🌍 CAT Newsletter #182 - 2023-08-06
CAT 182 - 2023-08-05
Hey CATs,
Welcome to issue 182 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
#️⃣ Slack highlight
#3-ask-anything: Erik asked whether moving into a “green” field helped you with climate anxiety? Share your experience
💚 CAT project
Claire and Caroline are kicking off #EcoWeb (#proj-ecoweb) with the goal to analyze the carbon footprint of 500 climate action websites, create case studies, and promote sustainable digital practices. Find more details about the project in this article or apply to volunteer by filling out this form!
📕 Book club event
Mary and Melissa are hosting part 1 of the ‘How to blow up a pipeline’ book club on Thu, Aug 21st and you can RSVP on Meetup. Also check out #films-books-media and our books spreadsheet for more book inspiration.
💚 CAT projects
🌱 #EcoWeb: Claire and Caroline are kicking off this project with the goal to analyze the carbon footprint of 500 climate action websites, create case studies, and promote sustainable digital practices. Find more details about the project in this article or apply to volunteer by filling out this form!
📕 ‘How to blow up a pipeline’ book discussion: In our #films-books-media Melissa shared that you can download the ebook for free from Verso with the code ‘pipeline’ and Melissa and Mary are now planning a book discussion group! Get involved in the thread.
📍 Meet with other CATs in person: Folks in our #local-switzerland, #local-germany, #local-bristol, and #local-sweden channels have been chatting about meeting up in person.
⏸️ Donut community networking and our regular events are now taking a break. These programs will return in September.
🎬 CAT videos
DW planet A: How to cool our homes (even without ACs)
As the planet gets hotter, more people use air conditioners to keep cool. Running these takes lots of energy, which means emissions that then further speed up global warming. Rethinking our architecture and using more efficient cooling technologies could help us break this vicious circle.
BONUS VIDEO! Climate Voice - Escape the Chamber
Do you work in a tech firm based in the US? Climate icon Bill McKibben has a very specific ask for you, especially if the company you work is a member of the US Chamber of Commerce. Take three minutes to watch this video, and learn about helping the firm you work for escape the chamber, and lead on climate.
CAT videos, geddit? 10-15 minute videos providing accessible explainers to topics related to climate.
✋ Looking for volunteers
📚 Co-host a summer book club (one-off)
If you want to not just read ‘How to blow up a pipeline’ this summer but help host a one-off CAT book club event, let us know in this thread.
📆 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.
Wed Aug 16 2023 - Fundraising and Investment Opportunities in Cleantech
SoCal MeetUp In-person hosted by Silicon Valley Bank and Cleantech Open West in Santa Monica, CA (8/16 at 5pm PDT) with special guests Alena Solonina, VP at Aegon Climate Capital and Farshid Roumi, Co-Founder of Parthian Energy, a Cleantech Open alum and CalSEED awardee.
Check #external-events in the CAT slack for more.
🎤 Podcasts
Outrage and Optimism: 211. You’ve Got Questions, We’ve Got Answers
For the final episode of the season, Christiana, Tom and Paul answer many of your questions including: ‘We hear a lot of talk about planting trees to sequester carbon, but most of our planet is covered by ocean, and the ocean is absorbing most of the heat. Should we be doing more to plant and restore seaweed, seagrasses, and mangroves?’; ‘If anything would be possible and all of us would work together towards one goal - what would your ideal world look like?’ and “Are we gonna be OK?”. Also, (bizarrely) rapping by the key architect of the COP 2015 Paris Agreement.
Zero: A sci-fi writer’s guide to a low-carbon future
In the first of three episodes talking with climate storytellers on Zero, we hear from Kim Stanley Robinson about how he crafts a good story out of a desperate situation, what he thinks the limits of climate storytelling are, and how his thinking has changed since publishing Ministry for the Future.
A Matter of Degrees - Live Episode: A Climate Book Talk with Rebecca Solnit
Welcome back for a bonus episode of A Matter of Degrees! We were lucky enough to sit down with Rebecca Solnit — author, historian, and climate activist — to talk about her newest climate anthology, Not Too Late. Leah and Nikayla Jefferson both wrote essays for the book and joined Rebecca onstage for this live episode.
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
Reuters: Britain commits to hundreds of North Sea oil and gas licences
LONDON, July 31 (Reuters) - Britain on Monday committed to granting hundreds of licences for North Sea oil and gas extraction as part of efforts to become more energy independent, drawing criticism from environmental campaigners. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak confirmed plans for more than 100 such licences, which attracted bids earlier this year and said hundreds of future licenses could also be granted.
Washington Post: US Republicans want to plant a trillion trees. Scientists are skeptical
The chairman of the US House Natural Resources Committee has introduced legislation to plant a trillion trees as “a comprehensive, practical solution to the climate issues we’re facing today.” Recently published research by CLimate Interactive and the MIT School of Management finds that planting a trillion trees would have a minimal effect on halting global warming. “Trees are great. I personally love to be out in the forests as much as I possibly can,” Professor Sterman said. “But the reality is very simple. You can plant a trillion trees, and even if they all survived, which wouldn’t happen, it just wouldn’t make that much difference to the climate.”
Sky news, Aug 1st: Iran announces nationwide shutdown due to soaring heat
A two-day national holiday is due to start tomorrow as the health ministry put hospitals on high alert and warned the vulnerable to stay indoors. This year has already seen heat records broken across the world, with devastating consequences. Many cities and towns across Iran have sweltered for days in heat as high as 40C (104F), with the mercury rising to 50C (122F) in the southwest city of Ahvaz. The city also registered Iran's hottest-ever temperature in 2022 of 53C (128F).
Aljazeera: UAE promises to allow climate protests at COP28
Official permission is required for protests in the Gulf nation, which is hosting UN climate talks this year. In the oil-rich Gulf nation, which is set to host COP28 from November to December in the business hub of Dubai, official permission is required for demonstrations but effectively bans protests the authorities consider disruptive.
The Register: Our AI habit is making us less environmentally friendly, Google admits
Google's plans to go green are faltering – and its all AI's fault, the company claims. Amid a fall in renewable energy usage and increased water consumption, Google SVP of learning and sustainability Ben Gomes said the Google maintains its "bold goal" to achieve net zero emissions, but the disappointing data is due to the AI that the firm has made the centerpiece of its operations.
Datacentre dynamics: Greenpixie awarded £50,000 UK government grant for cloud emissions tracking tool
The UK’s national innovation agency Innovate UK has given startup Greenpixie a £50,000 ($64k) grant to track data center emissions. Greenpixie currently works with Amazon Web Services and is set to launch on Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure. The company claims to calculate emissions based on computation, storage, memory, networking, and embodied emissions. The methodology is calculated using usage data, and includes the Scope 3 emissions of cloud providers.
Energy Monitor: Weekly data - record number of flights in the sky as southern Europe burns
Data from Flightradar24, which tracks flights using satellite data, detected a record number of flights in the sky on Thursday 20 July. Yet even as tourists flee hotels amid wildfires in Europe’s prime sunspots, many millions more continue to flood into holiday destinations on kerosene-burning planes for their annual summer vacations.
💼 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.
Vayda - Fractional Engineering Lead - $100-200/hr depending on experience - Contract - Flexible - remote ok
Hi everyone! We are hiring our first Eng Leader on a fractional basis to drive development of a data-centric product in the regenerative agriculture and climate space, building off of the company's direct knowledge and experience in regenerative farm operations. The company is a Series A startup backed directly by institutional investors (lead: Ontario Teachers Pension Plan).
David Energy - Customer Support Lead - $90,000 - $120,000 - Permanent - Flexible - remote ok
David Energy is a new kind of power company. One that’s better for customers and for the planet. We’re on a mission to transform the electrical grid with 24/7 clean, renewable energy – and give customers greater transparency and control while we do it. We are seeking a passionate and strategic Customer Support Lead to own our support experience for our residential customers. If you enjoy working on complex problems, excel at creating delightful experiences, and have a knack for elegant solutions and scalable processes, we’d love to connect with you.
Cercula - Software Developer - Up to £55,000 - Permanent - Flexible - remote ok
Cercula is an award-winning construction tech & sustainability startup, working towards the decarbonisation of the construction industry. In short, we take a list of materials for a construction project, match each one in our database of materials carbon data, and produce a report on the building's whole-life carbon impact. We're looking for experienced developers to work on our API and databases, at the core of Cercula's business, as well as on our user-facing front-end and AWS deployment. Our stack is primarily TypeScript and Postgres on AWS (including serverless). If you are interested in social and climate change, and want to contribute to solving major environmental problems by decarbonising a high-impact industry, please reach out!
Overstory - Full-stack software engineer - 60-75k eur - Permanent - Totally remote
Full-stack software engineer role to create web appls and data visualizations - mostly of trees! Vegetation is the single greatest contributor to power outages and wildfires caused by our electric grid. Overstory provides utilities with visibility, risk analysis, and optimization recommendations for vegetation management, using machine learning and satellite imagery. Overstory is a flexible and diverse remote-first climate tech startup and this role would suit someone with experience with deep tech / remote sensing / cartography / GIS especially but these aren’t essential.
Revalu Impact AG (IT Partner: i-ways) - Multiple - 15 - 25 LPA - Permanent - Flexible - remote ok
Revalu Impact AG is an Indo-European start up with a focus on Sustainability in buildings- sector. As part of expanding our teams in India, we are partnering with our IT partner, I-WAYS to recruit multiple senior developers.
Revalu Impact AG (IT partner: i-ways) - Multiple - 15 - 25 LPA - Permanent - Flexible - remote ok
Revalu Impact AG is an Indo-European start up with a focus on Sustainability in buildings- sector. As part of expanding our teams in India, we are partnering with our IT partner, I-WAYS to recruit multiple senior developers.
Deep Science Ventures - n/a - 50k GBP - Founder in Residence - Flexible - remote ok
Deep Science Ventures is looking for a Founder in Residence to lead the development of a decarbonisation insights platform for industrial plants and help avert 7.5 Gt of CO2 emissions/year. The software developer/data scientist will develop a technical platform that can perform quick techno-economic analysis to allow companies to formulate a decarbonisation strategy and implement it easily for their manufacturing plant.
Root Sustainability - Tech Lead - €55.000 - €70.000 - Permanent - Totally remote
Our approach is straightforward yet powerful. We provide qualitative, data-driven insights across the entire supply chain of products, enabling companies to reduce their environmental impact and effectively communicate their sustainability efforts. We have successfully secured funding and have been accepted into an impact accelerator program in Lisbon. This means you'll join us at a pivotal moment in our journey, with the resources and support to bring our vision to life.
Open Supply Hub (OS Hub) - Principal Gifts Officer - 80-90,000 USD - Permanent - Totally remote
Open Supply Hub’s Principal Gifts Officer is an exciting new role in the global Business Development team. Reporting to the Business Development Director, this role will lead on income generation from principal donors (in particular large institutional donors including private foundations and governmental donors). This is a relatively nascent fundraising area for OS Hub and will involve all aspects of the funding cycle from research and outreach to grant management, reporting, and stewardship. While the portfolio grows, the successful candidate will support the BD Director in all areas of business development and fundraising, including strategy and systems development, developing communications materials for new business, new business research, and proposal writing for all funding disciplines.
Vayda - Growth Specialist - $70-110K (+equity and performance bonus) - Permanent - Flexible - remote ok
Our team is looking for a Growth Specialist! This is the only marketing role in our team, currently - so an opportunity to grow with the function. Vayda is a technology & services company accelerating the transition to regenerative agriculture - we operate our own commercial scale proving ground farms! We are a Series A company backed by the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan, and a Public Benefit Corporation on track to being a B Corp.We are working in the ag industry, so it is heavily B2B focused. Ag industry experience is a plus, but not required.
Carbonara - Multiple - $120k-$180k - Permanent - Flexible - remote ok
Carbonara is a fast-growing tech company building a sustainable future by empowering companies to reduce their carbon footprint.. Our mission is to minimize the environmental impact of technology by automatically measuring and recommending actionable code and infrastructure optimizations.
As a Full Stack Engineer, you will play a key role in designing, developing, and maintaining our cloud-based systems and large-scale platforms. Your expertise in system design, data pipelines, and distributed systems will be instrumental in shaping the future of our products. You will have the opportunity to work with a talented and passionate team, contributing to projects that drive meaningful change.
Monthly CAT thank you
📝 For adding knowledge to Outline: @melissa @mrchrisadams @Mary Ma @zarino @alexglow
💰 For supporting us financially on Open Collective: @Poppe Guthrie @Michael Napper @Michelle Barker @Mike Gifford (CivicActions) @fershad @Todd Zmijewski @Chris Pointon @James Crowley @Jeff Burka @asim @HeatherB @Nic Wistreich and all you lovely anonymous CATs
❤️ For volunteering within the community: @Hannah @roundcrisis @Siôn @Brett Duboff @Elisa @Łukasz Mastalerz @Claire Thornewill @Owen Rogers @Tom Kennes @Aïda @Caroline Schneider @Nat Darke @Clare Tomassian (she/her) @Ben Tongue @Dan @Matt Sirkis @Gaël Duez @Poppe Guthrie @Evan Hahn @Alja Isaković @Marlo @Mary Ma
Also extra special shout-out to our volunteering anniversaries:
2 years: @Alja Isaković
1 year: @Elisa & @Matt Sirkis