CAT Newsletter #144 - 2022-10-30
Hey CATs,
Welcome to issue 144 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 launches
CAT volunteer Gaël invites you to join the Branch magazine reading group! Each month we will pick an article from our Branch magazine and have a reading group discussion session. For our first meeting we’ll read “If I am a Techie, How Can I Help Solve Climate Change?” and we’ll meet to discuss it mid-November 👇
📚 Branch reading group (western-friendly)
Thu, Nov 17th • PT 10am | ET 1pm | GMT 6pm | CET 7pm | IST 10:30pm
If you can’t make it, you can still join the chat and share your reflections in the thread.
Let @Sandra know if you’d like join the volunteering crew and co-host with Gaël!
#️⃣ Slack channel highlights
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#2-global-dialogue: Melissa asked in this post: How did you decide which climate actions to take? (Or what are you considering in your decision-making process now?) What feels impactful to you?
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#greener-design: Natalie W. is looking for any industrial designers/fabricators out there who are navigating design and material decisions for sustainability! Reply in the thread
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#behaviour-psychology: Jon is pondering… should countries who used their army resources to help with COVID also use the army for installing rooftop solar and electrifying people’s houses? What do you think of the psychology of that idea?
✋ Looking for volunteers
CAT Coffee volunteer • 2hrs / month
Help brainstorm on how to improve our #cat-coffee events and/or help facilitate conversations during the event.
#cat-roulette channel host • 30mins-2hrs / week
Check in regularly, improve # of matches that meet, keep an eye on inactive members, and help out if folks need help.
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.
📆 CAT events in November
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 coffee (eastern-friendly)
Thu, Nov 1st • GMT 8am | CET 9am | IST 1:30pm | CT/SGT 4pm | AEST 7pm | NZST 9pm
🎧 Listening party: Green I/O – Tim Frick – Confessions from a trailblazer…
Thu, Nov 3rd • AEST 6am | NZST 8am | PT 12pm | ET 3pm | GMT 7pm | CET 8pm
☕️ CAT coffee + 📚 Branch reading group (western-friendly)
Thu, Nov 17th • PT 10am | ET 1pm | GMT 6pm | CET 7pm | IST 10:30pm
🍩 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 IOSpeaker 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.
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
Sustainababble #265: Rainforests of Britain
Britain has lost a lot of things lately: international standing; economic credibility; its collective shit. But we’ve also mislaid something more fragile, dank and extraordinary than even Liz Truss’s premiership: our precious and hitherto largely unknown temperate rainforests. Author and campaigner Guy Shrubsole sets out to right that wrong - he’s mapped every last rainforesty remnant, uncovered centuries old cultural ties to them, and outlined a compelling case for reversing their decline.
Climatetech for developing economies
In this episode, guest host Lara Pierpoint talks to Kate Steel, CEO of Nithio, a finance company focused on off-grid clean energy in Africa. Kate and Lara discuss the options for separating economic growth from fossil fuels. Kate argues that we have the technology to develop low-carbon electrified economies in developing economies — we just need to deploy it.
Outrage and optimism - #175. Hali Hewa: Gender and the Climate Crisis with Sofanit Mesfin
In this episode, Sofanit Mesfin, of Ripple Effect takes us through her journey working with women farmers in different African countries to deliver training programs that help them adapt to a changing climate. She explains how and why women and children are disproportionately affected by the impacts of climate change, and what Ripple Effect is doing to ease the burden on women, children and their households.
The ‘ecological Ponzi scheme’ putting Florida at risk
This week, we talk with Mike Grunwald about Florida’s unwillingness to plan for climate change — and what a solar-powered Florida city that weathered Hurricane Ian with little damage tells us about what’s possible.
📰 News Highlights
The European Parliament calls on nation-states to develop a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty
In a resolution passed earlier today outlining its demands for COP27, the European Parliament called on nation-states to “work on developing a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty”, a proposed international mechanism that would complement the Paris Agreement by enabling an equitable phase-out of oil, gas and coal production, responsible for more than 80% of global emissions in the last decade.
New report from the other CAT. “The report analyzed recent progress made in accelerating climate action across sectors that collectively account for roughly 85 percent of global GHG emissions (power, buildings, industry, transport, forests and land, and food and agriculture) and in scaling up carbon removal technologies and climate finance. Of the 40 indicators assessed, none are on track to achieve their 2030 targets.”
All the massive reports on climate released in the last week, in one thread
This week has been a big one as COP 27 approaches, and a common theme is that we’re not moving fast enough.
Carbon Aware Apples - Apple introduces clean energy charging in new iOS update
Apple have quietly rolled out a neat little feature where if you are in the States, your phone will adjust its charging to match when energy on the grid is cleanest. More on their support page, Found via fellow cat @budparr.
This is super nerdy and technical, but pretty huge. The folks who basically decide how proper accounting works have come out saying that for corporate carbon emissions, disclosure on Scope 3, where companies hide most of their emissions is required. Use this one at work, CATs.
Biden signs climate treaty aimed at limiting greenhouse gases used in refrigeration
Good news! This bill limits the use of HFCs in the United States, which are frequently used in appliances such as air conditioners and refrigerators and can be thousands of times more powerful than carbon dioxide in terms of warming the planet.
This startup offers affordable EV leases to people with long commutes
This is pretty cool story. The top 10 percent of gasoline users in the states consume about a third of all the gasoline consumed in America and more than the UK, France, Italy, and South Korea combined. They often can’t afford to switch to EVs, so services specifically here has outsize impact. See also this podcast diving into supercommuter phenomenon.
Brazil election goes to the wire after ill-tempered final TV debate
Today in Brazil, an voters decide between former leftist president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and the far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro, an election with profound implications for the Amazon rainforest, the global climate emergency and the future of one of the world’s largest democracies, and plagued by disinformation.
#🎬 CAT videos 🎬
CAT videos, geddit? 10-15 minute videos providing accessible explainers to topics related to climate.
How to build a wood skyscraper
Is there a way to replace carbon intensity steel and concrete for construction with wood, a carbon sink? That’s one of the ideas behind mass timber — a relatively new construction technique growing in popularity. Vox’s Phil Edwards visited Ascent Milwaukee, the tallest mass timber building in the world, to see how it all comes together
#💼 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.
Cercula - Tech lead - Perm - London/Hybrid remote - £50k - £70k plus equity
We’re looking for a strong mathematician & software engineer who wants to help decarbonise one of the most polluting sectors on planet earth: construction! Working with search engines / RDBMSs would be a huge plus
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.
Numina empowers cities with data to support climate-friendly and equitable forms of transportation, including walking, biking, and public transit. As our Director of Business Development, you will act as player-coach to expand Numina’s footprint, generating new business opportunities and building the foundation of a Series A growth-stage sales team.
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.
If you’re in the United States, climate change makers offer systemically useful actions you can take - especially useful given the mid term elections quickly approaching.