This Week in MCJ (4/4/20)
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.
If someone forwarded this to you, sign up!
If you have feedback or items you’d like to include, feel free to reach out.
Hello MCJ community,
We continued to put one foot in front of the other this week, recording new episodes, and doing our best to stay focused. These next few weeks will be brutal and bring lots of unknowns, but we are cooped up tight and staying safe, and controlling the things we can control.
I am continuing to think a lot about how we ultimately emerge from this lockdown, lessons learned, key forks in the road and decision points, and what we can do to make lemonade out of lemons and put the world on a better path coming out of this to tackle climate change.
If there is a silver lining to all of this, it comes in things like this series of before/after photos of pollution-free skies (thx to Alex Marshall for the link!). Or the decrease in personal consumption (besides alcohol, maybe!) that each of us has been doing around the globe, appreciating the little things, and being more present in the moment. Maybe these habits will stick, maybe they won’t. But if nothing else, I think we will all emerge from this more aware of our carbon-intensive lifestyles, and the treadmill we’ve all been stuck on that is our global economy. And maybe also with an increased awareness of the risks of ignoring the collective good for too long - a particularly apt lesson for climate change, as well.
I hope everyone is staying safe and sane. And a special shout-out to all of the healthcare workers, grocery employees, UPS drivers, warehouse employees, scientists, police and fire, and so many others putting themselves at risk to keep our essential food and supplies available, our people safe, and basic law and order.
Jason
📼Episodes
Here are this week’s episodes you may have missed!
Episode 94: Robyn Beavers, Co-Founder & CEO of Blueprint Power
Blueprint Power is a company that unlocks new revenue for real estate owners by transforming their buildings into power plants and connecting them to new energy markets and customers. It offers commercial property owners a suite of data-driven machine learning tools that automate the management, aggregation, orchestration, and market transactions of energy assets across their entire portfolio. I had a great discussion with Robyn in this episode about the origin story of the company, their progress to date, long vision, what’s coming next, and a deep dive into the energy markets, the grid, the regulatory landscape, and how they tie into the broader climate fight.
Environmental and climate justice are important and under-discussed topics that I’ve been seeking to get smarter on and give more visibility to, and it is hard to imagine a better guest than Jacqui to help provide perspective on these issues. The NAACP Environmental and Climate Justice Program was created to support community leadership in addressing this human and civil rights issue. Having led the program for over a decade, Jacqui works to address the many practices that are harming communities of color nationwide. She works in both the public and commercial realms to support policies that foster sustainable, cooperative and regenerative communities. We have a great discussion in this episode about the origins of the program, some of the biggest climate and environmental inequities and how they came about, some of the initiatives NAACP works on to try to help in these areas, and the path forwards.
🤝Sponsor
Interested in becoming an MCJ sponsor? Good way to get some visibility for your org and support our efforts, so we can keep doing this. Let us know!
💼Jobs
Here are some jobs shared by members of the MCJ community that we think might be of interest to you.
Full-Stack Developer at Joro in Oakland, CA (job description)
Machine Learning Engineer at Salient Predictions (job description)
Sr. Software Engineer, Data Engineer at Scoot Science in Santa Cruz, CA (job page)
Front-End Engineer at Rheaply in Chicago, IL (job description)
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.
📰Articles
Below are interesting articles and content that we find interesting or that was recently shared by fellow MCJers.
PBS: “Could the coronavirus reshape America’s social safety net?”
Interesting article on social safety nets, and whether this crisis will cause America to rethink them. Particularly applicable, as we think about climate change and the clean energy transition.
Los Angeles Times: “Trump weakens fuel economy standards, rolling back key U.S. effort against climate change”
On Tuesday, it was announced that the Trump Administration would be weakening one of the nation’s leading efforts to address climate change. The new EPA and Transportation Department rules would involve, “releasing new fuel efficiency standards for cars and trucks that handed a victory to the oil and gas industry.” Environmental groups and various states, such as California, are expected to challenge these new policies.
The New York Times: “Vodka From Thin Air: An Unusual Climate Prize Hits a Coronavirus Snag“
This was an interesting read about the Carbon XPrize, a climate change competition focused on developing the most profitable use of carbon dioxide. Unfortunately, it was recently delayed due to the travel restrictions brought about by COVID-19. One of the 10 finalists to the $7.5 million prize, Brooklyn-based Air Co. uses carbon capture to produce vodka and, more recently, hand sanitizer. The competition is notable as, “the prize came at the problem from the opposite direction: It set out to create financial incentives for companies that produce a lot of carbon dioxide to hang on to it, rather than releasing it.”
🎟Events
Below are some upcoming events we recommend checking out!
MCJ Climate Investing Chat (3pm EST, Sunday, April 5th; remote)
Fellow MCJers, Nicole Kelner and Chris Powers, are hosting a 30-minute remote panel discussion on the topic of climate investing. Attendees will have an opportunity to hear from panelists, as well as meet other fellow MCJers in two 15-minute breakout sessions. The panel will include Ramanan Raghavendran (Managing Partner of Amasia), Monica Varman (Investor at G2VP), and Hannah Davis (Program Director at Techstars Sustainability Accelerator).
RSVP here before noon on Saturday, April 4. You can submit questions for the panel here. (editor’s note: we are sending out this newsletter a day late, WE ARE SORRY!)
Thanks for reading everyone, until next week! Feedback welcomed :)
Jason