š CAT Newsletter #148 - 2022-11-27
Hey CATs,
Welcome to issue 148 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 outĀ our onboarding checklist.
Remember you can unsubscribe from this newsletter at any time - the link is at the bottom.
Stay safe & healthy š š š±
Share your 2022 highlights
Weāre in the process of putting together our š 2022 Year in ReviewĀ presentation and weād love to highlight some member projects, wins & actions.
If you have something youād like to highlight (an action youāve taken or a project youāve been involved in or a blog post you published or anything at all) ā pleaseĀ add a slide hereĀ and weāll include it in the final presentation!
The presentation will be publicly accessible. If youād like to share your win only within the CAT community, keep an eye onĀ #2-global-dialogueĀ where weāll start a thread about this in December.
Weāll also get together on Dec 15th for our last event of the year to celebrate!
CAT Community News
š Branch magazine reading group
Weāre voting for our next article! Currently Bigger, More, Better, Faster: The Ecological Paradox of Digital Economies is winning but weāve got 3 other choices for you to vote on in this post.
#ļøā£ Slack channel highlights
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#3-ask-anything: Ben started a thread with some feedback on our vision and community beliefs in this thread. You can get involved there or add your thoughts in #community-feedback.
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#greener-leadership: Chad shared a Linkedin thread about remote companies doing offsites. Join the conversation on Slack or comment directly on LinkedIn.
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#3-ask-anything: Justine is wondering where kids (6-16) go to get their climate information. Any clues? Share them in this thread.
ā Looking for volunteers
Onboarding hero ā¢Ā 2hrs / week
Help us come up with and implement improvements to our onboarding process so new members have a positive experience during their first few months in CAT.
CAT Coffee volunteer ā¢ 2hrs / month
Help brainstorm on how to improve our #cat-coffee events and/or help facilitate conversations during the event.
š CAT events in December
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.
ā CAT coffee (eastern-friendly)
Thu, Dec 8th ā¢ 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.
ā¶ļø Watch Party: How to Harness Digital Tech to Accelerate Climate Action
Tue, Dec 13th ā¢ GMT 8am | CET 9am | IST 1:30pm | CT/SGT 4pm | AEST 7pm | NZST 9pm
š CAT Coffee 2022 ā year in review and celebration
Thu, Dec 15th ā¢ PT 10am | ET 1pm | GMT 6pm | CET 7pm | IST 10:30pm
š© 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.
šĀ 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. _ Dec 12th 12:30:00 GMT / 13:30 UTC - Building green software with the Software Carbon Intensity Specification
Building green software with the Software Carbon Intensity Specification
Dec 1st - 12:30:00 GMT / 13:30 UTC - Working in Sustainable Tech: Retrofit (Heating and Cooling)
The Working in Sustainable Technology meetup will be focused on Domestic Retrofit Solutions via Zoom. We’ll be hearing from 3 experts from Snugg, Ambue and Furbnow on how we can keep our homes warmer, more sustainably this winter. š
Check #events in the CAT slack for more.
š¤Ā Podcasts
The latest climate-related podcast episodes.
The Carbon Copy - Gas stations vs utilities: the battle for the future of charging
How the rise of electric vehicles is creating conflict between two titans of the energy industry.
In this episode, co-hosts Christiana Figueres, Tom Rivett-Carnac, and Paul Dickinson give their concluding thoughts on COP27, followed by Tomās interview with Rory Stewart OBE FRSGS FRSLäøformer Conservative cabinet minister, diplomat, soldier, author, academic, charitable entrepreneur, and podcasteräøa true polymath if there ever was one.
Sustainababble - Just Stop Oil
Before we get too festive and emotional, thereās work to be done. Like trying to gather our thoughts on there being 8 billion humans alive. Or indeed what we make of the increasingly ballsy climate protests sweeping the land. Are Just Stop Oil really ādamaging their causeā, as so many armchair critics would have us believe?
Don’t forget, if you’re looking around, there’s a list of podcasts maintained by CATs
š° News Highlights
Climate-friendlier meat just got aĀ step closer to yourĀ plate
Upside Foods, one of more than 100 startups working on cultivated or lab-grown meat, is the first to earn aĀ key approval from the U.S.Ā FDA.
Major airlines are teaming up to tackle planet-warming plane contrails
American, Southwest and United are joining with Airbus, Boeing, RMI and researchers in an effort to mitigate heat-trapping condensation trails. Contrails and other non-CO2 aircraft emissions warm the planet as much as twice as much as the carbon dioxide released by airplanes.
Clickbait sites have huge carbon footprints and advertisers urged to snub them
Research finds that made-for-advertising websites provide no value to businesses while generating excessive amounts of CO2 emissions. Marking the launch of the report, Scope3 also released a new way to measure carbon emissions in digital advertising that can weigh performance against carbon cost.
Google UK signs 100MW PPA, data centers near 90 percent renewables
Google has signed a power purchase agreement (PPA) with Engie for 100MW of offshore wind energy. The new deal will mean that Google’s facilities are expected to operate at or near 90 percent carbon-free energy (CFE) on an hourly basis in 2025, up from a projected 67 percent.
Meta thirsts for desert conditions in datacenter water quest
Facebook parent Meta is aiming to cut the volume of water used in its datacenters by operating servers at higher temperatures but lower humidity, as part of a commitment to become āwater positiveā by 2030. _(author note: this piece gives a good roundup of pushes in industry to address water usage by datacentres)
PSI joins the call for a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty
Public Service International is a union representing 30 million public service workers and their unions. The endorsement is the first from the global union movement and means that a huge section of the unionised workforce, including health and social care workers, energy, water, local government and public administration workers want a ban on new fossil fuel exploration and production.
Worried about your datacenter carbon footprint? Why not put it in orbit?
The European Commission is to carry out a feasibility study on putting datacenters into orbit as part of its wide-ranging Horizon Europe research program, and has now announced companies taking part in the project.
Laid-Off Tech Workers Have the Skills That Climate Startups Crave
Transitioning into the expanding climate-tech sector could be theĀ next step for some of the thousands whoāve recently lost their jobs.
Coping with climate change: Advice for kids ā from kids
The recommendations are worth a read, and not all that different to recommendation for adults. Apart from the degree of agency adults have vs kids.
š¬ CAT videos
CAT videos, geddit? 10-15 minute videos providing accessible explainers to topics related to climate.
The OTHER big problem with the Qatar World Cup
Qatar promised to deliver a carbon neutral World Cup. So did FIFA President Gianni Infantino. But did they deliver? (Author’s note: this is a really good 7 minute demonstration of how orgs can mislead with carbon accounting)
š¼Ā 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.
Leaders for Climate Action - Senior Growth Marketer - Permanent - Remote (Europe) - ā¬40-60K
As Senior Growth Marketer at LFCA you’ll be the driving force behind all our member acquistion initiatives. You’ll develop, implement, track and optimize acquisition campaigns across multiple, mostly digital, channels. In your role, you’ll work together with our content, community and product teams. Ultimately, you’ll make sure our message reaches our target audience of climate action practitioners.
Root Sustainability is a young software startup with the goal to unleash the sustainable potential of every business by building a software solution that enables companies to easily measure and reduce their environmental footprint. Weāre seeking a dedicated senior Software Engineer to join our growing company.
Allplants - Senior Software Engineer (Frontend) - Full time - Remote, UK - Ā£70,000
We created allplants to make eating more plants exciting and easy, delivering delightful, healthier food to busy homes everywhere. Weāre looking for an experienced front-end engineer to join our Growth team. Youād be working alongside our two existing front-end engineers, our lead front-end engineer, product designers, and product managers to improve our existing front-end applications, most notably our Shop and Account apps. Expect to be improving the performance and accessibility of our sites, building out and implementing a new design system, migrating our front-end code to consume our new v2 API, and much more.
RheEnergise - Operations and Finance Executive - Full-time - London, hybrid - Ā£28,000
RheEnergiseās mission is to enable the energy transition by creating a low-cost, scalable energy storage solution. We are seeking an Operations and Finance Executive to join our London team. This is a fantastic opportunity to come and work for an exciting cleantech start-up and make a real difference in preventing climate change.
The Green Web Foundation is seeking five practitioners for a paid part-time fellowship of 10 months for our 2023 cohort. Successful fellows will deliver a project that contributes to the digital rights and climate justice movements. Fellows will also learn together and from experienced practitioners about what powers control the internet, how it is fueled, and what we can do about it.