Ultimately, I landed upon seven climate tribes, which I’ll expand on in a bit:
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Over the last four decades, climate has crossed an arc from science to evangelism to tribalism, with each of today’s tribes focused on pushing forward their own solutions.
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As of 2021, climate tech accounts for 14 cents of every venture capital dollar.
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The late author Michael Crichton delivered a series of eloquent talks about environmentalism and religion. Crichton, who studied anthropology in college, argued that environmentalism had become a personal source of meaning for people, which prevented them from being able to objectively evaluate climate risk according to science.
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Crichton himself stated that he thinks “you cannot eliminate religion from the psyche of mankind. If you suppress it in one form, it merely re-emerges in another form.”
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- [note::Reminds me of the article I just read discussing how tribes are ubiquitous in society and that everyone's thinking, try as they might to counteract it, is influenced by them. I think it was Collab Fund article?]

If religious tendencies cannot be repressed from our collective psyches, why not start with the premise that climate is a religion, then try to understand it on those terms? Instead of insisting that we “stick to science” or only focus on technology, we can instead evaluate climate opportunities through the lens of tribal values.
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- [note::How would we think about climate if it were a religion? Interesting framing. 🤔]

In climate, Hannah Ritchie, a data scientist at Our World in Data, makes a similar observation to Anders: “In reality, it is possible to solve our environmental problems. Climate scientists certainly think so. They are often less pessimistic than the general public, which is a new and odd disconnect.”
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- [note::Some thoughts: Maybe this is due to survivorship bias i.e. people who are predisposed to be more optimistic about climate outcomes end up working in doomer fields (i.e. all the doomers have too much anxiety about it to continue pursuing similar the career path) OR maybe it's more comforting for people in the general public (who have less expertise and "skin in the game" than scientists) to accept that the worst is going to happen v.s continually maintain hope only to be disappointed (and feel as if there's nothing they can do to contribute). Lots of perspectives you could take on this.]

(highlight:: When it comes to working in climate, I noticed two major personas:
Incumbents: People with specialized skills who have been working in relevant industries for awhile (ex. scientists, policy researchers, or those who work in e.g. energy, utilities, manufacturing, agriculture)
Switchers: People with generalized skills who switched into climate (frequently those with a background in tech, finance, management consulting, or corporate executives))
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- [note::Some parallels to 80,000 Hours advice here (e.g. gaining specialized skills to do something with outsized impact v.s. gaining general career capital to do something impactful down the line)]

(highlight:: If we were to organize the climate industry, based on motivations and interests, it might look something like this:
Mr. Owl does not endorse this diagram.
Bright, sugary exterior: Climate doomerism, largely driven by media, the doomer climate tribe, and outsiders who don’t work in climate.
Surprisingly substantive, dense interior: This is where much of the climate work gets done, driven by different tribes. Each tribe has its own values and strategies, but all are generally preoccupied with realizing a vision of the future outside of themselves.
Hard stick in the very center: Not very tasty, but a necessary and oft-unappreciated foundation. This group would work in climate regardless of its trendiness: those with science backgrounds, or in relevant industries like energy or manufacturing. They’re motivated by personal curiosity and desire to solve an (often technical) problem.)
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Doomerism serves a general PR purpose, even if it’s annoying. It keeps what might otherwise be a niche academic or business endeavor in the public’s top of mind. Without doomerism, growing artificial meat or building an algae farm to capture carbon might be just another scientist’s crazy pet project, struggling for funding.
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(highlight:: Snapshot
Pro-economic growth
Techno-optimist
Individualist
Optimistic about the future
Abundance mindset
Related movements: Ecomodernism
Areas of interest: Nuclear, geothermal, pro-energy policy
Relevant people and orgs: Eli Dourado, Austin Vernon, Mark Nelson, Breakthrough Institute, Tim Latimer, Michael Shellenberger, Isabelle Boemeke
Keywords: energy, abundance, growth, nuclear)
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- [note::"Energy Maximalism" in a nutshell]

(highlight:: Snapshot
Pro-economic growth
Techno-optimist
Collectivist
Optimistic about the future
Abundance mindset
Related movements: Urbanism, solarpunk
Areas of interest: Infrastructure, transportation, construction, energy transmission, climate adaptation, renewable energy
Relevant people and orgs: Ezra Klein, Jesse Jenkins, Lyn Stoler, YIMBY, 2150.vc
Keywords: cities, progress, infrastructure, optimism, housing, resilience)
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- [note::"Climate urbanism" in a nutshell]

While energy maximalists skew more towards the R&D side of technology, climate tech operates more on the commercial side of the pipeline: bringing existing technologies to market. Those in climate tech are always looking for low-hanging fruit, overlooked gaps and points of leverage.
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(highlight:: Snapshot
Pro-economic growth
Techno-optimist
Individualist
Abundance mindset
Neutral to optimistic about the future (this group tends to be more anxious and focused on downsides, but they generally believe we can solve these problems)
Areas of interest: Carbon removal, energy storage, renewables, policy reform, nuclear, geoengineering
Relevant people and orgs: Stripe Climate, Frontier, Nan Ransohoff, Shayle Kann, Lowercarbon Capital, Chris Sacca, Ryan Orbuch, Jason Jacobs, Climate Tech VC
Keywords: scale, decarbonization, removing roadblocks, progress, building, innovation)
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- [note::"Climate Tech" in a nutshell]

Whereas climate technologists see regulation as a way to remove roadblocks, eco-globalists see regulation as a way to enforce behavior.
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(highlight:: Snapshot
Pro-economic growth
Tech-neutral
Collectivist
Scarcity mindset
Neutral about the future (they still think it’s possible to fix climate change, but are much more alarmed)
Interests: carbon offsets and credits; carbon pricing; carbon tax; setting and enforcing emission targets; energy efficiency; reducing consumption; Green New Deal; ESG investing; global climate impact; renewables
Relevant people and orgs: World Economic Forum, UN Climate Change Conference (COPx), Bloomberg Green, Tom Steyer, John Doerr
Keywords: sustainability, reporting, targets, efficiency, supply chain, climate crisis, climate action)
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- [note::"Eco-globalism" in a nutshell]

(highlight:: Snapshot
Anti-economic growth
Techno-pessimist
Collectivist
Scarcity mindset
Pessimistic about the future
Related movements: classic environmentalism (1960s-1990s), peak oil, environmental justice, climate justice, degrowth
Interests: political advocacy, anti-corporate lobbying, anti-nuclear, recycling, overpopulation, renewable energy, Green New Deal
Relevant people and orgs: Sierra Club, Mother Jones, Grist, The Guardian, Hot Take, Assaad Razzouk, Leah Stokes, Mark Ruffalo, HEATED, Jason Hickel, Earthjustice
Keywords: degrowth, environment, fossil fuels, sustainability, consumerism, carbon footprint, reduce, extractivism)
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- [note::"Environmentalism" in a nutshell]

(highlight:: Snapshot
Anti-economic growth
Techno-pessimist
Individualist
Scarcity mindset
Pessimistic about the future
Related movements: anarcho-primitivism, retvrn, accelerationism, preppers, Pine Tree gang
Interests: personal preparedness, farming, homeschooling, regenerative finance, New Urbanism
Relevant people and orgs: Doomer Optimism, Willow Liana, Anarcho-Contrarian, Industrial Society and Its Future
Keywords: homesteading, prepping, resilience, adaptation)
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- [note::"Neopastoralism" in a nutshell]

(highlight:: Snapshot
Anti-economic growth
Techno-pessimist
Individualist
Scarcity mindset
Pessimistic about the future
Interests: activism, protests, eco-therapy, self-care
Relevant people and orgs: Greta Thunberg, Extinction Rebellion, Just Stop Oil, Gen Dread
Keywords: (climate, eco-) anxiety, trauma, grief; climate crisis; climate denial; extinction)
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- [note::"Doomerism" in a nutshell]

For a snapshot view, here are all the tribes, plotted along a few key parameters:
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Finally, just to round out our landscape, here are a few other groups I considered including, but I think aren’t (yet? quite full-fledged tribes:
Climate escapists: People who want to get off the planet and explore new frontiers (ex. Musk, Bezos)
Regenerative finance (“ReFi”): Those who want to rethink our financial system from the ground up, designing money in a way that regenerates, rather than depletes, our capital assets, using tokenomics and blockchain technology
Bobrossians: A gentler strain of doomers who believe the world is unsalvageable, but are focused on finding the small wins and joys in life (aka “happy little trees”) – see, for example, the All We Can Save Project)
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Some people claim that such divisiveness politicized climate science; that it brought us to a global stalemate; that climate solutions require us to set aside our differences and work together to resolve an existential threat. I find this framing to be totally unrealistic. There is no unified “we” in climate, any more than there is in the normal world, and pretending otherwise is exactly what keeps us trapped in these failed coordination games.
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Why do climate tribes matter? Tribes can help people find each other more quickly by communicating values instead of agendas. “Let’s switch to nuclear energy” doesn’t sound very intriguing to someone who’s not interested in climate at all. “Let’s stop talking about scarcity and instead talk about abundance, starting with our energy needs,” however, might make them perk up their ears. (This rhymes with my conception of idea machines: a modern approach to turning ideas into outcomes by starting with a community, which only develops an agenda downstream of its values.)
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Finally, the most important thing about climate tribes is that they shift the conversation from passive, “true-believer” narratives towards active, action-oriented ones.
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(highlight:: A doomer industry is the talent ecosystem that forms around a perceived civilizational threat that demands us to prioritize it, for the sake of humanity, over whatever else we might want to do instead. Doomer industries like climate and AI safety have a sort of wheedling, persistent mind-virus quality to them that other important topics – say, global poverty or education – do not.
Besides climate, a few other examples of doomer industries might include: AI safety, biosecurity, global catastrophic risk, misinformation, and population decline (and its counterpart from a previous generation, overpopulation). And while the human attraction to religious apocalypticism is pervasive (there’s even a name for it: eschatology), doomer industries – as a way of finding meaning in one’s primary work – appear to be a fairly recent development.)
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From a historical perspective, then, someone like Shellenberger might say that the reason we have doomer industries is because, in a secularized world of comparative peace and prosperity, it fills the role of some primal human need for community. Preventing a doomsday scenario is a way to feel connected to millions of other people, all working towards the same purpose, just as previous generations once felt in rallying around war efforts, or the race to beat the Soviets. Environmentalism is a rare natural fit for this topic compared to other cause areas, because the environment affects everyone – reaching across geographies, socioeconomic class, and demographics.
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Most obviously, doomer industries require a shared belief in a disaster scenario, which lacks specificity and has no clear date for the “day of reckoning”, but is understood to have a totalizing effect across all aspects of life. (This mentality is what usually attracts pejorative comparisons between doomer industries and religion.)
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Most cause areas struggle to attract talent, because there is no money to be made. They are usually funded with philanthropic capital from a finite set of funders, and those working in such industries must often accept below-market rate salaries.
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Doomer industries, on the other hand, can attract high-quality talent because they are adjacent to some underlying commercial opportunity that either makes it possible to get paid well, or attracts the overflow from workers who already made money in the adjacent field and are now in the “second act” of their careers.
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Doomer industries attract ongoing media attention and speculation, moreso than “everyday disasters” like poverty, for the two reasons stated above: 1) lack of specificity or verifiability around the actual doomsday scenario, which blurs the lines between fact and fiction; and 2) adjacency to a business sector, where the presence of funding, as well as potential extreme wealth outcomes, makes these topics more exciting to write about. This attention creates a positive feedback loop for talent and funding.
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If doomerism is the new normal, it’s unsurprising that we’d start to see “doomer industries” become a normalized way of finding meaning in one’s work. AI safety, biosecurity, misinformation, and population decline all carry the same urgency of climate, but – as Nabeel noted – appeal to different subcultures within tech. In a world with highly polarized narratives, it’s no longer enough to work on “helping the world” or “improving the world” – people need to save the world, in order to get the same high of doing meaningful work.
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