We talked to Carl Bärstad, Lead Instigator of the creative climate collective Fund Your Mother, on why he decided to quit his job and focus all his time and energy to combat the climate crisis.
When and why did you decide to “climate quit”?
I quit my job in February 2024. It’s not that my former employer was harmful or meaningless in any way. Rather the opposite. I was working to raise money for an after school program for underprivileged youth in socio-economically vulnerable areas to empower them with digital skills such as programming and inspire them to take control over their future. It was just that last thing that bothered me. To take control over what future? Is there even a future for them? During my whole professional life I’ve been trying to empower kids and youth to be creative with technology so that they can be equipped with relevant skills for an uncertain future.
As the planet is burning it’s become more and more difficult for me to work with such a long-term endeavour that is education. There are just too many urgent needs around the climate that need to be addressed for kids to even have a future, my own kids included. Plus, how can I empower kids and youth if I myself feel increasingly powerless and desperate? It’s like trying to offer fun and inspiring classes in coding while the house is on fire and my internal compass is screaming to call the fire brigade and evacuate the building.
So that’s what I eventually did, in my own way, doing what I know I’m good at and using the privileged position I have in society.
Describe a specific moment when you realized that you needed to climate quit.
In the beginning of 2024, I was with my partner and our kids in Järvsö when I watched the news and it came to my knowledge that 5,5 million Swedes (including myself at the time) unknowingly owned shares in Saudi Arabian oil company Aramco oil via Sweden’s largest pension fund AP7.
This was extremely provocative and caused me to immediately changed funds to something more sustainable that I had already chosen for my work pension
I was also quite amazed how easy it was to actually switch funds (just log in with BankID via pensionsmyndigheten.se) and that if you know what fund / funds to change to, the process to actually move your money only takes a couple of minutes. For me I just couldn’t believe why 5,5 million Swedes still have their money in a fund that still has 45 billion SEK in the fossil fuel industry.
What are you doing now?
Inspired by the British campaign Make My Money Matter and their brilliant campaign with Olivia Colman (acting as oil exec Oblivia Coalmine) I realized that all the conditions were here in Sweden too to do a similar campaign, targeting AP7.
So I quit my job to live off my savings for the rest of the year and put all my focus on developing, funding and launching such a campaign. And thanks to brave companies like GoClimate who believed in me and decided to chip in to sponsor the production of the campaign this vision is now a reality on www.fundyourmother.org
How does it feel now since you changed your path?
To be honest I can’t imagine ever going back to a job where I’m not able to put all my time and effort on the climate as it really is a matter of survival for me now, both from a mental (engagement as an antidote to depression) and physical (having a liveable planet) standpoint. So the answer to your question. It feels great and it feels like I’m at just the place where I want to be.
What’s your advice to others who want to climate quit?
Do an inventory of your life. What is really meaningful? What kind of relationship do you want to have with your kids (if you have kids)? What do you want to be able to tell them when they ask you what you did to prevent or mitigate climate breakdown during this critical time? Now think about what you are really good at and really enjoy doing. Could any of that be applied to the climate somehow?
We are not all privileged in a way that we can just quit our job overnight. But maybe we can ask our employer to work only 4 days a week and use that extra day for something else related to the climate? Or if you really do have the economic safety net and an idea you believe in I’d say go for it! What’s the worst thing that could happen?