The Drawdown Labs Job Function Action Guides will help employees understand how their roles are critical in addressing the climate crisis, as well as implement high-impact solutions and navigate key considerations for taking action inside the workplace.
To make your government relations or public policy job a climate job:
- Ensure that your company has a system for tracking and prioritizing climate-related local, state, and federal policies.
- Learn your company’s policy on speaking out on behalf of climate-related policy. Does it match the company’s stated climate ambition? If not, push your leadership to take stronger positions on climate advocacy. Raise this question at team and all-staff meetings, and mobilize others to raise their concerns, as well.
- Encourage decision-makers to publicly support federal legislation that helps not only your company, but also helps the world achieve drawdown, such as clean energy standards and investments.
- Is your company part of any climate policy coalitions (such as the Ceres Policy Network)? If so, ask about how often they engage with them to support climate policy.
- Work with your sustainability team and regional offices to identify local and state-level climate policies to advocate for.
- Take note if your state is involved with a regional climate coalition, like the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) or Transportation & Climate Initiative (TCI), as these coalitions can help guide and aggregate business influence.
- Be transparent about how your company spends its political contributions and lobbying dollars. Allocate more dollars to lobbying in support of climate policy.
- Together with finance teams, support legislation and regulation requiring companies to disclose their climate risk.
- Work with the marketing and communications teams to develop effective communications strategies and campaigns to publicly support climate legislation (see this example).
- If your company belongs to trade associations that lobby against climate policy (take note of the worst actors), encourage leadership to push the associations on climate action or leave them all together.
- Share your understanding of the current and future policy and regulatory landscape to help your finance team craft an internal carbon price that can keep your company accountable to its climate goals.
- Minimize carbon-intensive business travel for you and your team, and opt for virtual gatherings. If possible, instead of flying, choose lower-carbon travel options, such as the train.
- Build community with other climate-concerned colleagues within your team and beyond. Come together to brainstorm ways you can take action, and raise your collective concern at team and all-staff meetings.