So You're Ready to Step Up on Climate Action. Now What?

Daniel Potter -

It’s no surprise to say the planet is getting hotter and the need for climate action is urgent. But what can you do? How can you apply your unique talents and interests to make a worthwhile difference? In fact, where do you even start? We hear these questions over and over, so in this post, we’ll explore your options and their pros and cons.

Up front, we need to state plainly that there is no one-size-fits-all answer. You may already know a fair bit about climate change and want to figure out what this all means for your next career move—or you may just be starting out and want a better baseline understanding of global heating and what it will take to curb its worst impacts.

Other factors include where you are in life; not everyone has the time or money to launch into a full-on graduate program, for instance. How you like to learn also matters: If you’re persistent and self-directed, you might not need much support, but many people benefit from a sense of structure and community, as well as expert guidance.

Also, the climate crisis is really, really big. For folks ready to learn and do more about it, we freely admit we’re not the only game in town. We take heart knowing others are also working to accelerate and broaden climate action, and that these range from the level of tenacious individuals on up to universities, as well as other startups, as we’ll discuss below.

Option 1 – The solo track

Many of us begin here, and it’s easy to see why: You don’t have to apply or subscribe to anything to follow your climate curiosity, making this a flexible and inexpensive starting point. 

Anyone with web access can read authoritative climate reports like the IPCC’s latest, as well as news from sites that cover climate without a paywall like the Guardian and Carbon Brief. Heck, if you have a library card you can check out great books like Dr. Katharine Hayhoe’s Saving Us and the works of Pulitzer-winning journalist Elizabeth Kolbert.

Other resources we recommend:

One problem here is that if you’re unfamiliar with the landscape, it can be hard to discern what’s real, meaningful, and timely from the vast amounts of misinformation out there. How do you know who to trust? (For starters, be skeptical of anyone getting rich defending the status quo, or who tells you the problem is already so bad there’s nothing to be done.)

Another problem is that this path can feel lonely and unfocused. Exploration with no destination in mind has the potential to be a lot of work for not much payoff. And plunging into the climate crisis can feel, at times, heartbreaking.

At the risk of exposing our soft side, let’s unpack that last part.

🌿 Why it’s hard to take climate action alone

From wildfires to floods to coral bleaching, the impacts of global heating are already here. To put it lightly, this is hurting people and the natural world. It’s a painful reality to face. But this is not to say all hope is lost: It’s not too late to stop the planet from getting even hotter, and there is a tremendous amount of urgent work to be done to keep things from getting worse. 

The point here is that this is a lot to confront on your own. "You’re not going to feel great all the time," writer and seasoned "climate person" Mary Annaïse Heglar told us in her 2024 keynote.

As some backstory about us, this is part of the problem our founder and CEO, Anshuman Bapna, set out to address in the earliest days of Terra.do. He found that delving into climate change is hard to do by yourself. Our flagship course, Climate Change: Learning for Action, is the remedy designed by his co-founder, longtime climate warrior Dr. Kamal Kapadia. Having a community of like-minded peers and experts alongside for the journey is key.

  • Solo track pros: If you’re highly dedicated, you can learn a lot this way on your own time for next to no money.
  • Solo track cons: There’s no structure or community built in, so it can be a lonely, nebulous path. And there’s a lot of misinformation and snake oil out there that can waste your time, too.
  • Our take: This is a sensible way to get started, but once you’re ready to step up climate action in your community or your career, it might not provide everything you need.

Option 2 – Back to school

If money is no object and you’re ravenous to learn and do more about climate change, you might be a wealthy philanthropist—hey, we love that for you—or you might be on your way to grad school.

The pros of getting a fancy graduate degree in something climate-adjacent are many. Such credentials can open doors, as can the professional connections that tend to come with spending time in such programs. If you know exactly what you want to work on and can dedicate a few years to getting there, don’t let us talk you out of it.

Photo by Lukáš Kadava / Unsplash

The trouble is, not everyone has that much time and money—or clarity. You might need more climate context before deciding what part of the problem makes sense for you to tackle. For that matter, you may already know what you’re good at—programming, writing, art, you name it—but not know how to connect it to climate action.

Put another way, if you’re not sure what you’d want to do after grad school, it risks being an expensive, mentally draining place to hope to figure it out. And some of our fellows looking to work in climate have found a master’s degree is optional. Others have first come to us to get an overview of the problem and the many solutions it calls for, to help decide what they’ll focus on. A few even come to us after grad school, to cover knowledge gaps they missed earlier.

Here, note that our co-founder and chief learning officer, the aforementioned Dr. Kamal Kapadia, knows something about grad school. She holds a PhD from Berkeley and a master’s from Oxford. In designing our Learning for Action course, her goal was to compress the most relevant aspects of a master’s degree in climate action into a program you could finish in 12 weeks without quitting your day job. (Indeed, the time commitment in a given week of LFA is generally under 10 hours.)

And to the extent that grad school is partly about networking, our program is also a more affordable way to do that. Past fellows like Adam Nashban tell us they keep in touch with others from their cohort after graduation—and that such connections are invaluable to transitioning into climate roles.

  • Grad school pros: A fancy degree can provide a crucial advantage to landing your dream job in climate, particularly if it requires certain qualifications or technical skills.
  • Grad school cons: Given the amount of time and money involved, this route isn’t for everyone. If you’re just getting the lay of the land or deciding what role you want to play taking it on, it might be a dicey proposition.
  • Our take: Many climate people we admire got where they are today thanks to grad school, and it can be a worthy investment, but if you’re mainly looking for a way to learn and meet people, consider the next option.

Option 3 – Cohort-based programs like ours

The last pathway we'll cover is an online program like Terra.do. These tend to offer more structure and guidance than you’d find lying awake reading about, say, global average temperature modeling, or commodifying carbon dioxide removal. Such programs also tend to take less time and money than going back to school, while affording some of the same upsides, like networking opportunities.

Here, we have to note again that the problem of climate change is just too big and multifaceted for any single organization to claim it can be the one-stop shop for everyone ready to take it on. We’re glad we’re not alone in working to scale up climate knowledge to take action, so we’ll cover a couple of others you might want to investigate as well, namely OnePointFive and Climatebase.

Some Terra.do folks have also taken courses through or even worked with these organizations, so here's our breakdown.

🌿 How Terra.do differs from Climatebase

True, both Climatebase and Terra.do offer 12-week fellowships to step up climate action—but when you zoom in, the two differ appreciably.

Climatebase’s fellowship centers on tech, and its target audience speaks that language. The program culminates in a capstone project, so if you jump in with a project in mind, the idea is you’ll walk away with the kind of work product you can show off to prospective employers or even investors. Climatebase also takes an exclusive approach, meaning a relatively small percentage of applicants are accepted.

Terra.do sets itself apart with more than just its slightly offbeat name. Importantly, we believe you can’t solve a problem you don’t understand, so our course goes deep on context and critical thinking: What’s driving climate change? How can you discern which solutions will actually make a worthwhile difference? How does this translate in terms of communications, economics, politics, justice, and adaptation?

We explore these questions with an eye for systems thinking. We examine not just problems and solutions but also what second-order impacts they have, and how these many factors interact and can ripple and cascade broadly. This means we take a global perspective. And because the perils of climate change are already falling disproportionately on those least responsible for causing it, we consider all this through a justice lens.

Photo by Boris Smokrovic / Unsplash

In other words, while Terra.do's audience is broader than Climatebase's focus on folks in the world of tech and new ventures, that's hardly to say we have nothing to offer there.

In deepening your understanding of what it will take to blunt the worst impacts of the climate crisis, our program aims to help you find your path forward. Crucially, that might mean a career move—and our fellows often see good results landing climate jobs after graduation—but it might also mean going from anxiety to action, and perhaps stepping up involvement where you live.

🌿 Different approaches to content and community

Terra.do invests heavily in curating resources and making our content accessible and timely. We endeavor to make even technical subjects—like carbon pricing, say, or direct air capture—conversational. Climatebase skips this intermediate step and points fellows straight to the weighty tomes of the IPCC, where just a summary (PDF) might run to 42 pages, and the prose might be politely described as "dense."

And we take a big-tent approach to accelerating climate action. This means our cohorts tend to be highly international—since 2020, we’ve had fellows from more than 80 countries—and range from lawyers and engineers to educators and artists, all eager to apply their talents to tackling the climate crisis. 

We think this cross-pollination is valuable. It reflects in our instructors, who range from a scientist and journalist who’s written for The New Yorker to the "recovering mainstream economist" behind the acclaimed podcast Tipping Point. Other current and past instructors include a former senior director of Tesla's energy business, a sales head at a home electrification startup, and a head of ESG for a multinational conglomerate. Many hold master's degrees or PhDs from top climate schools like Berkeley, Columbia, Oxford, Stanford, and Yale.

Both Terra.do and Climatebase make financial aid available. We can't speak to Climatebase's refund policy, but if you sign up for Terra.do's Climate Change: Learning for Action fellowship and decide it's the wrong fit less than three weeks into the program, we'll give you your money back, no questions asked.

🌿 What about OnePointFive?

There are a few things to note here. One is that there is some overlap between instructors you’ll meet at Climatebase and OPF. But OPF Academy’s focus is on corporate sustainability and carbon accounting. This makes it a logical fit for folks interested in climate consulting.

This distinction underscores our point that OPF is not really competing with Terra.do’s Learning for Action fellowship—which, again, provides global context and tools for critical thinking as you explore how you can apply your unique talents within the vast array of cross-cutting solutions the climate crisis demands.

That said, Terra.do does periodically offer shorter "sprint" courses worth comparing here:

➡ Bottom line on cohort-based programs

Because they’re generally less time and money than grad school—while still providing more structure, guidance, and networking than the self-directed solo track—cohort-based online programs offer something of a happy medium.

As discussed above, the courses and target audiences differ appreciably:

  • Who is Learning for Action for? If you're ready to deepen your understanding of climate change and step up climate action in your career or community, then Terra.do’s flagship 12-week course is made for you. We've graduated thousands of fellows since 2020. People keep telling us it was worth their time and money, and our Trustpilot rating is excellent.
  • Who is Climatebase’s fellowship for? Read up for yourself, but the focus is on technology and new ventures, and folks who already have particular solutions in mind. (Perhaps tellingly, as of this writing, the word "policy" does not appear in a search of their fellowship page.)
  • Who is OPF Academy for? Read more on their sustainability consulting accelerator, and note that it’s oriented around specific skills like GHG accounting, lifecycle analysis, and climate disclosures for businesses. (Again, do your research, but note that Terra.do periodically offers classes covering similar areas like corporate sustainability and carbon accounting.)

It's going to take all of us to stop the planet from getting hotter and avert the worst impacts of climate change.  Whatever path you decide to take, we’re glad to be working in the same direction.