Conversations w/ Conservative Climate Activist, Benji Backer
MCJ Community AMA
The words “climate activists” and “conservatives” don’t typically share the same sentence, unless of course you’re contrasting their conflicting values and viewpoints. But Benji Backer begs to differ. In a recent podcast, Jason sat down with the Founder and President of the American Conservation Coalition, an organization working to build a grassroots movement and address climate among young people in the right-of-center space. The conversation covered Benji's upbringing, what led him to care about climate change, and the fact that the Republican Party hasn't necessarily put climate change as a front and center issue (among other things).
But beyond simply listening to the lively discussion, we wanted to offer MCJ members a chance to ask Benji their burning questions, and they did not disappoint! We grabbed a few of our favorites to share with the wider community to hopefully inspire dialogue with people who may seem to have opposing viewpoints. At the end of the day, we are all in this climate fight together.
In an effort to further connect the My Climate Journey podcast with our amazing MCJ community, we will be hosting future AMAs with upcoming guests in our #c-mcj-ama channel. And for folks reading this who are not MCJ members, please consider joining. If you have any suggestions or feedback, feel free to reach out to Jenn Beening or Leone Baron on Slack.
✍️ The Draw-down
Darren Sears is an artist/cartographer with an educational and professional background in landscape architecture. He lives in San Francisco where he is represented by Hang Art Gallery; you can learn more about his work and inspiration at www.darrensears.com.
🍿 The Lean Back
The latest Climate Town feature covers the Supreme Court’s ruling in West Virginia vs the EPA.
🎙My Climate Journey Podcast
♼ Jason talked with John Dees, Senior Science Analyst at Carbon Direct, about life cycle assessments (LCAs) for carbon emissions, their level of accuracy, and where they fit into the overall path towards a clean future.
📹 Cody caught up with Kip Pastor, Founder & CEO at Pique Action climate storytelling that resonates with audiences today, climate TikTok, and how Pique plans to scale its impact as it grows.
✨ Highlights
Frontier’s fall 2022 carbon removal purchase cycle has kicked off! If you’re working on carbon removal–whether you’re very early or starting to scale up–consider applying! Find out more and submit your pre-application by September 2 here and feel free to spread the word on Twitter.
👩💻 Climate Jobs
For more open positions, check out the #j-climatejobs channel in MCJ Slack as well as past newsletters.
EnergyHub is searching for a Market Development Specialist to empower utilities and their customers to create a clean, distributed energy future. (Brooklyn, NY)
Helio Home is building their tech team and looking for a Backend Software Engineer & Full Stack Software Engineer to help electrify U.S. homes. (Remote/CO)
Jaro Fleets is looking for several engineers to help electrify trucks. (Oakland, CA)
Liminal Insights is hiring a Senior Manufacturing Engineer, Machine Learning Engineer & Technical Program Manager to join their commercial battery efforts. (Emeryville, CA)
Patch is on a mission to enable gigatonne-scale carbon removal the world over and is hiring a Lead Product Marketing Manager. (San Francisco, CA)
🗓 August Events
For more climate events, check out the #c-events channel in MCJ Slack.
🔥 Fireside Chat: Getting into Climate Tech w/ Candice Ammori, Yin Lu, & Eugene Kirpichov (8/23)
🚺 Women in Climate Meetup: We co-create the agenda real-time and get through the topics that are most interesting to the group. (8/24)
🧠 MCJ Monthly Idea Jam! Our focus is on: Climate Change Management and Reporting. Interested in hearing 3 innovations in this area, or learning more - come along, listen, and share your thoughts. (8/26)
👋 MCJ Community Welcome Call: Connect, share and learn with other MCJ-ers. (8/25 & 9/08)
🎨 Climate Art Workshop with Nicole Kelner: This month’s theme is Solarpunk, the art movement that envisions how the future might look like if we live in harmony with nature. (8/30)
📚 MCJ Book Club - Doughnut Economics: Discuss Kate Raworth’s book. (8/31)
✨ MCJ Community Roundtable: Join the MCJ team to learn about progress that’s been made over the past year and what’s ahead. (9/01)
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