🌍 CAT Newsletter #164 - 2023-04-02
Hey CATs,
Welcome to issue 164 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
🌏 It’s Earth Day this month!
Are you planning to do a talk at work for Earth Day? If you need any pointers or if you’re looking for speakers, use our #green-talks channel to get feedback, or share a speaking opportunity. Practicing how we talk about climate at work is super important and Earth Day is a great time to try it out!
️⃣ Slack highlights
-
✨ NEW CHANNEL: #greener-marketing — Channel hosts Claire and Owen invite you to join for discussions around the carbon footprint of marketing, greenwashing, and collective action.
-
#greener-design: Eve is looking for a green design speaker — a great opportunity to practice talking about green design — and Sandy shared a workshop she’ll run!
-
#greener-games: Jonathan shared a concept for a rewilding game and Matteo shared an article that asks how boardgames could be greener.
😎 Project updates
Everyone who signed up for a ⚖️ #climate-justice squad will be meeting for the first time in the week of April 10th!
Our next 📚 Branch reading group article & date will be announced soon!
📆 Upcoming CAT events
▶️ Mon, Apr 3 · Watch Party: Why carbon offsets are worse than you think
☕ Thu, Apr 13 · CAT Coffee (eastern): Share your project/idea/win (sign up for a slot here)
☕ Tue, Apr 18 · CAT Coffee (pacific): Digital clean-up session
☕ Thu, Apr 20 · CAT Coffee (western): #greener-games pop-up! We’ll play ‘Green House’.
🎬 CAT videos
CAT videos, geddit? 10-15 minute videos providing accessible explainers to topics related to climate.
Can thorium nuclear energy make a comeback?
Nuclear energy gets a pretty bad rap – for good reasons. But thorium, a weakly radioactive element, is hailed to fix all its problems: no meltdowns, less waste, no bombs. We developed a molten-salt reactor to unlock its potential decades ago – but then turned our backs on it. Was that a huge mistake?
✋ Looking for volunteers
#️⃣ Slack moderator • 20min / week
Keep our Slack space safe, spam-free & working as intended across different channels
📆 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.
Mon Apr 10 2023 - The Digital Collage workshop
The Digital Collage is a 3h playful and collaborative online workshop. The aim of the workshop is to raise awareness and train participants on the environmental issues of digital technologies. The workshop also aims to outline solutions for more sustainability in Tech.
Thu Apr 20 2023 - Cloud Carbon Footprint - Simply measure, simply reduce
Cloud Carbon Footprint is an open source solution to measure the CO2 emissions of cloud applications. Erik Dornberg, Head of Technologies at Thoughtworks, has been involved with that tool and will share his insights in this talk. (Event is held on German)
Read a transcript of the conversation between podcast host Akshat Rathi and producer Oscar Boyd about the latest IPCC report and why it matters.
Check #events in the CAT slack for more.
🎤 Podcasts
Carbon Copy: Live - the most ambitious city energy transition in America
In 2021, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s supercomputer determined that Los Angeles could hit 100% clean power within a decade and a half. But how will it be implemented in reality — and in a way that benefits everyone?
Catalyst with Shayle Khan: SVB, the banking crisis and climatetech
Silicon Valley Bank’s failure highlights the coming headwinds for climatetech.
Zero: When Will Global Emissions Peak?
On this week’s Zero, Akshat Rathi talks to International Energy Agency Executive Director Fatih Birol about what it will take to cap warming at 1.5C.
MIT TILClimate Episide8: TIL about recycling
We often hear about recycling as a way to make an impact on climate change right in your own home. But how big a difference are we really making when we recycle? For this episode, Anders Damgaard, senior researcher at the Technical University of Denmark, joins the TILclimate podcast to help us understand the climate benefits of recycling—and why they depend on what we’re recycling and how.
Restart Podcast Ep. 85: The local businesses giving your stuff a ‘second life’
This week we’ve been celebrating London Repair Week by highlighting the heroic repair businesses all over the city with LondonRepairs.org, a new dedicated websit for finding reliable businesses to fix your stuff. In this month’s podcast, we spoke to two of these repairers about their passion for fixing, the barriers to their work and what could revitalise the repair economy.
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
US electricity from renewables surpasses coal for first time
Renewable energy for the first time comprised more electricity generated in the U.S. last year than coal or nuclear power, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).
No more room for vroom? Paris votes on banishing e-scooters
Parisians vote Sunday April 2nd whether to do away with the 15,000 opinion-dividing micro-vehicles in their city. In response, E-Scooter operators are offering free round-trip rides on Sunday on their scooters or electric bikes to users who enter the words “Je vote” — I vote in F rench — into their apps.
In-depth Q&A: The UK’s ‘green day’ avalanche of climate and energy announcements
After losing a court case brought by Friends of the Earth, Client Earth and The Good Law Project, the UK government was issued a deadline of 31 March 2023 to publish updated, policy-by-policy plans about how it will meet its legally binding targets for carbon reductions in the coming years. With one one day to spare, the UK has published an avalanche of climate and energy documents in a chaotic policy move dubbed “green day”.
United Nations adopts landmark resolution on climate justice
Resolution hailed as ‘win for climate justice of epic proportions’ should make it easier to hold countries accountable for failures
Race to Zero campaign launches new tool to enhance transparency of net zero commitments
Microsoft vs the Farmer Citizen Movement in The Netherlands
As the Dutch government sets strict environmental targets to cut emissions, industries are being forced to compete for space on Dutch farmland—pitting big tech against the increasingly political population of Dutch farmers.
The world’s top 1% of emitters produce over 1000 times more CO2 than the bottom 1%
The International Energy Agency has published new analysis on the climate impacts of inequality. Wealth, energy use, and the consumption of goods and services are unevenly distributed across the world, and carbon emissions are no exception. Emissions vary across countries and across generations, but even more so across income groups.
Wikipedia has a climatetech problem
Millions rely on Wikipedia, but its entries can be outdated or incomplete, especially on climate topics — and that’s where you come in.
💰 Jobs
TransitionZero - People and Operations Coordinator - £80,000 - £85,000 - Permanent - Flexible - remote ok
TransitionZero is seeking an experienced and passionate expert to lead our work on commodity data and heavy industry subsectors, with a particular focus on steel. The successful candidate will oversee our heavy industry workstream, including developing and communicating our views on heavy industry decarbonisation, building a team of engineers and analysts to support you, managing our commitments to our partners, including Climate TRACE, and working closely with our technology, product and engagement teams to support the development of tools, such as Future Energy Outlook (FEO) and Steel Asset Transition (SAT) tool.
TransitionZero - People and Operations Coordinator - £45,000 - £50,000 - Permanent - Flexible - remote ok
Our Engagement Analyst will ensure that our data drives impact for our users and partners. This is a technical and outreach role involving data wrangling, making product iterations, answering technical questions and communicating with stakeholders. They will develop and maintain relationships associated with Climate TRACE, a global non-profit coalition we co-founded to track GHG emissions independently.
Green Web Foundation - Operations Assistant - €20 - €35 / hour, depending on experience - Contract - Totally remote
We’re looking for a freelance Operations Assistant to join our small, ambitious and friendly Green Web Foundation team. We work together with one clear mission: to transition the world to a fossil-free internet by 2030. There is scope for this role to grow over time in terms of pay, hours and responsibilities.
Elemental Excelerator - Teacher Fellow (Contractor) - Up to 20 hours per week for a stipend of $3000. - Contract - Flexible - remote ok
Elemental is seeking a passionate self-starter to join its Equity & Access, Career Pathways team as a Climate Champion Teaching Fellow. In this role, you will support a dynamic partnership between Elemental Excelerator and Subject to Climate (a nonprofit online connector for K-12 educators of all subjects to find credible and engaging materials on climate change at no cost) to establish Climate Curriculum in the Hawaii Education Ecosystem
Elemental Excelerator - EDICT Internship Coordinator (Contractor) - Ip to 20 hours per week at $22/hr - Contract - Totally remote
Elemental is seeking several passionate self-starters to join its Equity & Access, Career Pathways team as an Intern Case Manager. In this role, you will support the internal and external efforts needed for implementing the EDICT summer internship programming becoming the bridge between our interns, host employers and programming teams