourselves, we're protecting the human race.
Speaker:We're not protecting the world . Um, so what are we going to do about climate?
Speaker:What are we, where are we going to play so that we actually
Speaker:stay persistent on this planet?
Speaker:How do we want our great-grandchildren to enjoy the things that we grew up with?
Speaker:Do we, and if we do, what are we doing about it?
Speaker:I mean, I have very strong, beautiful memories of growing up on.
Speaker:right?
Speaker:That's something I want for my grandchildren.
Speaker:Absolutely.
Speaker:So, um, I dunno if that answered the question, but I have a strong
Speaker:reason for wanting fly up to be a huge employer of the future.
Speaker:I was, uh, listening to our national, um, radio station the other day,
Speaker:C B C, and they were, uh, they were talking about a new term, um,
Speaker:that we've, we've come through the industrial age and the new age.
Speaker:The name that is being proposed is the Anthropo scene, age or era.
Speaker:Um, speaking about the era in which the humanity did the most harm to
Speaker:the planet . Uh, so hopefully we can come through that and into a
Speaker:new era for our great-grandchildren.
Speaker:. Mm-hmm.
Speaker:. Um, yeah, and, uh, I've been really fortunate.
Speaker:Um, so here in here in Toronto, I'm actually also part of a third age learning
Speaker:group, and one of the gentlemen there is an environmental consultant and.
Speaker:he helped design the thas barrier, um, in the 1980s.
Speaker:And so I learned a lot from him.
Speaker:And one of the things I learned was every solution is gonna
Speaker:bring its own set of problems.
Speaker:Hmm.
Speaker:So as we start thinking about how we wanna solve things, we also wanna think
Speaker:about it as a rolling issue is like each problem, each solution will in its
Speaker:turn, become possibly become a problem.
Speaker:So either we need to have.
Speaker:Um, flags in place so that we, we, you know, get out of that or make
Speaker:switches, uh, before they become too, be before it becomes too late.
Speaker:But, uh, you know, so just addressing climate, I don't want people to look at
Speaker:it in, you know, think of it in Hollywood terms of, oh yes, they turned on a switch
Speaker:one day and everything went away, and suddenly everything was hunky dory.
Speaker:I think that's the biggest disservice we do ourselves is.
Speaker:Just as, as this whole change seeped in so gradually the change is always gonna be
Speaker:gradual and we have to support the change and in this case, accelerate the change
Speaker:so that we are able to stop disasters happening as frequently as they are.
Speaker:Um, but at the same time, we just have to realize that it, you know, this
Speaker:is not an on off switch situation.
Speaker:And then to me that's.
Speaker:Communications issue.
Speaker:So Karina, I'm gonna ask you, uh, one more question I'm gonna ask you.
Speaker:Where do you see hope?
Speaker:Oh, everywhere.
Speaker:. Uh, someone actually asked me that question earlier this week because,
Speaker:uh, I told 'em that I was a futurist and they said, you know, what is
Speaker:your position of the futurist?
Speaker:And I realized that every futurist actually exists from a position of hope.
Speaker:. You can't be a futurist if you're not positively thinking about the
Speaker:future . If you think it's gonna get destroyed, we'll take a different job.
Speaker:. It's So, where my hope comes in is we have, as of yesterday, was a day
Speaker:before 8 billion people on Earth.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:. We had half as many people.
Speaker:When we send a rocket to the moon, With a, you know, brain power for calculator.
Speaker:So we now have more people, more intelligence, more educated people out
Speaker:there, more motivated people consistently working towards these solutions.
Speaker:We have young minds in so long as we do not get in their way, and
Speaker:that to me is a very important part of what my communication is.
Speaker:That's my responsibility to their.
Speaker:Is, um, let us get out of their way and let them come up with solutions.
Speaker:Uh, yes, we're here to help.
Speaker:Yes, we, we have technology, we have skills, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker:But I do feel a lot of the dynamic change that's gonna happen over the
Speaker:next 20 years is gonna come from the kids who are literally finishing
Speaker:high school, finishing university already in their first jobs right now.
Speaker:Um, so to me that's very positive.
Speaker:My reason for hope is that, uh, the, be like I've always used this phrase, the
Speaker:best idea can come from anyone, anywhere at any time, so long as they're not
Speaker:depressed, so long as the environment exists for them to think positively.
Speaker:Because from that, you, you, you dream rich, dream, you dream rich solutions.
Speaker:And we don't want bandaid solutions.
Speaker:We want rich solutions.
Speaker:We want solutions that theoretically could dis in quotes, disrupt.
Speaker:And I don.
Speaker:You know, uh, disabuse that, that word too much.
Speaker:But I want, I want, I want the kind of dreaming that says it's okay to change the
Speaker:financial system the way it is right now.
Speaker:It's okay to change the social structure the way it is right now.
Speaker:It's okay to change politics, you know, nothing is off the table because
Speaker:it, it is quite a big ask that we have right now, but it's their, , it
Speaker:is their grandchildren, it's their great-grandchildren as much as it's ours.
Speaker:So why are we not allowing them a seat at the table?
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:. And I feel that they have that same impetus.
Speaker:And to me that that energy that comes from knowing that there's an urgency
Speaker:is going to create great solutions.
Speaker:, and you ask why I have hope.
Speaker:I'm a, I, I'm a kid of the seventies and eighties generation, 1970s and 1980s,
Speaker:and we lived with nuclear proliferation.
Speaker:We don't have that right now.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:. Why?
Speaker:Because we were very motivated to stop that.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:So I think that same sense of urgency is gonna come from this new generation, and
Speaker:we're gonna start seeing movement from beneath, from from this ground swell.
Speaker:, and like I said, our biggest responsibility to get out of their way.
Speaker:Mm.
Speaker:. A few years ago, Seth Golden wrote a book that we bought a bunch of
Speaker:and gave to all of our, um, young adult children at the time, called
Speaker:What To Do When It's Your Turn.
Speaker:Um, and it was, it was speaking about that like, it's, it's your turn, go . So I
Speaker:think, uh, I think we'll leave it at that.
Speaker:But Karina Dessa, thank you so much for, um, bringing your wisdom to the
Speaker:carbon sessions and, uh, for all the work that you're doing in the world.
Speaker:It's so needed and, um, and you're an inspiration, so thank you.
Speaker:Thank you very much for having me.
Speaker:Appreciate it, and I love being part of this organization and wonderful minds that
Speaker:are so motivated to make a difference.
Speaker:You've been listening to Carbon Sessions, a podcast with carbon
Speaker:conversations for every day with everyone from everywhere in the world.
Speaker:We'd love you to join the Carbon sessions so you too can share your
Speaker:perspectives from wherever you are.
Speaker:This is a great way for our community to learn from your ideas and
Speaker:experiences, connect and take action.
Speaker:If you want to add your voice to the conversation, go to the carbon
Speaker:almanac.org/podcast and sign up to be part of a future episode.
Speaker:This podcast is also part of the Carbon Almanac Network.
Speaker:For more information to sign up for the emails.
Speaker:To join the movement and to order your copy of the Carbon Almanac,
Speaker:go to the carbon almanac.org.
Speaker:Be sure to subscribe and join us here again, as together
Speaker:we can change the world.
Speaker:You've been listening to Carbon Sessions, a podcast with carbon
Speaker:conversations for every day with everyone from everywhere in the world.
Speaker:We'd love you to join the Carbon sessions so you too can share your
Speaker:perspectives from wherever you are.
Speaker:This is a great way for our community to learn from your ideas and
Speaker:experiences, connect and take action.
Speaker:If you want to add your voice to the conversation, go to the carbon
Speaker:almanac.org/podcast and sign up to be part of a future episode.
Speaker:This podcast is also part of the Carbon Almanac Network.
Speaker:For more information to sign up for the emails, to join the movement, and to
Speaker:order your copy of the Carbon Alman.
Speaker:Go to the carbon almanac.org.
Speaker:Be sure to subscribe and join us here again, as together
