This Week in MCJ (3/28/20)
News, help wanted, and other topics of note from the MCJ community.
This Week in MCJ is a free weekly email curating news, jobs, new MCJ episodes, and other noteworthy happenings in the MCJ community.
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Hello MCJ community,
Crazy times we’re living in. The near-term physical and economic suffering and death that has happened and will happen in the coming weeks/months is incredibly troubling, to say the least. First and foremost, I hope you are all staying safe and sane (credit to Hunter Walk for that one). Times like this really put into perspective what matters most, and how much we (or at least me!) take for granted on a daily basis. I feel very fortunate to be home safe with my family, and we will sit tight here while we wait out the storm.
While I have found it hard to see what is happening in the near-term and not drop everything to pitch in, what I have realized is the work we are all doing to help address climate change is more important than ever. As bad as COVID-19 seems right now (and it is!), we will get through it. And how we come out the other side, what decisions we make, what we learn from this crisis that we can apply, etc will be fundamentally important to how we come together to address climate change in the years to come. The climate problem may play out over a longer time horizon, but that doesn’t make it less important to address or change how high the stakes are that we do so.
I have found that thinking through and planning for the way we come out of this pandemic and what each of us can do to help steer us down the right path has been a very purposeful exercise, and has helped me stay focused during this trying time. Anyway, that is my approach, but I’d love to hear how any of you are thinking and how COVID-19 is affecting your plans and beliefs moving forward.
Jason
📼Episodes
Here are this week’s episodes you may have missed!
Episode 92: Dawn Lippert, CEO of Elemental Excelerator
Dawn Lippert comes on the pod to talk about Elemental Excelerator, a Hawaii-based clean tech accelerator program, incubating the next generation of companies tackling various environmental and climate-related issues. Elemental Excelerator supports its portfolio companies well beyond just an investment, providing a peer group, and a wide range of tools, mentorship, and coaching. This is a great episode, especially for early-stage clean tech companies looking to take their companies to the next level. You can apply to be in the next cohort here.
Episode 93: Naomi Oreskes, Professor of the History of Science at Harvard University
Naomi is a world renowned geologist, historian and public speaker, and a leading voice on the role of science in society and the reality of anthropogenic climate change. She is the co-author of the 2010 book Merchants of Doubt, which looks at how the tobacco industry attempted to cast doubt on the link between smoking and lung cancer, and the 2014 book The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View from the Future, which looks back at the present from the year 2093. We have a great discussion, including diving deep into the legacy and history of climate denialism, Naomi’s personal experiences of being attacked and threatened as part of a larger campaign to discredit climate science, and why the public should trust science.
🚨Talent Acquisition Opportunity
Sam Zimmerman, CTO & Co-Founder of Freebird, posted in MCJ Slack looking for a new home for the company’s data science and engineering team with a particular interest in climate opportunities:
If you’re in the market for this list of talent, you can reach out to Sam using the button below.
🤝Sponsor
Interested in sponsoring the MCJ podcast episode and/or newsletter? Let us know!
💼Jobs
Here are some jobs, shared by members of the MCJ community, that we think might be of interest to you.
Director of Corp. Partnerships, Partnerships Manager, Development Director, and more at Elemental Excelerator (job listings)
Full-Stack Engineer at Emitwise (job listing)
Secondment Opportunity at 2040 Foundation (job listing)
Interested in sharing a job with the community? Use the button below to let us know, or just post it in #climatejobs in the MCJ slack room.
👉Opportunities
Below are unique opportunities that fellow MCJers have brought to our attention.
Techstars Sustainability Accelerator
Do you know great entrepreneurs building a more sustainable future? Encourage them to apply to the Techstars Sustainability Accelerator in partnership with The Nature Conservancy. This mentorship-driven accelerator supports companies focused on sustainably providing food and water, building healthy cities, and addressing climate change. Each year ten for-profit, technology companies are invited to Denver (or remote if needed) from September through December where they recieve up to $120K in funding and the support from the huge networks of Techstars and The Nature Conservancy to make over a year’s worth of progress and impact in those 3 months.
Learn more and apply at http://bit.ly/TSNature.
Senior Policy Fellowship at Carbon180
Carbon180 is launching a one year Senior Policy Fellowship to begin fostering a robust field of carbon removal experts to help build the New Carbon Economy. Fellows will be embedded with their policy team in Washington, D.C. and work on creating new, science-driven, inclusive policies to scale carbon removal to the gigaton level. (h/t Hannah Davis of Techstars)
🍩☕️Get to know a MCJ-er
With all of us social distancing, and with so many new members joining MCJ Slack who don’t necessarily know each other, we thought it might be cool to try to foster more connections in there. We are trying a slack app called Donut to facilitate this.
If you’re interested, join the #virtual-coffee Slack channel, and @donut will pair each person who is in there with a random MCJ buddy every 2 weeks and encourage them to meet up (virtually, for now!) and chat! For the brave among us, feel free to join #virtual-coffee to try it out. I’m in there!
📰Articles
NPR: “Climate Change Push Fuels Split On Coronavirus Stimulus”
With the Senate’s recent passage of the $2 trillion stimulus package, this report delves into how some politicians attempted to push for provisions that addressed climate change. It is a timely article, as while we all want to make sure we come out of this pandemic with the greenest path possible, in the immediate-term, we also just need to make sure that the people suffering most get relief, and some issues are best left debated and worked out another time. The hard part is knowing which is which.
MIT Technology Review: “Why the coronavirus outbreak is terrible news for climate change”
Much is being discussed right now about the impact the COVID-19 pandemic will have on the fight on climate change. One writer outlines the possibility of how it might divert attention, financing and incentives from the necessary action needed to address climate change. While this may be true, there is another argument that the collaborative spirit, systems learning, and suffering that comes from addressing COVID-19 will lead to better muscle memory and more determination to tackle climate change. This tweet from Naval makes a good point, and how the world responds coming out of this is TBD.
The New York Times: “What the Coronavirus Means for Climate Change”
This opinion piece takes a different position from the one above, arguing the pandemic may galvanize public attention on climate change: “…there may be a sort of Freudian transference from coronavirus to climate — that the fear and sense of urgency will be lifted from the faster-moving crisis and settle on the slower one, becoming a catalyst for much-needed action.”
I like the point the article ends on, “Perhaps the real question is not whether the virus is “good” or “bad” for climate, or whether rich people will take fewer airplane flights, but whether we can create a functioning economy that supports people without threatening life on Earth, including our own.”
Foreign Policy: “Sorry, but the Virus Shows Why There Won’t Be Global Action on Climate Change”
This opinion piece by Jason Bordoff takes a more cynical position on the effects COVID-19 will have on climate action. Only time will tell, but it is fascinating to consider these different points of view when trying to chart the path forwards for each one of us.
BloombergNEF: Covid-19: The Low-Carbon Crisis
A deep dive, by Michael Liebreich, into the implications of the pandemic on the energy and transport transition, with several concrete recommendations.
🎟Events
Climate Avengers Event recap
See the zoom video here from the very cool Climate Avengers panel that Ann Bordetsky and Kathleen Egan organized, with Bill Weihl from ClimateVoice, Abe Yokell from Congruent Ventures, and Maria Fujihara from SINAI Technologies.
Thanks for reading everyone, until next week! Feedback welcomed :)
Jason