CAT Newsletter #146 - 2022-11-13
Hey CATs,
Welcome to issue 146 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
📚 Branch magazine reading group
This month we’re reading “If I am a Techie, How Can I Help Solve Climate Change?” and we’ll meet to discuss on Nov 17th. Thread for async chats is here.
#️⃣ Slack channel highlights
#2-global-dialogue: The Decarbonize Software event inspired lots of discussion in this thread. Join the conversation and share your reflections.
#greener-webdev: Jason found out last week that some font foundries don’t allow sub-setting fonts. There’s this handy site that lists foundries that do and don’t allow this in their licences.
#greener-design: There’s been a bunch of chat after the Design Council’s Design for Planet festival last Tuesday. Catch up on the conversation in this thread.
#3-ask-anything: Fershad asked: is there a standard or agreed upon threshold for when a country's electricity grid would be considered low-carbon? Share your knowledge in the thread.
#3-ask-anything: A few CATS are asking about Shell, the well known energy company, being a member of the Green Software Foundation It brings up questions about the interplay between antitrust laws, and fossil fuel firms's social license to operate. Worth a read.
#conf-cop27: If you're not sick of COP27 already, or you're there, we have a channel for CATs who are interested in meeting others there, or just want to discuss the event.
✋ Looking for volunteers
Channel host • 20min / week
Pick a channel and ensure conversation there stays active, welcoming and safe.
CAT Coffee volunteer • 2hrs / month
Help brainstorm on how to improve our #cat-coffee events and/or help facilitate conversations during the event.
#freelance channel co-host • 20min / week
Help out CAT volunteer @Sigi to keep our #freelance channel welcoming and active.
📆 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 coffee + 📚 Branch reading group (western-friendly)
Thu, Nov 17th • PT 10am | ET 1pm | GMT 6pm | CET 7pm | IST 10:30pm
▶️ 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 Submitted Events
Want an event listed here? Use this event listing form to submit the details so we can add it in the newsletter.
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.
Dec 12, 12:30 GMT - Building green software with the Software Carbon Intensity Specification
Sara Bergman, Senior Software Developer at Microsoft, will be talking about the Green Software Foundation and their Software Carbon Intensity (SCI) Specification tool.
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
Outrage and optimism 175. COP27: A Little Less Conversation, A Lot More (Climate) Action
Co-hosts Christiana Figueres, Tom Rivett-Carnac, and Paul Dickinson catch up on the whirlwind political news from the last few weeks. They cover the defeat of Brazil’s far-right President Jair Bolsonaro by former president (and prisoner) Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva aka “Lula,” the upcoming COP27, and the U.S. midterm elections.
GreenIO - #10 - Sören Enholm - How to navigate toward more sustainable digital equipment?
In this episode, we went to Stockhölm to meet Sören Enholm, TCO Certified CEO 🏷️. For 30 years, TCO has been assessing IT products reaching a whopping 10'000 references today 🤯. We discussed the environmental footprint of digital devices, natural and urban mining, how to secure a qualitative certification process, the current momentum in Digital Sustainability and much more.
Catalyst with Shayle Kann - Getting more energy on the wires
Lack of transmission is a massive bottleneck for the energy transition. We need way more of it to bring power from rural areas with rich wind and solar potential to power-hungry population centers. In 2020, in the US alone, there were enough projects in the queue waiting to get grid connections to replace the entire US current generation fleet. How do we fix it?
Political Climate - How voting rights and redistricting shape climate policy
When it comes to climate, research shows that 66% to 80% of people polled support major mitigation policies. But are election-related barriers preventing these voter preferences from being captured at the ballot box? We discuss how the redistricting process influences both electoral outcomes and policymaking — including on climate and energy issues.
Loathe though we are to be scatological, it’s time to face faecal facts: the astonishing amount of human excrement on the planet presents a honking environmental challenge. We join professor and film-maker Troy Hale, whose latest release (sorry) ‘Sh*t Saves the World‘ is a televisual tribute to all things number two. Ahead of his film being deposited on a UK streaming service near you, we shoot the crap with Troy.
The Week in Green Software: Disintegration vs Integration
This Week in Green Software Episode, host Ismael Velasco takes you through the recent key events and happenings in the world of green software. He outlines a range of reports coming out from The WMO Greenhouse Gas Bulletin, IPCC, UNEP, UNFCCC, IEA and many other acronyms to boot! He also highlights huge positive (and negative) changes in Big Tech and how you can be part of the crest of the wave of change in green software.
📰 News Highlights
France legislates that every parking lot for 80 cars or more must be covered by solar panels
That would mean 11GW of new solar, comparable to 10 new nuclear reactors, powering millions of homes, with zero new land needed. Article in French (it’s the French senate website), but translation works well - original french link.
World is on ‘highway to climate hell’, UN chief warns at Cop27 summit
António Guterres tells leaders ‘global climate fight will be won or lost in this crucial decade – on our watch’. Full quote - “We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot on the accelerator… The global climate fight will be won or lost in this crucial decade – on our watch. One thing is certain: those that give up are sure to lose.
Biden says leaders ‘can no longer plead ignorance’ over climate crisis
Flying in to deliver a speech, after better-than-expected mid term US election results, Joe Biden comes out for staying within 1.5 C of warming “If we are going to win this fight, every major emitter needs to align with 1.5C. We can no longer plead ignorance of the consequences of our actions or continue to repeat our mistakes. Everyone has to keep accelerating progress throughout this decisive decade.”
Good Net Zero, bad Net Zero? Crowdsourcing company targets with WikiRate
As the seriousness of the climate crisis becomes ever clearer, more and more companies are making public sustainability commitments to show they are doing their part. But how do you tell when they’re sincere pledges and then they’re greenwash? And is there any middle ground between the two? Last month we teamed up with WikiRate to run an event focussed around the pledge du jour, the corporate Net Zero target, to help answer these questions.
There are 636 lobbyists from the oil and gas industries registered to attend the UN event in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. At Glasgow, the figure was 503, which outnumbered the delegation of any single country.
Germany to leave Energy Charter Treaty
The pact, designed in the 1990s, allows international investors in energy projects to sue governments for profits lost as a result of policy changes. It’s now viewed as a major threat to national climate plans to shut down coal plants or limit production of oil and gas.
The decision follows announcements from France, Spain, the Netherlands, Slovenia and Poland that they will withdraw from the pact.
Free Green Software Training course launched by Green Software Foundation
The Linux Foundation, the parent body of the Green Software Foundation has launched a free course aimed at software engineers, to learn the basic concepts a practitioner needs to know to build, maintain and run greener applications. It’s about 2 hours of content.
CATs among the winners of Carbon Hack ‘22
Last week, at the Decarbonise software event run by the Green Software Foundation, the winners of the month-long hackathon. Among the winners were CATs like @Samuel Pitoňák, with Sustainable UI, and @Todd Zmijewsk with HEDGE.earth . If you missed our watch party during the event, you can at least see the notes and links put together by some diligent members.
🎬 CAT videos 🎬
CAT videos, geddit? 10-15 minute videos providing accessible explainers to topics related to climate.
Why we may HAVE TO genetically engineer crops to ensure food security
Will CRISPR gene editing guarantee us enough food in the future? How does it work to genetically engineer crops and is it dangerous? Some scientists say we need to increase productivity and create new crops that withstand heat and droughts as water, healthy soils, and agricultural land become scarcer. Genome editing, also known as gene scissors, differs from traditional genetic modification as it doesn't use foreign DNA - but the long-term environmental impacts of the technology are hard to assess.
💼 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.
Sofar is building the world’s largest real-time ocean weather sensor network which provides the most accurate marine weather information and forecasts to power industry-specific solutions. Our Wayfinder application, like Google Maps for the sea, is used by the world’s largest commercial cargo vessels to make better routing decisions, resulting in lower fuel consumption and emissions. Our products are used by industries such as coastal engineering, off-shore wind, and aquaculture, As well as supporting extreme weather forecasting.
ClimateView is a climate tech startup helping cities to transition to net zero. We have raised our Series A (€10m). We’ve got a truly unique and valuable product, and we’re getting traction across the world.
Icebreaker One - Data Solutions Analyst (R&D) Up to £600/day (contract) - Remote
This role supports the delivery of an early stage smart meter data innovation project, in which we will assess the feasibility of taking an open, standards-based approach to data sharing for a specific use case. We’re unable to share more specifics on the project publicly until the award of the funding is formally announced.
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.
We are recruiting a new member who will help expand and maintain our Public Utility Data Liberation project. You’ll focus on providing analysis-ready data to climate advocates, policymakers, researchers, and journalists. Catalyst is a small organization, so we all play a variety of roles as needed. Our biggest needs are currently in data wrangling, client-facing data analysis, and software engineering.
Remix by Via - Senior Product Designer - $140,000-$180,000 - San Francisco, New York, Remote US
Via is hiring for a Senior Product Designer to work on Remix tools! You will be joining a truly civic-minded and mission-driven team to create tools for people to plan and execute more equitable and efficient public transit systems! If you’re passionate about social impact, care about climate change, and want to create tools to better serve the public sector, definitely give it a read!