CAT Newsletter #139 - 2022-09-27
Hey CATs,
Welcome to issue 139 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.
You might notice this newsletter looking a bit different - we've switched to using a different newsletter service, so please accept our apologies while settle into the new system.
Remember you can unsubscribe from this newsletter at any time - the link is at the bottom.
CAT Community News
New to climateAction.tech? Have a quick skim of our community guidelines to get the most out of your experience here. 💚
Also! our new onboarding checklist. Whether you’ve been part of CAT for a while or whether you’re relatively new — this should help you get set up with the basics of our little community.
Channel highlight: #films-books-media is a great place to share what you’ve been reading, watching or listening to! We’ve also got a podcasts and a books spreadsheet where you can upvote things you enjoyed and get inspired by what other CATs have added. And you can find newsletter recommendations, reading groups and other bits on Outline.
Actual cats: If it's all a bit much and you just want to look at actual cats on the internet, yes, there is a now a #cat-cats channel, for sharing pictures of our feline friends. Go visit, and feel the stress melt away.
Join our volunteer team: Check out the task in our “Needs volunteers” column on the CAT volunteers trello board.
Thread highlight: Share what you’ve been working on or struggling with in your #green-teams in this thread started by Sandra.
Stay safe & healthy 😌 💚 🐱
💬 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.
CAT Roulette - 30mins - whenever you find a time
We're continuing our programme of letting members connect to 1 other CAT member every second week for a nice beverage and chat about climate and tech. It's a nice way to get to know other CATs, and you can start and stop at any time. Joining the #cat-roulette channel to learn more.
Check #events in the CAT slack for more.
💬 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.
Sept 28 - 6pm BST - 21 BST - Let's measure the environmental impact of digital products & applications - London and Remote
The SDIA will demo their new website emissions measurement tool and we'll work in teams to define how organisations should use it internally and externally. Developers, designers, product owners, senior stakeholders etc all working together. Hopefully see you there!
There’s a #carbonfootprint channel in the CAT slack, and one the question of targets comes up all the time. WikiRate and Green Web Foundation are teaming up host a live research session on the climate action targets of companies to achieve carbon neutrality. Which companies have set climate targets for 2030? Which ones for 2025? What are they? Join to help create an open dataset, and see how to query it and use the data in your own research and tools.
Sept 29 - 9AM BST - 12 noon - UK Climate Job Fair - London and remoteJoin this action-packed virtual event to meet UK startups scaling cutting-edge climate solutions - all of whom are actively hiring. Brought to you by Terra.do, in partnership with IEMA, MCJ Collective and London Climate Connection, as part of #GreatBigGreenWeek.
Oct 5 - 10:00 – 12:00 CET - ClimAccelerator Ecosystem Day - Africa
The event will be an opportunity to bring together actors and critical drivers of climate change specific to the African ecosystem. ClimAccelerator partners, start-ups, and other community members working in Africa are encouraged to attend.
Check #events in the CAT slack for more.
🎤 Podcasts
The latest climate-related podcast episodes. Don't forget, if you're looking around, there's a list of podcasts maintained by CATs
Nori: Climate art can be a beautiful thing—w/ Nicole Kelner, Artist-in-Residence at My Climate Journey
Communicating the science behind climate change is a challenge.
But when you present these concepts in an artistic way and make the data beautiful, it’s more engaging and easier to understand. And more likely to inspire climate action.
Outrage and Optimism #168. From Climate Week NYC: No Other Option But To Solve This
In an event as rare as the triple Jovian eclipse on Jupiter, Christiana, Tom and Paul recorded this episode together! As in IRL together! Physically at the same table! Having graduated from their humble beginnings which saw them huddled together around a mic in a San Francisco bathroom (not ‘toilet’ as the Brits call it, conjuring up all kinds of odd visions for our US audiences), they are now broadcasting to you listeners from Tom’s ‘cozy’ New York hotel room, bringing us all the news and highlights from the first half of Climate Week NYC.
Climate One: THE INFLATION REDUCTION ACT PASSED. NOW WHAT?
In August, President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law. The IRA allocates around $370 billion over ten years to invest in renewable energy, make EVs more affordable, address climate inequities, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help mitigate the climate crisis.
📰 News Highlights
Pope calls for courage in halting use of fossil fuels to protect planet
Pope Francis has called for courage in abandoning fossil fuels and lamented that older generations did not know how to protect the planet and secure peace.
Empirically grounded technology forecasts and the energy transition
We covered this in issue 3 of Branch magazine, but the paper we cited has gone through peer review unscathed, and is the wonkish one to use when people talk about the cost of staying with our current system, vs moving to one that is fairer, and greener. Using this approach to estimate future energy system costs under three scenarios, we find that compared to continuing with a fossil fuel-based system, a rapid green energy transition is likely to result in trillions of net savings. Hence, even without accounting for climate damages or climate policy co-benefits, transitioning to a net-zero energy system by 2050 is likely to be economically beneficial.
Wind farm Unicorn Orsted, extends 100% renewable target to all suppliers
Because most emissions are in supply chains for companies, climate leaders are writing provisions into contracts for their suppliers to follow the same policies they do. Orsted has becaome
Currently, a majority of suppliers involved have already adopted 100 % renewable electricity use. An additional 15 % of suppliers involved have committed to using renewable electricity exclusively by 2025, thus helping ensure that Ørsted will reach its target.
Estimating the environmental impacts of 57,000 food products
TLDR: the most nutritious ones tend to be the best for the climate too. See also - the open access original paper. One for the #cat-food channel
Timber skyscrapers reach for record heights and sustainable Australian cities
At around 200 metres tall (2/3rds the height of the Eiffel Tower), these buildings will be the largest in the world that use significant quantities of ‘engineered’ timber, which has excellent load-bearing qualities. One skyscraper will be 42% wood, with the developer saying it would cost about 9% more than a fully concrete alternative.
Paris and New York join climate litigation against TotalEnergies
The cities of Paris and New York have joined a coalition of associations and local authorities that are suing oil major TotalEnergies for failing to adequately fight climate change, the coalition said in a statement on Wednesday.
🎬 CAT videos 🎬
CAT videos, geddit? 10-15 minute videos providing accessible explainers to topics related to climate.
Frank Capra introducing a documentary on climate change, in 1958, on US television
If you were ever in doubt that climate change was not a new thing, here’s a 1-2 minute clip from the Bell Telephone Hour, a series of science films from the US telecoms giant, produced by Frank Capra of It’s A Wonderful Life, talking about fossil fuels emission melting the polar ice caps, and supported by Vannevar Bush, the creator of the memex, considered one of the precursors to the hypertext and the web,
💼 Jobs & Opportunities
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.
We are building a decision support platform, driven by data science, for land managers, investors, and policymakers to achieve the best carbon, biodiversity, and other environmental outcomes. We’re seeking talented, flexible, creative engineers who are happy to get stuck in at any part of the product architecture, from front-end UI engineering to back-end query design and data wrangling.
Also! Don't forget the super handy "climate careers page" on outline *listing a bunch of useful resources and sites to check.