🌍 CAT Newsletter 257 - 2025-03-02
CAT 257 - 2025-03-02
Hey CATs,
Welcome to issue 257 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.
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Stay safe & healthy 😌 💚 🐱
CAT Community News
💚 CAT member project highlight - Greenlight your tech career
Highlight from CAT Danil M: Many of us find climate calling after career success. Let's flip that! My book guides new devs to code for good, tackling climate change from day one and joining CAT. AI will shape tech. We can't stop it, but we can ensure it's used sustainably. This book targets aspiring devs, not seasoned pros like you, but I need your help! Find a free version, summary, and chapters about CAT and my journey via the link. Please review it on Amazon/Goodreads and share it with future devs. Each review counts since hundreds are needed. Reviews from any country matter! Though a purchase isn't required, verified Amazon reviews help. See more on this public page in the CAT wiki.
📅 CAT events
Tue, Mar 4th – CAT Open Meeting: Organizer Update and AMA [online] – register now
Join us for an update from our Organizer group: Chris Adams is stepping down as an organizer but staying involved as a CAT Director, and we're looking for a Tech organizer and Comms organizer to help keep the community going! We'll share what it's been like to collaborate in the Organizing team, followed by an AMA session with the Organizers.
Fri, Mar 14th – Digital Cleanup Day [online]
Join us for a Digital Cleanup — declutter your digital life & reduce your carbon footprint! During the event, you'll have the opportunity to work on a digital cleanup action of your choice together with other participants. For ideas on what cleanup action to take, see and contribute to the CAT Digital Cleanup Outline page.
🧠 Knowledge base deep dive
💪 CAT Action Calendar: Contribute suggestions for monthly community climate action challenges, and explore resources and notes for current and upcoming actions. Just log into the CAT knowledge base with your CAT Slack account to contribute and help fellow CATs take climate action together.
🍩 Community networking
Every 2 weeks, we match 2-3 CATs so you can connect over a quick 30-minute call. Join #cat-roulette, pick your region and wait for a message from Donut. The next round of matches will go out on Fri, Mar 7th. More info.
Media, events, and news
😺 CAT recommendations
▶️ CAT videos
10-15 minute videos providing accessible explainers to climate related issues.
PBS Terra: This is The Best Evidence That Atlantic Currents Are Slowing (AMOC Explained)
The AMOC is one of Earth's most vital systems and it may be collapsing. Ocean scientist, Lisa Beal, has discovered that the Gulf Stream is slowing down, indicating a potential tipping point for the AMOC. In hopes to prevent an AMOC collapse, Maiya May heads to Georgia to meet Stacey Abrahms and learn how an ambitious non-profit hopes to electrify everything. She then travels to take her first flight lesson in an all electric plane. And finally she returns to Florida to learn about the final piece of the puzzle in reaching net-zero carbon emissions: nature.
🎤 Podcasts
The latest climate-related podcast episodes. Don't forget, if you're looking around, there's a list of podcasts maintained by CATs
The Climate Question: How can we build mental resilience to climate change?
How can we protect our mental health from climate change related trauma? Can family, friends and community help to boost recovery and resilience in places hit by extreme weather? Graihagh Jackson finds out about a local support network called "After The Fire", set up following the wildfires which swept through Northern California in 2017. And she hears how the Manobo tribe in the Philippines are protecting their community from flooding and typhoons.
Green IO #53: Scaling GreenOps at Back Market with Dawn Baker
Changing its Cloud provider is never small potatoes, especially when a platform operates up to 40,000 containers and has about 4 million unique visitors a day to its website. Yet Back Market made the move from AWS to Google Cloud Platform motivated primarily by … sustainability concerns! In this episode its CTO, Dawn Backer, chats with Gaël Duez and covers a wide range of GreenOps topics.
Environment Variables: The Week in Green Software - Transparency in Emissions Reporting
For this episode of TWiGS, Chris and Asim discuss the latest developments in emissions reporting, AI energy efficiency, and green software initiatives. They explore the AI Energy Score project by Hugging Face, which aims to provide an efficiency benchmark for AI models, and compare it with other emissions measurement approaches, including the Software Carbon Intensity (SCI) for AI. The conversation also touches on key policy shifts, such as the U.S. executive order on AI data center energy sourcing, and the growing debate on regulating the data center industry. Plus, they dive into the Beginner's Guide to Power and Energy Measurement for Computing and Machine Learning, a must-read for anyone looking to understand energy efficiency in AI.
Outrage and Optimism: Can philanthropy fill the hole left by USAID?
Development programmes across the world are still reeling from the swingeing cuts to USAID, whilst other western nations such as the UK and Germany have announced plans to scale back their own aid commitments.
With Mike Bloomberg agreeing to fill the gap in climate funding left by the US's withdrawal from Paris, is it up to wealthy philanthropists to fill the hole of state funding? Is it realistic or appropriate for them to do so? And do competing interests from funders compromise work on the ground?
Tom Rivett-Carnac, Christiana Figueres and Paul Dickinson examine the potential for a slippery slope in which governments increasingly abdicate their responsibilities for minimising problems for people and the planet.
Zero: Why (almost) everyone hates ESG right now
The world of ESG regulation and investing was already suffering a period of shaky confidence even before President Donald Trump returned to the White House. Now, companies are facing a new period of uncertainty when it comes to Environmental, Social, and Governance policies. Reporter Frances Schwartzkopff tells Akshat Rathi why the EU is rolling back some ESG legislation. And reporter Saijel Kishan explains that many companies today are still keeping their ESG plans in place — but just not talking about it.
📅 Submitted events
Wed Mar 05 2025 - Climate Conscious Convos - Monthly Meetup for Product People
A Product Manager's Perspective: What it’s like working in the EV Charging Industry --- Join us to learn about the challenges, opportunities, and skills needed to thrive in this rapidly growing ClimateTech sector.
Thu Mar 06 2025 - Digital Product Sustainability Pulse
We have the need, & the suggested techniques, but few act.
Join the launch of the Digital Product Sustainability Pulse, which summarises expert know-how and results from Product Owner interviews across Europe on Digital Product Sustainability.
Wed Mar 12 2025 - Tech's Next Power Move
Join Renewabl, Tech Zero, and Octopus Energy to learn about clean energy procurement in the tech industry and connect with sustainability leaders.
Want an event listed here? Use this event listing form to submit the details so we can add it in the newsletter.
📰 News Highlights
Electricity Maps: Why we built an engine to predict the future of electricity grids
Electricity Maps have launched a blog series, 'Behind the forecasts', which provides us with a peak inside their grid forecasting team to learn why and how they build their powerful forecasting engine. In this first instalment, team lead Pierre Segonne explains the vision behind grid forecasts, and why accurate, multi-day grid predictions are key to a data-driven decarbonization of electricity.
IISD Sustainable Development Goals Knowledge Hub: UN Report Explores Tech Foresight, Assessment in Sustainable Development
The UN Secretary-General has issued a report that explores the role of technology foresight and technology assessment in guiding sustainable development policies. The two complementary practices help countries "strengthen anticipatory governance capacities and proactively adjust technological trajectories," according to the report.
The Guardian: Plants losing appetite for carbon dioxide amid effects of warming climate
Earth's plants and soils reached peak carbon dioxide sequestration in 2008 but proportion absorbed has been declining since, according to a new study. Rising levels of carbon dioxide helped spur growth and warmer temperatures gave rise to a longer growing season, but these benefits start to be outweighed by the negatives of a warming climate. Read the full study here.
TechCrunch: Lonestar and Phison's data center infrastructure is headed to the moon
Data storage and resilience company Lonestar and semiconductor and storage company Phison launched datacentre infrastructure on a SpaceX rocket on Wednesday that's headed to the moon.
GOVUK: New guidaance on the use of environmentally sustainable services published
The UK Service Standard is the benchmark public facing services run by the government need to meet, to go into production. On 24th February, it was updated with guidance on choosing and deploying sustainable digital services. Editors note: with a new procurement law in the UK coming into effect the same week, that allows more leeway on who to buy from, this is an interesting development.
Nature inFocus: Wildlife Photography Awards 2024 Winners
The Nature inFocus Photography competition celebrates photographers who capture powerful moments in natural history and highlight critical conservation issues. This year's winners are a stunning selection!
💚 Papers We Love 💚
BBC: The Dark Side of Dark Mode
We've all been taught that 'dark mode' is far more sustainable to use when collaborating... but when isn't it? The BBC's Zachary Datson has done some interesting research which shows that users tend to crank up the brightness of their screens so much when using dark mode, that often it's worse than light mode! This is the full whitepaper which inspired the article we shared last week, The Register: Dark mode might be burning more juice than you think.
Jobs
Want to post a job here? Submit your job to go out to the 10k member strong CAT community with this helpful form.
Elemental Impact - Director of Development - $106,400- $191,000 - Permanent - Flexible - remote ok
The Director of Development will primarily focus on materials creation, as well as researching new funding opportunities to build an expanding portfolio of private and public funders. They will work in close collaboration with the Managing Director of Growth and across a team of practitioners and partnership builders in order to create an aligned fundraising strategy.
Citizens' Climate Education - IT Support Specialist - $60k/yr - Permanent - Totally remote
We are seeking an Entry-Level Applications Support Specialist to join our team. This role will help update/maintain essential applications and integrations, make updates to websites, and generally support our volunteers who are working to protect climate policies.
Green Web Foundation - mid/senior product comms manager - Between €350 and €450 - Contract - Flexible - remote ok
We’re looking for an experienced freelance product comms manager who’s comfortable working at mid-level or above to join our small, but ambitious team on a part-time contract basis. This role will support our carbon.txt project, which aims to make sustainability data easier to discover and use on the web. It’s a single place to look on any domain for public, machine-readable, sustainability data relating to that company.
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. Remember: if you're looking for advice finding a role, check our #climate-careers channel.
Elemental Impact - Director of Development - $106,400- $191,000 - Permanent - Flexible - remote ok
The Director of Development will primarily focus on materials creation, as well as researching new funding opportunities to build an expanding portfolio of private and public funders. They will work in close collaboration with the Managing Director of Growth and across a team of practitioners and partnership builders in order to create an aligned fundraising strategy.
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