April 9, 2023

🌍 CAT Newsletter #165 - 2023-04-09

Hey CATs,

Welcome to issue 165 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.

• #local-london: If you’re in the UK, there’s a contingent of CATs organising to join Extinction Rebellion “The Big One” - planned to “the biggest climate protest” the UK has ever seen. CAT started with techies meeting in a New York march, if you’re in town, this thread is where to learn more.

😎 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

☕ 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’.

✋ 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.

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)

Thu Apr 20 2023 - Creative UX for Nature

Join the free 1h online workshop. Connect with nature, get creative tips to reduce the 10 energy eating monsters of UX/UI Design and see how to implement features that positively affect our environment. Plus, overcome objections from clients and colleagues.

Check #events in the CAT slack for more.

Thu Apr 2023 - Green Tech South West: Net zero for business and UK gov digital sustainability strategy - hybrid event

Join us for our hybrid event with insightful talks combining tech and sustainability with two brilliant speakers - Aisha Stewart from Business West and Adam Turner from Defra (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs).

April 21 -24 2023 - The Big One - Extinction Rebellion UK

The invitation is for everybody to Unite to Survive at ‘The Big One’ – a four day action from the 21st to the 24th April 2023, where people from all groups and movements, not just XR, will gather throughout Westminster and at the Houses of Parliament.

🎬 CAT videos

CAT videos, geddit? 10-15 minute videos providing accessible explainers to topics related to climate.

How Putin made Europe go green faster

One year after Russia invaded Ukraine, analysts think Putin’s aggression may have sped up Europe’s energy transition. How’s does that work?

🎤 Podcasts

Carbon Copy: What’s driving the surge in opposition to renewables?

Facebook groups and media manipulation are contributing to increased local opposition to wind and solar projects. We talk with Michael Thomas, founder and author of the Distilled newsletter, who embedded himself with dozens of local Facebook groups devoted to fighting renewables.

Zero: A kingdom built on oil now controls the world’s climate progress

This week on Zero, Bloomberg Green Executive Editor Aaron Rutkoff talks to Senior Reporter Akshat Rathi about his new in-depth profile of COP28 President and UAE National OIl firm CEO Al Jaber, exploring a world of contradictions. You can read the full article “The Oil Sheikh’s Climate Fixer”.

GreenIO #16: Datacenter Sustainability with Stanislava Borisova and Benoit Petit

Travel with Gaël Duez to Sweden to meet Life Cycle Management expert Stanislava and to France to meet Benoît, co-founder of Hubblo and NGO Boavizta who works on impact evaluation and energy/material efficiency for businesses. Join us for an eye-opening episode on how data centers can play a crucial role in building a sustainable digital future

Outrage and Optimism 195: A Better Future Emerging

With Tom away this week, tune in to hear Christiana Figueres and Paul Dickinson discuss announcements from the World Bank, the spring G7 meeting in Japan and Paul’s mini scoop into the issue of UK internal flights, as well as their fantastic interview with celebrated author Jon Alexander and his widely acclaimed book: “Citizens: Why the Key to Fixing Everything is All of Us”

The Week in Green Software: Netflix, Refurbishment and Anti-Greenwashing Laws

On this episode of The Week in Green Software, Chris Adams and Asim Hussain discuss the latest research on streaming emissions from Netflix and DIMPACT, the environmental impact of refurbished tech from Back Market, The European Commission’s Right to Repair Law and their proposal for an Anti Greenwashing Law which is being echoed across the channel with the UK’s Digital Markets, Competition and Consumer Bill. The usual exciting resources and events in the show notes from TWiGS, Environment Variables and the Green Software Foundation.

Fear and Wonder podcast: how scientists know the climate is changing

How do the IPCC’s climate scientists know the climate is changing? And what does it feel like to carry that knowledge and do their vital work at this crucial juncture in Earth’s history? Fear & Wonder is a new podcast from The Conversation that seeks to answer these questions. It takes you inside the UN’s era-defining climate report via the hearts and minds of the scientists who wrote it.

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

Parisians vote to ban rental e-scooters from French capital by huge margin

Parisians have voted to rid the streets of the French capital of rental electric scooters, with an overwhelming 90% of votes cast supporting a ban, official results show. Hire bikes and e-bikes still available.

Carbon dioxide removal is not a current climate solution — we need to change the narrative

From the author: “I have spent my career studying the natural carbon cycle and, in recent years, developing methods for checking that CDR works. I don’t deny the need to develop CDR methods over the longer term. But it’s clear to me that deploying them to remove CO2 from the atmosphere is pointless until society has almost completely eliminated its polluting activities.”

Revealed: UAE plans huge oil and gas expansion as it hosts UN climate summit

The United Arab Emirates, which is hosting this year’s UN climate summit, has the third biggest net zero-busting plans for oil and gas expansion in the world, the Guardian can reveal. Its plans are surpassed only by Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

Potent Greenhouse Gases and Ozone Depleting Chemicals Called CFCs Are Back on the Rise Following an International Ban, a New Study Finds

Emissions of a small group of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), man-made chemicals that destroy Earth’s protective ozone layer and fuel global warming, are back on the rise after their production was all but banned more than a decade ago, a new study concludes.

Suddenly, the US is a climate policy trendsetter

In a head-spinning reversal, other Western nations are scrambling to replicate or counter the cleantech manufacturing perks in Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.

Regrowth of degraded tropical forests offsets ‘a quarter’ of deforestation emissions

The researchers find that degraded and secondary forests in humid tropical regions have stored, on average, 107m tonnes of carbon (MtC) annually between 1984 and 2018 – enough to offset 26% of the carbon emissions generated from forest loss in those regions during that period. The study says that investing in conservation for secondary and degraded forests is essential, but warns that this should not come at the expense of conserving old-growth forests, which “remains the most cost-effective climate mitigation strategy in the land-use sector”.

💰 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