Academia's original sin is forcing the most knowledgeable, talented, and passionate scientists, educators, and scholars to move every 1 to 4 years chasing postdocs. The kinds of community level changes we need to fight climate change need people who can commit to those communities.
I started serving on my town's climate change commission 4 years ago. We're now starting to see the first small projects come to fruition, the big project may be half a decade away. You can't do that on a 2 year post doc.
I started serving on my county library board. Our biggest initiative for the last decade is a massive renovation of our town's library. We crossed the biggest funding hurdle this year (Thank you Gov. Moore!). It'll be done in time for my daughter to enter middle school.
It's almost as if they do it to prevent any sort of actual community or organization of depth the take root. The powers that be learned a lot from 1965 to 1980.
Speaking as a frustrated, not-particularly-rooted postdoc who feels she's not doing a great job of finding the right avenue into community-level involvement: what are we going to do about it?
The reality might be that most of the work on solving the problems that plague mankind lies outside academia and is in the area of social programs, and these problems require people with expertise.
PS: Of course, academia still needs to educate/prepare people to tackle them...
