đ CAT Newsletter 219 - 2024-05-12
CAT 219 - 2024-05-12
Hey CATs,
Welcome to issue 219 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 đ đ đ±
CAT Community News
âïž From the blog
@Sandra shared a Mini grants update: Sustainable AI, Product Management and funding a Hackathon in Switzerland
#ïžâŁ Slack channel highlights
#greener-games: M shared some news about how climate is showing up in gaming
#greener-infra: F asked about the energy consumption trade-offs between running a single large server with multiple applications versus running multiple smaller servers
#3-questions-and-ideas: C shared this article where employees speak out about Microsoft + big oil. There's a good conversation in the thread - under what circumstances should tech workers work with oil and gas sector? Share your thoughts.
đ§ Knowledge base deepdive
Greener Product: Looking for advice on how to make greener product decisions? Log into the CAT knowledge base with your CAT Slack account to browse links and tips, and help a fellow CAT become a greener product manager by adding your own recommendations.
đ CAT events
Fri, May 17 - Zurich [in person]: Zurich hackathon (more info)
Tue, May 21 - Vienna [in person]:Â CAT meetup
Other local events were shared in #local-germany, #local-london, and #local-san-francisco-bay-area.
đ© Community networking
Get to know other CATs and make some friends in the community. Every 2 weeks, we match 2-3 CATs so you can connect over a quick 30-minute call. Simply join #cat-roulette, pick your region and wait for a message from Donut about your match! Our next round of matches will go out on Fri, May 24. More info
Media, events, and news
đș CAT recommendations
đ± A cutting from Branch issue 8
One Movement, Four Wings: Connecting climate strategies
Melissa Hsiung, introduces the butterfly model - an approach to climate action for transformative social change, based around the ideas of Resist, Reform, Heal, and Build, and walks the reader through how to use it to design a strategy fo engagement on climate.
â¶ïž CAT videos
10-15 minute videos providing accessible explainers to climate related issues.
Planet A: How can we make farming affordable again?
Farmers are angry and protesting across Europe, India, seemingly all over the world. What exactly do they want â and do they have a point? A good explainer on the challenges of adopting more climate friendly farming practices, in a world of entrenched subsidies, with highlighting a few paths out the current deadlock.
.
đ€Â Podcasts
The latest climate-related podcast episodes. Don't forget, if you're looking around, there's a list of podcasts maintained by CATs
Spill: Maddie Stone on Microsoft's Role in the Climate Crisis
Absolute must listen: In a new story co-published by Grist and Drilled, Microsoft employees who spent years fighting the tech giant's oil ties are speaking out about the worker-led effort to get the world's most valuable company to stop helping the oil and gas industry drill.
Outrage and Optimism 244: Movies, Mosses, and Stories to Change The World
This week, Christiana, Tom and Paul are back together and, as we continue to experiment with a new format, they each bring the topic they are feeling particularly outraged or optimistic about; listen in for discussions about deceitful campaigns by the oil and gas industry dating back to the 1960's, small thinking in Europe and fiduciary duty with a capital F.
Catalyst with Shayle Khan: CO2 utilization
The IPCC says that we likely need to capture hundreds of gigatons of carbon dioxide if we want to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. So what are we going to do with all that carbon?
In this episode, Shayle talks to Julio Friedmann, chief scientist at Carbon Direct, about how much will need to be stored, but also what the likely uses may be. Editors note: this is an incredibly information dense episode - it provides lots of useful context around the challenges of CO2 capture as well as how it's used at present.
Environment Variables: Greening Software Procurement
Joining Chris Adams today is Mike Gifford, an accessibility and open web veteran, to look at the drivers adopting digital sustainability in the industry, learn from the field of accessibility and inclusive design how we can further sustainable software development. Mike tells us about the wins from the accessibility movement that we can learn from in this engaging episode.
Green IO #38 - Building Green Software with Sara Bergman
What are the main angles to be covered when you truly want to design, run, and sometimes decommission, software, in the greenest possible way? đïž In this episode, Sara Bergman, a seasoned software engineer and one of the acclaimed co-authors of the O'Reilly book "Building Green Software" joins Gael Duez to discuss the book, and more specifically the chapters on AI, measurements, and hardware
Volts: How climate change is portrayed in popular culture
Climate awareness is growing in the real world, but it remains rare in popular entertainment, as illustrated by some new research on climate in film. In this episode, Anna Jane Joyner discusses the efforts of her nonprofit, Good Energy, to help screenwriters tell climate stories better (or at all).
đ 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 May 15 2024 - NYC Leaders in Impact Happy Hour
âBuild your network, meet like-minded people and have meaningful conversations with founders, operators and investors at organizations tackling issues related to climate, economic mobility, healthcare, corporate sustainability, edtech and more.
Thu May 16 2024 - Climate Action Week Sydney - Does Cloud Co$t the Earth?
"Does Cloud Cost the Earth?", Every decision in the cloud has a 'cost, an economic cost, and an environmental cost. We're asking if decision making is costing businesses and the planet more than it should. Is it the technology or is it the way we are using it?
Thu May 16 2024 - Building a Climate Action Habit Into a Busy Life
Whether you're at the start of your climate and nature journey, or you've been taking action for a while but feel in a bit of a rut, this session will leave you feeling energised and ready to be part of building a better world. Use code CAT for a free ticket.
Fri May 17 2024 - Climate Solutions Intensive â A two-day deep dive into strategy, scenarios, and systems thinking (California)
The course delves into climate solutions, impacts, and system structures. Gain clarity on high-leverage actions you or your team can take to address the climate and equity challenges, using En-ROADSâa global simulator Climate Interactive co-developed with MIT
Thu May 23 2024 - Greening the Bid: Strategies for Addressing Sustainability in RFP Responses
âAre you a small or mid-size company facing mounting inquiries from larger corporations about your environmental practices? Are you feeling the pressure to provide sustainability data but unsure where to start?
Thu May 30 2024 - Introduction to Digital Sustainability Workshop
This in-person workshop in Brighton on 30 May will pilot a Digital Sustainability Strategy card game. All welcome and free to participate, but places are limited. We'll explore the use of creativity and play to increase awareness and share best practice around sustainable ICT.
Fri May 31 2024 - ClimateCon! Boulder 2024
ClimateCon! is a launchpad that brings people together â in person and online â to boost collective action on climate change.
đ° News Highlights
Links to discuss each story in the CAT salck
Grist: Microsoft employees spent years fighting the tech giant's oil ties. Now, they're speaking out.
Inside the worker-led effort to get the world's most valuable company to stop helping the oil and gas industry drill. For nearly a decade, Holly Alpine (née Beale) loved working at Microsoft. Shortly after finishing college, in July 2014, she landed a job there as a technical account manager. Less than four years later, Alpine was leading a program that invests in environmental projects in the communities where Microsoft's data centers are located. But at the end of last year, Alpine reached a painful decision: She could no longer ethically work at Microsoft. Writing on behalf of herself and a colleague who resigned at the same time, Alpine told the tech giant's top brass that the two were quitting in "no small part" due to Microsoft's work for the fossil fuel industry aimed at automating and accelerating oil extraction. (discuss this story in slack)
The Guardian: World's top climate scientists expect global heating to blast past 1.5C target
Hundreds of the world's leading climate scientists expect global temperatures to rise to at least 2.5C (4.5F) above preindustrial levels this century, blasting past internationally agreed targets and causing catastrophic consequences for humanity and the planet, an exclusive Guardian survey has revealed. The experts were clear on why the world is failing to tackle the climate crisis. A lack of political will was cited by almost three-quarters of the respondents, while 60% also blamed vested corporate interests, such as the fossil fuel industry. (discuss this story in slack)
What Trump promised oil CEOs as he asked them to steer $1 billion to his campaign
As Donald Trump sat with some of the country's top oil executives at his Mar-a-Lago Club last month, one executive complained about how they continued to face burdensome environmental regulations despite spending $400 million to lobby the Biden administration in the last year.
Trump's response stunned several of the executives in the room overlooking the ocean: You all are wealthy enough, he said, that you should raise $1 billion to return me to the White House. At the dinner, he vowed to immediately reverse dozens of President Biden's environmental rules and policies and stop new ones from being enacted, according to people with knowledge of the meeting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a private conversation. (discuss this story in slack)
Canary Media: World's largest direct air capture plant starts sucking CO2 from the sky
On Wednesday, Swiss company Climeworks said it started operations at its Mammoth facility, marking an important milestone in the world's emerging efforts to remove planet-warming carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and permanently lock it away. The 36,000-ton facility is a significant step up for the costly, energy-intensive tech.
The plant's opening also helps lay the groundwork for a significantly larger direct air capture facility that Climeworks plans to build in the United States using federal funding, experts say.
IT Channel Oxygen: Are pre-owned laptops the 'new new'? Channel leaders give surprising prediction
"How long will it be before pre-used laptops make a real dent in the enterprise space? Not too long, according to leaders who attended the recent Sustainability Summit of Circular Computing, which bills itself as a global leader in the remanufacturing of laptops. Some 40% of those surveyed at the event predicted that one in every five laptops purchased by enterprises will be pre-used by 2028."
Cooley: EU Adopts Mandatory Rules on Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence That Will Apply to Many US Companies
On 24 April 2024, the European Parliament voted to adopt the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), meaning it will now become law and necessitate a shift in corporate attitudes to responsible business conduct. The CSDDD will apply to European Union (EU) and non-EU companies with activities in the EU meeting the thresholds outlined below. For the first time, it will introduce comprehensive mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence obligations, with significant financial penalties and civil liability for companies that do not fully comply
Ars Technica: Oil companies may soon have to pay for Vermont's climate recovery
Vermont may soon become the first state to force fossil fuel companies to pay their fair share to cover recovery efforts from climate change damages. This week, the state's potentially groundbreaking law passed a preliminary vote in the Senate, where a final vote is expected soon that would likely send the law to the governor's desk. And there's reportedly broad enough support to override any attempt to veto the law.
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.
TransitionZero - Product Manager - ÂŁ 44,286.17 - ÂŁ51,808.55 - Permanent - Onsite only
We are a climate analytics not-for-profit established in 2021. We're building easy to use energy transition modelling software to give governments, businesses and investors the tools to understand and decide how to transition to carbon free energy. The Product Manager will work collaboratively with the Head of Product on the product strategy and roadmap for our energy systems modelling software. A key aspect of the role will be to drive usage of and engagement with the product.
Marble - Founder in Residence, Geothermal - Anywhere - 2.5-3K per month - Contract - Flexible - remote ok
Dive into the geothermal revolution and help unlock clean, sustainable energy for our planet. We're on the hunt for entrepreneurial engineers/scientists from geothermal, oil & gas, or similar sectors. If you're passionate about innovation and ready to explore cutting-edge approaches to power the net zero economy, we want you.
ExpectAI - Full Stack Engineer & Data Scientist - ÂŁ35-45K, commensurate with experience - Permanent -
Join me in building ExpectAI's climate action platform that enables our customers to find and take profitable decarbonisation actions with confidence
Icebreaker One - Trust Framework Solutions Architect - Up to ÂŁ500/day - Contract - 3 days/wk until Dec 2024 - Totally remote
Icebreaker One is a UK-headquartered non-profit working to improve data sharing between organisations in order to accelerate the transition to net zero. Inspired by the explosion of financial service innovation brought about by Open Banking, we are applying the same model, known as a Trust Framework, to collaboratively design, govern and operate secure data sharing infrastructure across the economy. The Trust Framework Solutions Architect will help organisations from startups to PLCs understand and participate in these ecosystems from a technical perspective.
Terawatt Infrastructure - Senior Manager, Grants & Incentives - $160,000-$180,000 - Permanent - Onsite only
Looking for someone to lead critical grant and incentive acquisition and execution strategies in the EV space! Terawatt is an EV fleet charging company looking to decarbonize fleet transportation.
The Chancery Lane Project - Principal User Researcher - ÂŁ60k to ÂŁ70k - Permanent - Flexible - remote ok
The Chancery Lane Project helps organisations reduce emissions using the power of legal contracts. We do this because contracts govern the entire global economy, and changing these contracts is one of the fastest ways of tackling the climate crisis. We're looking for a Principal User Researcher to set the standards for research in the organisation, lead research in the most critical areas of our work and train others to do their own disposable, lightweight research.
Support our work
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