CAT Newsletter #143 - 2022-10-23
Hey CATs,
Welcome to issue 143 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.
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Stay safe & healthy 😌 💚 🐱
CAT Community News
#️⃣ Slack channel highlights
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 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
Want an event listed here? Use this event listing form to submit the details so we can add it in the newsletter.
Nov 3rd - Working In Sustainable Tech: The Carbon13 venture builder
At this Working in Sustainable Technology event we’ll be learning from two previous cohort members about building a business as part of the UK Carbon13 accelerator.
Speaker 1: Josephine Bromley at Mortar IO
Speaker 2: Wesley Yland at FoodSquared
Nov 12-13 - OpenAI (and Climate Policy Radar) Hackathon for Climate Change
Join us November 12–13 for a virtual hackathon to explore how our current AI models can accelerate solutions to climate change.
Oct 13 to Nov - Carbon Hack 22 - Join the Race to Build Sustainable Software!
In celebration of COP27, we are hosting Carbon Hack 22 - a race to build the most innovative carbon aware software solutions using the Green Software Foundation's Carbon Aware SDK/API with a total prize pool of $100,000 USD. The SDK/API enables software to do more when the energy is clean and less when the energy is dirty.
Oct 27 - The Green Transition And Its Discontents - Remote
In this workshop, we look at ecological modernization in an inequality perspective, and focus on regional, as well as social, justice. With examples from Norway and Belgium, we argue that the ecological modernization approach is unintentionally increasing social and spatial inequalities. If these inequalities are not addressed, the political viability of the Green Transition is in question. Fortunately, participatory foresight approaches to environmental policy making might mitigate this problem, avoiding some of its pitfalls.
Nov 23 - Digital Ethics Forum 2022 - Italy and Remote
Two days of panels and conferences on the most relevant ethical issues of the digital transformation of our society.
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
Why the countries leaving the Energy Charter Treaty is a big deal
Assaad Razzouk on a little known, secretive, stealthy tool undermining climate action, the innocuously called the Energy Charter Treaty - a treaty that allows corporations to sue countries for taking climate action. This is a big deal as in one week, France, Spain, and the Netherlands all pulled out of the treaty (yaaay!).
In this episode, we go to both Denver and Montpellier to meet Cameron Casher, Clean Tech Strategist at ThoughWorks, and Benjamin Davy, Sustainability Director at Teads. Being both hands-on engineers 👨💻 and well-known voices in Cloud Sustainability 🌱.
What climatetech can learn from the oceans
“Bluetech,” the range of technologies that touch the oceans, may prove to be an invaluable component of climate solutions.
Sustainnababble #264: Coke at COP
Who knew climate conferences had corporate sponsors? 183,295 people, that’s who, for they have signed a petition telling the UN suits to ditch the sponsor of this year’s jamboree in Egypt which is… Coca-Cola. Listen on to find out why.
📰 News Highlights
What would climate scientists do with $100m? We asked them
Here’s where climate scientists would spend their dosh — from climate education tools to concentrated solar-thermal power tech.
Rebellion has mounted among EU countries over an international energy treaty that gives multinationals the power to sue governments, as the Netherlands became the third country to announce plans to withdraw from a pact it says stymies plans to tackle climate change.
France becomes latest country to leave controversial energy charter treaty
France has become the latest country to pull out of the controversial energy charter treaty (ECT), which protects fossil fuel investors from policy changes that might threaten their profits. Liberté, Egalité, Sustainabilté?
HSBC climate change adverts banned by UK watchdog
The UK's advertising regulator has banned two HSBC advertisements for being "misleading" about the company's work to tackle climate change. The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said the banking giant can no longer run the ads which promoted its plans to reduce harmful emissions. The watchdog said that the posters "omitted material information" about HSBC's activities (
Carbon Offsets Are Currently Harming the Path to Net Zero, Report Warns
UK climate advisory group the Climate Change Committee issued a report Thursday warning that the current offset system is doing more harm than good when it comes to the overall reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.
Nigeria floods: 'Overwhelming' disaster leaves more than 600 people dead
Recent flooding in Nigeria has become an "overwhelming" disaster, and many states were not properly prepared for them despite warnings, the minister for disaster management has said. Some 1.3 million people have been displaced, and more than 200,000 homes have been destroyed. The government has said unusually heavy rains and climate change are to blame.
Q&A: Should developed nations pay for ‘loss and damage’ from climate change?
Ahead of the COP27 conference in Egypt, Carbon Brief has produced an interactive explainer on – according to experts – what loss and damage is, who is responsible and how it should be paid for.
Greenwashing or real commitment? Introducing our climate pledge rating
"We’ve just added a new badge to our search results, rating the climate pledges of the most searched-for companies on Ecosia."
Google updates search engine results to nudge towards more sustainable choices
Google is giving users more sustainable options by showing environmental impact comparisons with their new search update.
YouTube and Facebook letting Brazil election disinformation spread, NGO says
Global Witness produced – and withdrew – purposely misleading ads that were all approved by YouTube, and half by Facebook.
🎬 CAT videos 🎬
CAT videos, geddit? 10-15 minute videos providing accessible explainers to topics related to climate.
Why Germany is destroying villages for coal
Right in the heart of Germany, villages are being destroyed for coal – even though the country has vowed to turn its back on the fuel as soon as possible. But the villagers and activists are fighting back. (Editor's note - the energy charter treat mentioned above is related to this story - coal companies use it to sue governments if they try to stop it)
💼 Jobs
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.
Neutreeno - Full Stack Engineer - Perm - £40 - £70K + Equity - Cambridge, UK (+/- 2 hours)
Neutreeno is a B2B SaaS deep-tech spinout from the University of Cambridge building the world’s first closed loop emissions platform to decarbonise the global economy, without offsetting. Our technology provides the solution, shifting the paradigm from Net Zero to Real Zero. We are a small, collaborative team of world-leading sustainability experts, growing quickly.
The Open Data Institute - 20k GBP - 5 month funded grant programme
We’re seeking participants for our ‘Data for climate resilience peer-learning network’ who will have the opportunity to learn from data experts and each other, to more effectively address challenges through a better understanding of relevant data topics.
UK Ministry of Justice - Digital Sustainability Lead - 55-64k GBP - Perm - UK
We’re recruiting for a Digital Sustainability Lead here at MoJ Justice Digital, to be part of our warm and collaborative Technology Services team.
This role will actively support the Ministry of Justice and its ALB’s to meet the following commitments: The Net Zero agenda, The digital commitments set out in the government wide ICT and Digital services strategy, Greening Government Commitments and Defra’s annual ICT sustainable reporting, known as STAR reporting.
Also! Don't forget the super handy "climate careers page" on outline *listing a bunch of useful resources and sites to check.
✋ Volunteering opportunities
Share your feedback on the draft of the new standards for B Corp Certification
Do you want to help shape the future of what it means to be a B Corp? At @BCorporation, we’re working to make the #BCorp Certification more relevant than ever for the challenges we face today & tomorrow.