Is there any job more depressing than climate scientist? People rifle through your email, send you death threats, hound you constantly, and force you to do embarrassing raps just to legitimize your area of research. It’s no wonder Addie Rose Holland said “no thanks” and decided to pickle things for a living instead.
Not so long ago, Holland was working as a paleoclimatologist, analyzing sediment from a Siberian lake. Now she spends her days among 15-oz. Mason jars full of pickles, at the organic pickle company she co-owns. Why the switch? The Daily Climate reports:
“Conversations about climate change often turn either to denial or guilt or depression,” she said. “But pickle conversations are full of laughter and hope.” … If she can get to climate through pickles, she said, the conversations are “invariably much lighter.”
Laughter and hope? We can pickle that.
Through her New England-based pickle company, Real Pickles, Holland is making her own small contribution to keep the planet from warming up. Real Pickles uses rooftop solar, has invested in energy efficient fixtures, won’t ship outside the Northeast, and buys local, organic vegetables to put in its Mason jars. The company also uses natural fermentation.
“We’re not solving global warming by making pickles,” said Holland. … But her company can, she hopes, help nudge the corporate world toward a more sustainable, healthier, less energy-intensive model. “We’re contributing to a global warming solution by helping to reorient our food system,” she said.
Also, she has a part-time job at the Northeast Climate Science Center, in Amherst, Mass., where her job is “to make conversations about climate change feel more like conversations about pickles.” Which is harder than it sounds, because it makes no sense to talk about how good climate change tastes on a sandwich.
