CAT 147 - 2022-11-20
Hey CATs,
Welcome to issue 147 of the climateAction.tech (CAT) Newsletter - your weekly summary of what’s happening inside the CAT community, and in the wider world of climate and tech. New to CAT or looking to re-discover the community? Try out our onboarding checklist.
Remember you can unsubscribe from this newsletter at any time - the link is at the bottom.
Stay safe & healthy 😌 💚 🐱
CAT Community News
📚 Branch magazine reading group
On Thursday CAT volunteers Gaël and Poppe hosted our reading group meeting — discussing the article “If I am a Techie, How Can I Help Solve Climate Change?”. You can find the summary notes here. Our next reading group meeting will be next year but voting for the next article is now open. Have your say here!
#️⃣ Slack channel highlights
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#greener-webdev and #greener-infra: Scott brought up how data is replicated on his Fediverse server and pondered whether one could find some sustainability improvements for software like Mastodon, Pixelfed and GoToSocial. Check out the thread. Over in #greener-infra Nico shared an article on gardening, monocultures and the Fediverse vs centralized platforms.
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#greener-design: Lucy asked about existing slide decks to give an intro to greener/sustainable design. Lots of good resources have been shared on the thread.
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#green-teams: In this post Emmet shared a newsletter aiming to get more people involved in advocating for improved sustainability and ethics in the workplace.
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#civic-tech: Channel host Siôn shared a practical accessibility toolkit. Give feedback in the thread.
✋ Looking for volunteers
Onboarding hero • 2hrs / week
Help us come up with and implement improvements to our onboarding process so new members have a positive experience during their first few months in CAT.
CAT Coffee volunteer • 2hrs / month
Help brainstorm on how to improve our #cat-coffee events and/or help facilitate conversations during the event.
📆 Upcoming CAT events
If you’re looking at organising event in your part of the world, you can ask for help in #events. There’s a CAT event support kit, sample deck and so on to help.
▶️ Watch Party: From individual action to systemic change
Thu, Nov 24 • NZST 7:30am | PT 10:30am | ET 1:30pm | GMT 6:30pm | CET 7:30pm
☕ CAT coffee (eastern-friendly)
Thu, Dec 8th • GMT 8am | CET 9am | IST 1:30pm | CT/SGT 4pm | AEST 7pm | NZST 9pm
Volunteer Matt invites you to a chat about transitioning to more sustainable practices and how to do it fair and equitably.
▶️ Watch Party: How to Harness Digital Tech to Accelerate Climate Action
Tue, Dec 13th • GMT 8am | CET 9am | IST 1:30pm | CT/SGT 4pm | AEST 7pm | NZST 9pm
🍩 CAT Roulette - 30mins - whenever you find a time
Join the #cat-roulette channel, pick your region and get matched with other CATs every other week! It’s a nice way to get to know other CATs, and you can start and stop at any time.
🎬 CAT videos
CAT videos, geddit? 10-15 minute videos providing accessible explainers to topics related to climate.
📆 CAT Submitted Events
Want an event listed here? Use this event listing form to submit the details so we can add it in the newsletter.
November 23: 15:00 CET / 14:00 UTC - Green Web Fellowship Webinar
The Green Web Foundation is start its second year of the green web fellowship programme: a series of paid, part-time fellowships to incorporate climate justice into the work of technologists, and design and deliver fellowship projects that contribute to digital rights and climate justice. If you’re thinking of applying these webinars give an idea of what to expect before applying.
Nov 24 - 13:00 CET / 12:00 UTC - Digital Collage online workshop
A 3h30 collaborative workshop to understand as a team, and in a fun way, the impact of digital technology on the environment.
Join Carbon13, our panel of guests and a room full of engineers at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers to discuss the most urgent challenges in Net Zero, as we make a call for engineers to dedicate their careers to working on the toughest problems in decarbonisation.
December 5: 11:00 CET/ 10:00 UTC - Green Web Fellowship Webinar
Second information slot for applicants.
Check #events in the CAT slack for more.
🎤 Podcasts
Sustainababble #268: David Roberts meets Sustainababble
Chances are you’ll have read David Roberts’ superlative writing on climate – at Vox or more recently Volts – and thought ‘coo, that’s sensible and right and interesting’. We certainly have, so we’re delighted to finally have him on the show.
Political Climate - What a divided (US) government means for climate policy
Climate proved not to be a wedge issue in the 2022 midterms. What could that mean for climate policy post-election?
The Carbon Copy - A reality check on corporate sustainability
How large companies are claiming credit for climate progress that isn’t actually happening.
Outrage + Optimism - 178. COP27: Why the Money Flow is Slow
In this episode, co-hosts Christiana Figueres, Tom Rivett-Carnac, and Paul Dickinson share their reflections on COP27. We also have music from South Africa’s Daily Maverick, featuring the brilliant vocalist, Anneli Kamfer.
Environment Variables Fact Check: Sara Bergman & Software Carbon Intensity
Host Ismael Velasco is joined by EV regular Sara Bergman, a senior software engineer at Microsoft, and an individual contributor to the Green Software Foundation’s Software Carbon Intensity project. They discuss Sara’s green software journey, the Software Carbon Intensity ISO standard, why it excludes carbon offsets, and fact checking what that tells us about offset-based green software claims, from Google to Blockchain.
In this podcast, we take a tour through a short history of UN climate talks (now in their 27th year at what’s called a “Conference of the Parties”, in short a COP) - whereby the Angry Clean Energy Guy concludes that climate action is happening everywhere, except at the UN climate talks
The latest climate-related podcast episodes. Don’t forget, if you’re looking around, there’s a list of podcasts maintained by CATs
📰 News Highlights
In low-energy finish, oil and gas escape censure at Cop27
At dawn on Sunday, exhausted negotiators agreed a climate deal in Sharm el-Sheikh that paves the way to a fund for climate victims but falls short on mitigation. It was an anticlimactic end to a summit that secured a breakthrough on support for climate victims, yet did nothing to stop oil and gas expansion.
‘We couldn’t fail them’: how Pakistan’s floods spurred fight at Cop for loss and damage fund
Harjeet Singh, the global political director at Climate Action Network, a network of 1,900 organisations from 130 countries, said: “Pakistan led from the front. But civil society pressure gave power to negotiators inside the conference rooms to fight harder.”
COP27: Brazil’s Lula promises zero deforestation in the Amazon by 2030
Brazil’s incoming president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva vowed to reverse the environmentally damaging policies of his predecessor in a speech at the UN climate meeting
The emissions-data arms race is on
Microsoft is adding a carbon accounting and markets function to its enterprise 365 offering, jumping into the race to become companies’ preferred provider for emissions tracking and reporting.
Hidden Emissions From Cloud Computing Pose Net-Zero Threat
Regulators push back against cloud providers including Google, Amazon and Microsoft.
We’re getting a better idea of AI’s true carbon footprint
AI startup Hugging Face has undertaken the tech sector’s first attempt to estimate the broader carbon footprint of a large language model.
Standards body ISO launches new Net Zero guidelines
As regulators increasingly focus on tackling weak corporate environmental claims, and investors call for harmonised global standards, the U.N. and ISO said its work would act as a core reference text on what to include in their net-zero plans.
(Note from author: these go quite a bit further than most standards. While the guidelines link to existing schemes, they are explicit that to be a credible net zero claim, it has to demonstrate a plan by an org to halve absolute emissions by 2030, with interim targets every 2-5 years).
💼 Jobs
TransitionZero - Data Engineer - London, hybrid working - Lead £67.5-£72.5K, Analyst £50-£55K
We’re building a team to deliver our Future Energy Outlook, a data service and integrated product suite to guide the ongoing energy transition. We’re bringing together market and asset-level data with our satellite- and machine-learning derived data products to provide both predictive intelligence and normative insights. We’re looking for Pythonistas, particularly those with some combination of CloudOps, machine learning, or relevant domain knowledge.
Leaders for Climate Action - Senior Growth Marketer - Permanent - Remote (Europe) - €40-60K EUR
As Senior Growth Marketer at LFCA you’ll be the driving force behind all our member acquistion initiatives. You’ll develop, implement, track and optimize acquisition campaigns across multiple, mostly digital, channels. In your role, you’ll work together with our content, community and product teams. Ultimately, you’ll make sure our message reaches our target audience of climate action practitioners.
SustainChain - Sr. Software Developer - Remote - Volunteer
SustainChain is a peer-to-peer knowledge sharing platform purpose built for Sustainability leaders and change-makers. It’s a safe place to share projects, find new partners, amplify solutions, and publish toolkits and learnings. It’s free and trusted and is being developed in partnership with the United Nations to accelerate progress on the SDG’s.
Root Sustainability is a young software startup with the goal to unleash the sustainable potential of every business by building a software solution that enables companies to easily measure and reduce their environmental footprint. We’re seeking a dedicated senior Software Engineer to join our growing company.
Remember only jobs listing salary ranges are listed here - to get your job listed, you need to list a salary range. Folks can still look in the #jobs channel.