CAT Newsletter #142 - 2022-10-16
Hey CATs,
Welcome to issue 142 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
#️⃣ Slack channel highlights
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#greener-design: Nico celebrated the HTTPArchive State of the Web 2022 having a sustainability chapter! Lots of CATs helped put this together and you can share your thoughts and congrats in the thread.
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#events: Lots of folks are excited about the Green Software Foundation’s Carbon 22 Hackathon Ismael shared. Find the thread here.
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#civic-tech: Reflecting on the recent elections in Aotearoa New Zealand Jenny asked a survey design/algorithmic bias question: How can one balance being transparent about the algorithm to ensure that algorithmic biases aren’t exacerbating existing inequalities, and keeping the scoring algorithm hidden so that candidates can’t game the system? Share your knowledge in the thread.
✋ Looking for volunteers
#freelance channel co-host • 30min / week
Help out CAT volunteer @Sigi to keep our #freelance channel welcoming and active.
Branch magazine reading group lead • 2hrs / month
Pick an article a month and host a reading group discussion session for our members
Local MeetUp organizer • 3hrs / month
Follow the lead of CAT volunteer Elisa and connect to your neighbours by organising your own local CAT meet-up.
💬 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.
👋 CAT x Terra.do London Mash-Up (in-person)
The Understudy, London, UK
Wed, Oct 19th • GMT 6pm
☕ CAT coffee (western-friendly): #greener-design pop-up
Thu, Oct 20th • PT 10am | ET 1pm | GMT 6pm | CET 7pm | IST 10:30pm
☕️ CAT coffee (eastern-friendly)
Thu, Nov 1st • GMT 8am | CET 9am | IST 12:30pm | CT/SGT 3pm | AEST 5pm | NZST 8pm
🍩 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 Submitted Events
19th Oct - 6pm CET - Carbon13 in Berlin: An Introduction for Founders
An introduction to Carbon13’s Venture Builder programme which will launch in Berlin for the first time in February 2023. In this webinar, the Carbon13 Berlin team will introduce the programme for founders interested in launching their startups in the EU and explain how it works.”
25th Oct - Climate Entrepreneurship for Biochemists, Botanists and Food Scientists
Welcome to Carbon13’s webinar, open to those with specialisms in food, protein, biotech, bio-engineering and similar, who are ready to contribute to the global effort to reach Net Zero and build a venture that can significantly reduce CO2e emissions.
Want an event listed here? Use this event listing form to submit the details so we can add it in the newsletter.
Check #events in the CAT slack for more.
🎤 Podcasts
Mistakes have been made, lessons learned. Yet again, us being away for a few weeks coincided with the ass falling out of everything that is good.
Volts My Climate Journey - David Roberts
Today’s guest is David Roberts, aka Dr. Volts, who runs the Volts newsletter and podcast.
Outrage and Optimisim 170. Australia is Back!
In this episode, co-hosts Christiana Figueres and Paul Dickinson are joined by guest co-host and friend, Dean Bialek. Dean has worked on climate change for years in his native Australia, which is especially relevant to today’s episode.
Sustainability defined: Ep 69: Air Pollution with Molly Rauch & Almeta Cooper (Moms Clean Air Force)
We hope this episode is a breath of fresh air on a critical topic. In 2019, 99% of the world’s population lived in places where the World Health Organization air quality guideline levels were not met. Air pollution is widespread and can have tremendous negative impacts on public health and the environment.
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
How open source is accelerating electric sustainability The Linux Foundation Energy (LF Energy), an open-source foundation focused on harnessing technologies to decarbonize global economies, announced several new efforts to usher in a new era of sustainability innovation.
From fellow CAT Brent Schulkin in the slack: “Trick or Treat is creating an outrageous ETF that will drive specific emissions reductions while aiming to financially outperform the largest existing ETFs.” Imagine shareholder activism, but doubling down on the activism part.
The Whitehouse in the USA starts a climate art funding to support a landmark climate science report
“For the first time, the NCA5 invites artists to creatively visualize climate change in the United States: its causes, impacts, and the strength of our collective response.”
Revealed: 5,000 empty ‘ghost flights’ in UK since 2019, data shows
More than 5,000 completely empty passenger flights have flown to or from UK airports since 2019, the Guardian can reveal. A further 35,000 commercial flights have operated almost empty since 2019, with fewer than 10% of seats filled, according to analysis of data from the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA). This makes a total of about 40,000 “ghost flights”.
Will Crypto Cowboys Crash the Texas Power Grid?
With Ethereum cleaning up it’s act somewhat, since “the merge”, Bitcoin is left as the main cause of proof of work, and it’s impacting the Texas power grid. “Bitcoin miners are helping to create an electricity shortage and then they get paid a ridiculous amount of money to help solve the shortage that they helped to create in the first place.”
Through analyzing film and television scripts over a five-year period, researchers found that only 0.6 percent of scripted TV and film mentioned the specific term “climate change.”
W3C Sustainability Guidelines Meetup
OK, not really a news item, but did you know the W3C is putting together Sustainability guidelines? Here’s your change to get involved and shape the web for a more just and sustainable internet.
William Shatner says his trip to space ‘felt like a funeral’ for Earth
The Star Trek actor, a longtime environmental advocate, described feeling grief for a planet in peril.
🎬 CAT videos 🎬
CAT videos, geddit? 10-15 minute videos providing accessible explainers to topics related to climate.
Greenland zombie ice and committed sea level rise
This is the youtube companion to the peer reviewed article in Nature, Greenland ice sheet climate disequilibrium and committed sea-level rise. 5 minutes long, fascinating and scary in equal measure.
💼 Jobs
Neutreeno - Full Stack Engineer - £40,000 - £70,000 (based on experience) + Equity!
Neutreeno is engineering the world’s first GHG instrument to simultaneously reduce companies’ emissions and costs without offsetting. We’re building the world’s most advanced decarbonisation team (including leading IPCC scientists & engineers) and are backed by Cambridge Enterprise, Innovate UK and other international investors. We’re are starting an exciting new product build (a Web App). They’ll get to design the App, choose the tech stack and help our climate engineers build a truly impactful product.
Library of Things - Back-End Developer - Up to £50,000 per year, depending on experience
We’re a friendly bunch, passionate about our mission. We’re guided by our values of being regenerative in the communities we’re in and to the planet we’re on; balanced in creating a fair exchange for everyone involved; entrepreneurial by testing ideas and learning quickly; transparent with our intentions; borrower-focused to create the best experience possible; and keeping things joyful, never too serious!
Singularity Energy - Product Manager - $100k-$125k, 0.05%-0.25% equity
In order to decarbonize the grid, the world needs better carbon data and analytics. To support this mission, Singularity Energy is building the world’s highest quality view of historical, real-time, and forecasted grid carbon emissions. We’re looking to grow our team in order to improve the sophistication of our offerings and expand our capabilities to become the ‘carbon intelligence layer’ for grid operators, utilities, companies, and service providers to build data-driven decarbonization solutions.
xtonnes - Sustainable Client Solutions Lead - £40,000 - £60,000 - Hybrid, London
xtonnes exists to reduce the impacts of global warming while proving that this improves business performance, by enabling them to take action on greenhouse gas emissions.
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.
Also! Don’t forget the super handy “climate careers page” on outline *listing a bunch of useful resources and sites to check.
✋ Volunteering opportunities
The Adora Foundation is about to launch its Autumn volunteering programme ahead of COP27. They are looking for people who would like to share or build their skills in Technology, Event organising, Non-profit management, Research and policy, Communication, Changemaking and social entrepreneurship, and Art. If this sounds interesting to you, please express your interest here. [Full post on Slack]