Quiet Quitting: The First Wave

It was last year’s buzz term, “quiet quitting.” It did not mean quitting one’s job — it meant quitting on the culture of working more than necessary. Employees clung to their job title, did the bare minimum, and protected their personal time.

For others, it was a survival technique in the climate of:

• Burnout from working too many hours.
• Being undervalued by their employers.
• The pandemic causing individuals to reassess what work ought to look like in their lives.
• Quiet quitting was a form of soft protest. Rather than quitting, individuals checked out — emotionally disengaged while still receiving paychecks.

 Step in “Resenteeism”

Now we’re seeing the rise of something a little different — resenteeism. This is when employees do stay in their jobs, but they’re not just disengaged; they’re actively unhappy about it.

Imagine showing up every day, feeling trapped, resentful, and vocal (even if passively) about your dissatisfaction. You’re there in body, but your energy is negative.

Resenteeism is fueled by factors like:

• Economic duress — inflation, debt, and fewer opportunities make individuals feel they can’t quit, even when they despise their job.
• Toxic cultures — micromanaging, no recognition, or discriminatory pay instigate resentment.
• Uncertainty — layoffs and unstable markets hold people back in jobs they’d otherwise leave.

Lame Quitting vs. Resenteeism

• Quiet Quitting: A survival tactic. Maintains mental well-being by establishing boundaries.
• Resenteeism: A pressure cooker. People stay, but resentment seeps and brews.

Quiet quitting was withdrawal. Resenteeism is bitterness. Weak quitting is passive resignation; resenteeism is active discontent.

The Human Factor

Resenteeism isn’t so much about people — it resonates across teams and organizations:

• An unhappy employee can demotivate others, spirits sag.
• Customers sense the tension when interacting with disengaged employees.
• Managers are most likely to churn over as discontentment goes viral.
• It’s like having someone come to a family meal who clearly doesn’t want to be there  they change the whole vibe.
• For the employees themselves, resenteeism exhausts them. Rising every morning to show up for work to a location you don’t want to be at, with no choice but to go, can contribute to depression, anxiety, and even physical sickness.

Why This Matters Now

We are living in a time of economic and cultural transformation:

• Job insecurity and inflation cause people to “stick it out.”
• Social media normalizes complaining about dissatisfaction in the workplace publicly.
• Smaller generations crave purposeful employment, flexibility, as much of the workplace lags behind.
• This cocktail of stress makes resenteeism look like the next destination in the office revolution after quiet quitting.

 How Businesses Should Respond

• Listen, Not Punish
  Addressing workers as “negative” won’t fly. Employers need to hear the whys of frustration.
• Address Pay and Fairness
  All too frequently resentment stems from being overworked, underpaid, or unfairly treated. Transparency and fair policies can make a huge difference.
• Invest in Culture
  Humans accept long hours if they feel valued, supported, and respected. Toxicity more than workload is likely the real issue.
• Career Pathways
  Employees who are left without career development opportunities are more likely to resent work. Small steps toward development can limit frustration.
• Mental Health Support
  Supplying support and placing dialogue around burnout and discontent assist in keeping quiet quitting from spilling over into resenteeism.

The Future of Work Attitudes

• Increased resenteeism will occur if fiscal stresses persist, but it highlights inappropriate management practices as well.
• Companies that prosper by offering flexibility, incentives, and fair treatment  will retain and attract the best and brightest.
• Employees, especially Gen Z, are less afraid of griping about poisonous workplaces. They may grit it out for a little while but that resentment is something that businesses can’t afford to ignore.

 Bottom Line

Quiet quitting was all about rebating to survive. Resenteeism is all about being present but resentful and trapped. It’s noisier, more infectious, and perhaps even more poisonous  to workers and organizations as well.

Companies have a choice: deny resenteeism and let it gnaw at culture from the inside out, or confront it with empathy, equity, and actual change.

Because in the end, employees don’t only want a paycheck they want to feel valued, respected, and empowered to succeed.

The New Reality: Trade Meets Climate

For decades, tariffs were a matter of money and politics — shielding local jobs, industries, or negotiating leverage. But in the 2020s, there is a new logic on the rise: trade isn’t just economically about economics anymore, it’s about survival.

Climate change is no longer avoidable — severe heat, droughts, floods, and rising tides are already disrupting international business. Governments are catching on: unless trade policy takes into account carbon emissions, it will be subsidizing polluters at the expense of climate-responsible economies.

Step in climate tariffs and carbon taxes — mechanisms aimed at ensuring “dirty” products (made with high emissions) are not given a free pass in the international marketplace.

The Age of Climate Tariffs

The biggest example is the European Union’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM). Beginning in 2026, all steel, cement, aluminum, fertilizer, or electricity imported into the EU will be subject to a tariff if it was made with greater emissions than EU limits.

Why is this important

• It puts EU companies that already pay carbon taxes on a level playing field.
• It puts pressure on exporting countries (such as India, China, Turkey) to straighten up their production if they wish to maintain access to the European market.
• It provides a model other nations (such as Canada, Japan, perhaps even the U.S.) will emulate.
• That’s why climate tariffs have been dubbed by some experts as the “new backbone” of trade — it’s not about being cheap, it’s about being clean.

 Carbon Taxes: A Domestic Shift With Global Ripples

Carbon taxes, on the other hand, are levied within a nation — taxing companies for each ton of CO₂ that they emit. More than 70 nations have implemented carbon pricing in some way. But here’s the catch: when one nation taxes carbon, but another doesn’t, trade imbalances surface.

Example: If Germany produces steel using costly clean energy, while another nation produces steel cheaply from coal, Germany’s economy loses out — unless a border tariff levels the playing field.

That’s why domestic carbon taxes and foreign climate tariffs are being intertwined into one system more and more.

The Opportunity Side

It’s not all punishment. Climate tariffs and carbon taxes are also:

• Driving innovation: Businesses are spending on green tech (such as hydrogen, renewable energy, carbon capture) in order to remain competitive.
• Rewarding clean economies: Countries that invest in renewables could find themselves with an export advantage. For instance, solar-generated aluminum from the Middle East would be more desirable than coal-generated aluminum from anywhere else.
• Pushing global standards: Even if there are holdout countries opposed to climate action, they might not be able to if they wish to continue trading with climate-aware markets.

The Risks & Human Costs

But let’s be human here — these policies aren’t painless:

• Poorer countries will view tariffs as a new type of protectionism — wealthy nations which have polluted for centuries now dictating that poorer nations must bear the brunt.
• Global consumers will pay more as businesses transfer carbon costs.
• Carbon-intensive workers (coal, steel, cement) could lose their jobs more quickly unless governments pay for a decent transition.
• Briefly, climate tariffs have the potential to exacerbate inequality unless they are accompanied by international assistance to struggling economies.

 The Human Lens

Visualize two workers:

• A Polish steelworker whose plant has made a green technology investment, so her job is safe due to EU regulations.
• An Indian steelworker whose factory uses coal. Exports suddenly incur tariffs, and demand plummets, putting his livelihood at risk.
• The policy might appear to be progress on paper, but in people’s lives, it can be opportunity for some and punishment for others.

Looking Ahead

• Are climate tariffs and carbon taxes becoming the backbone of trade policy? The answer is: yes, slowly but surely.
• They’re no longer fringe ideas — they’re shaping real trade deals, supply chains, and corporate strategies.
• They will most probably set the “new rules of the game” for world trade in the decade ahead.
• But their success hinges on whether or not they can be applied equitably, not merely rigidly — otherwise they will become another facet of the conflict between wealthy and poor countries.

 Bottom Line

Climate tariffs and carbon levies aren’t simply about emissions — they’re about what sort of world economy we want to create. An economy that is rewarded for sustainability, or one that holds on to short-term cheapness at the expense of long-term survival.

In a sense, they mark the start of the new age: “climate trade policy” — where the cost of a product isn’t just dollars and cents, but the carbon emissions it generates.