Everyone, everyday, everywhere has to produce goods and services that satisfy survival needs. These production activities are, quite simply, work. Work is done in a given climato-economic context that shapes the survival needs, the work, and the satisfaction derived from it. Many climate-related goods and services are produced through household work and other unpaid domestic tasks in straightforward ways. Much satisfaction is indirectly brought about also by working for money to buy a variety of basic goods and services. Indeed, it is a Sisyphean task to strip any work of its direct or indirect connections with the gratification of survival needs. For paid and unpaid production activities alike the bottom line is, “If you won't work, you shan't eat,” or, “If you won't work, you shan't survive.”

In psychology, it has become customary to divide the reasons for working into context-related or extrinsic motives such as social status and earnings, and content-related or intrinsic motives such as engaging in challenging tasks, use of skills, and freedom of action (for details, see Kasser & Ryan,2001; Maslow, 1954; Thierry, 1998). Climate-dependent work highlights the production of goods and services for extrinsic reasons of meeting basic necessities of life rather than intrinsic reasons of using and testing one's abilities. The section “Contextualization of Work Motives” provides sketches of the cultural consequences of climatic demands and money resources for the occurrence and salience of extrinsic versus intrinsic work motives.