Clean coffee #6
Below are the notes from Clean Coffee #6 — the second one with organisers on two different continents — Europe and South Asia this time! Read on to get an idea of what we covered. These They may be a bit messy, and are mainly used to refer back to later for attendees, but they may be useful for you too.
- Is there a way I could look to collaborate with like-minded people for a potential project? — Neha 🙋🏽🙋🏽🙋🏽🙋🏽🙋🏽🙋🏽
- Where to focus efforts about climate change: awareness v/s mitigation v/s adaptation? — Paras 🙋🏽🙋🏽🙋🏽🙋🏽🙋🏽
- Recently, I can see a lot of sustainable options for traveling like electric bikes, cycles and more. But what if the city infrastructure in itself doesn’t make it feasible? How can we deal with this?- Ankita 🙋🏽🙋🏽🙋🏽🙋🏽🙋🏽
- Swiggy/Coke etc. should be charged for the trash generated. I.e. pay for their negative externalities. Discuss — Akash 🙋🏽 🙋🏽🙋🏽🙋🏽🙋🏽
- How can we improve public transit by 10x which benefits both climate & convenience? Looking for how tech can help? Uber type thing to get your ride on? How do we solve Last mile — Scooter or small auto transit? How can we break through local Govt./ Politics? — Baskar 🙋🏽🙋
Topics we didn’t have time to talk about
- If I’m in a small team, where can I start? What resources are there? What arguments would I make to get some time to explore this? — Chris 🙋🏽
- One of the most urgent topics in my opinion — is — Indian cities running out of water shortly. What I accidentally bumped into was that the governments (both central and state (Delhi)) are actively working on solutions. How can we improve awareness of such solutions in the tech industry & how can we connect tech-volunteers/innovations to improve these solutions? Ankit 🙋🏽
- Trash collection should be chargeable based on how much is produced, and the type of trash it is. — How to get this done? — Akash 🙋🏽
- There seem to be many low hanging fruit, that can be done for Climate Change but i realize that these might have little or no impact, How do we understand better what to focus our efforts as a Group or even as Individuals on ? — Roby 🙋🏽
- Reuse all ecommerce packages esp. Food delivery…how can we convert them into Mumbai style dabbawala? Can the packages be compost? How can technology help? — Baskar
- What would it take to get people like us (techies) to go to the streets and protest? — Paras🙋🏽
Notes and links from the topics we discussed
- Topic 1: Is there a way I could look to collaborate with like-minded people for a potential project? — Neha 🙋🏽🙋🏽🙋🏽🙋🏽🙋🏽🙋🏽
Our first question covered where to find people to work with on a new project, or where to find the projects.
There’s a proliferation of sustainability focussed coworking spaces, just like how you see niche focussed ones elsewhere. Outside of India, Impact Hub is known for this.
There will be often social impact focussed accellerators or incubators in cities above a certain size.
Elsewhere Climate Action Tech exists to create a space to facilitate this too. In many cases, it’s easy to start this now, Facebook and twitter for all their issues, make it easy to start.
- Topic 2 — Where to focus efforts about climate change: awareness v/s mitigation v/s adaptation? — Paras 🙋🏽🙋🏽🙋🏽🙋🏽🙋🏽
For this, we discussed the interplay between raising awareness so that need to act, on climate change versus spending time on mitigating against further changes, vs adapting to what’s already changed.
Generally speaking, we are starting to get somewhere with awareness that we need to act. Most of us have no idea of what’s effective.
Mitigation
Some of the more accessible reports on mitigation (as in reducing our own emissions, and supporting policy for this) and what adaption come from Climate Outreach:
As more countries and cities begin to adopt binding targets, we’re getting a better idea of what it would entail:
This report from the UK Climate Change Committee outlined to the UK government on how they might reach net-zero emissions by 2050.
Partly informed by this report, the UK government set a legally binding target to be at net zero emissions by 2050 now (as in, it will be illegal for sectors to be emitting carbon.) New york as made a similar commitment.
The EU looks set to have a similar commitment by the end of the year.
You can see a list of all the countries and companies with net zero commitments on the ECIU Net zero scorecard
Is avoiding growth another possible strategy? Prosperity Without Growth explores this.
Adaptation
One of the more infamous pieces on adaptation is the Deep Adaptation paper from Professor Jem Bendell. It was referred to:
This “deep adaptation” paper shook me early this year into paying attention to climate change
There are also critics of the paper from climate writer Eric Holthaus:
An accessible, and less depressing read to give some more background on adaptation
Topic 3 — Recently, I can see a lot of sustainable options for traveling like electric bikes, cycles and more. But what if the city infrastructure in itself doesn’t make it feasible? How can we deal with this?
It’s worth looking at where it’s worked:
In the UK, companies like Pedal Me App are making inroads for last mile logistics.
Is there a similar story in Delhi?
I think in Delhi, govt is coming with a mandate to ensure all delivery vehicles are electric
Does this actually help though?
Are EVs an improvement in this case?
While the the carbon in energy depends on the fuel (and can be found out)…
The answer is yes, Auke Hoekstra covers this at length on Twitter, but also backs it up with peer reviewed science:
More over, energy on grids is moving to renewables. The energy transition show covers this in detail:
- Swiggy/Coke etc. should be charged for the trash generated. I.e. pay for their negative externalities. Discuss — Akash 🙋🏽 🙋🏽🙋🏽🙋🏽🙋🏽
This last one was a bonus qn, as we ran down the time.
There are options for returning them!
Okay, that’s a wrap!
