This Week in MCJ (5/2/20)

News, help wanted, and other topics of note from the MCJ community.

May 03, 2020

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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Hey all,

Another pandemic week down. I’m still finding myself feeling guilty for focusing on this longterm problem while there is so much suffering (physically and financially) going on in our own backyards, but I know this problem is of critical importance to our future, so it is one foot in front of the other to avoid losing focus/momentum.

What decisions we make and what kind of world we step out into as we (slowly) re-emerge from this pandemic will have huge implications for our ability to get the climate problem under control. I talked a bit about this with Joseph Majkut (MCJ episode #39) the other day, and tweeted a few thoughts from that discussion here. I’m no expert, so feel free to tell me everything I got wrong or what I am missing! Best way to learn :)

We are hard at work behind the scenes at MCJ to start to map out what tools and resources we could provide to the MCJ community beyond the pod, slack, and newsletter to make your climate journeys more efficient and effective, and to help increase the impact that this amazing group can have overall on addressing the problem. We have lots of ideas, but before we choose a path, we’d love to give you all a chance to have your voices heard.

To that end, please reach out to us and let us know what would help YOU the most with your climate journey! What do you wish MCJ provided that it doesn’t do today? Just reply to this email or send us a message here. Also, fun little tidbit, but you never know who may be in the MCJ community lurking in the shadows :)

Jason

Share My Climate Journey

📼Episodes

Here’s this week’s episode you may have missed!

Episode 101: Brenden Millstein, Co-Founder & CEO of Carbon Lighthouse
If you want to know about the intersection of energy efficiency and real estate, Brenden is your guy! We do a deep dive in this episode into the topic of energy efficiency, including why it matters, what the big levers are to improve it, and what types of obstacles have been holding it back. Brenden has a great story, and I loved learning more about Carbon Lighthouse!

🏗 What You’re Building

Projects and initiatives from the community.

Dom Potter, EIR at Unicef, is building a company and looking to connect with people in material science, sustainable production and decarbonization. You can reach him at dom at halofarming dot com.

Bruce Daisley is fundraising for PlasticFree.com, a platform for replacing plastic in the global production process.

💼Jobs

Here are some jobs shared by members of the MCJ community that we think might be of interest to you.

Product Engineers & Product Designer at Stripe’s new Climate team in SF, CA (design listing, engineering listing). Below is an expanded description of the opportunity we received from the team’s business lead, Nan Ransohoff.
“In short, we’re going to make it really easy for our users to make a big impact combating climate change. Today, many businesses want to play a role fighting climate change, but figuring out what to do is surprisingly complicated -- requiring time and resources they typically don’t have. As a result, most end up doing nothing. With Stripe Climate, users will be able to contribute a fraction of their revenue to high-impact climate initiatives, like negative emissions, in just a few clicks. Importantly, we’ll always aim to spend those dollars on what is impactful rather than what just sounds impactful. To start, we will use these funds to help create a market (demand) for negative emissions in the absence of policy.
As a founding member of the team, you’ll play a critical role shaping and shipping our first product(s). As a founding engineer, you’ll help the team iterate quickly to find product/market fit, as well as lay the technical foundations for our long-term aspirations. On the design front, you’ll have remarkable breadth -- from designing the user experiences across multiple product surfaces, to brand and communications design.
If you’re excited about making an impact on climate change and being part of a small and scrappy team to get something off the ground, please reach out to me (nan) at nransohoff at stripe dot com.”
Content Writer at Wren in SF or Remote (job listing)
Chief People Officer at New Energy Nexus in Oakland, CA (job listing)
VP of Engineering at The Climate Service in Durham, NC (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.

Submit a job

👉Climate Tech News

Recent funding and M&A announcements.

📰Recommended Reading

Below are recently published articles and content that we find interesting and/or that were shared by fellow MCJers.

Nathaniel Bullard: “BNEF Executive Factbook”
Nathaniel Bullard, Chief Content Officer at BloombergNEF, put together a comprehensive series of data points, which his team deem as crucial for understanding climate change.
Bloomberg: “Solar and Wind Cheapest Sources of Power in Most of the World”
A quick read about how solar and onshore wind power are now the cheapest new sources of electricity in at least two-thirds of the world’s population, further threatening coal and natural gas.
Yale Environment 360: “Why ‘Carbon-Cycle Feedbacks’ Could Drive Temperatures Even Higher”
This piece reports on the distressing finding by scientists that parts of the Amazon and other tropical forests appear to be emitting more CO2 than they absorb, which is not yet incorporated into climate models. Without such carbon sinks, global warming to-date would have been twice as great and already exceeded the 2 degree target.
The New York Times: “Emissions Declines Will Set Records This Year. But It’s Not Good News.”
This article speaks to the unprecedented projected 8% drop in global carbon emissions due to the pandemic, but also the risk that emissions could soar unless nations make A concerted effort to incorporate clean energy as part of their recovery efforts.
The Guardian: “Clean air in Europe during lockdown ‘leads to 11,000 fewer deaths’”
As a silver lining to the horrible human toll COVID-19 has wrought, The Guardian is reporting a study that has found that air quality over the past month has led to 11,000 fewer deaths from pollution in the UK and in other parts of Europe. Certainly not without massive costs lives and livelihoods, but a good reminder how insidious and harmful pollution is.

📖Hot Off The Press

Harvard University Professor and upcoming guest on MCJ, Rebecca Henderson recently published “Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire,” which speaks to the need to retool capitalism and corporations so they work for a more sustainable future. We very much enjoyed speaking with Rebecca and learning about the specific capitalist-oriented prescriptions she advocates for addressing climate change. Stay tuned for her MCJ episode later this summer!

🎟Events

Past and upcoming events organized or surfaced by your fellow MCJers.

Tackling Climate Change with Machine Learning
If you missed last weekend’s event, MCJer Amy Wang has provided a link to the recording.
MCJ Community Chat: ESG Investing (Sunday, May 3rd)
Eli Kariv, Chris Powers and others will be hosting the next MCJ bi-weekly community call this Sunday, May 3rd at 3:00 PM! The topic for this week will be ESG Investing. We’ll have a 30 minute panel discussion followed by two separate 15-minute breakout discussions. Topics will range from what ESG metrics investors looking for, what tools exist for ESG investing, and the role ESG investing has on making an impact in climate change. To receive the link to attend, please RSVP using this form.

Thanks for reading! As always, feedback welcomed. Stay safe, and keep up the good fight.