Getting the work done

Good work, everybody! Well, not everybody...

Mar 24, 2023

PRESENTED BY COMPACT DIFFUSION BONDED MICROCHANNEL HEAT EXCHANGERS

It’s Friday, it’s the end of the work week, everyone is working on their work or working on getting work to work. And while there are many humans working on speeding civilizational demise for their personal profit, there are many others working on keeping our only home in order. It’s been suggested that Hill Heat should talk a bit more about what the good folks are doing. All I can say is: I’m working on it.

Before the hootie snootie at the end of the newsletter is a long list of climate jobs that are open now. Let’s get to work.

Peter Forister ❄️💨❄️ @forecaster25

Amazing purple aurora pillars from Shenandoah National Park, Virginia! 9:00pm. Cannot believe this is happening right now

Yesterday we discussed Sen. Ed Markey’s (D-Mass.) effort on progressive clean-energy permitting reform. The Green New Dealers in the House aren’t sitting idly by, either. The Congressional Progressive Caucus, led by Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.), has launched the Accelerating Clean Energy Task Force to “clearly understand the challenges of implementation of clean energy projects, to work with the Biden administration and external partners, and to develop recommendations for administrative and legislative reforms to permitting that will assist in more rapidly bringing new renewable energy projects online” “without sacrificing bedrock environmental laws, throwing disadvantaged communities under the bus, or passing Trojan Horse legislation to help the fossil fuel industry.”

The other members of the task force are Reps. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.), Mike Levin (D-Calif.), Joe Neguse (D-Colo.), Melanie Stansbury (D-N.M.), Paul Tonko (D-N.Y.), and caucus chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.).

Meanwhile, House Republicans are planning to pass H.R. 1, their big love letter to the fossil-fuel industry, next week. But the fact that the drill-everything-everywhere bill includes turning every member’s district into a tailings pit is, as E&E News puts it, “complicating leadership’s plans.” For example, the lunatic Scott Perry (R-Pa.) wants the Delaware River Basin to be open to fracking, but the (comparatively) moderate Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) wants to protect his district’s watershed. Similarly, Vern Buchanan (R-Fla.) is unhappy about drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, and Morgan Griffith (R-Va.) opposes the Mountain Valley Pipeline.

And the Congressional Budget Office has now estimated this carbon giveaway would increase the federal deficit by more than $2 billion over ten years.

I am afraid that every other aurora display will suck compared to last nights. Talkeetna, AK

CROSSING THE INTERNATIONAL FINISH LINE: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change just finished the final component of its Sixth Assessment Report, the Synthesis Report and its Summary for Policymakers. This bracing document represents the work not only of thousands of climate scientists but also excruciating diplomatic negotiations in which representatives of countries around the world met in Switzerland from March 13th to 19th and battled over each phrase.

The Earth Negotiations Bulletin’s notes from this session are weirdly gripping, a science-fictional tale of pre-Clausewitzian politics where the heartbreak of the desperate effort to slow civilization’s rush toward collapse is documented in sentences like “After further discussion the sentence was parked” and “On Thursday evening, co-facilitators CANADA and SOUTH AFRICA reported the contact group had reached an agreement.” The bulletin concludes:

If the difficulties and frustrations of IPCC-58 provide any reason for hope, it is that they may spur new willingness to find ways to do the job better. It remains to be seen how the IPCC addresses these challenges and moves forward with the next assessment cycle. But one thing is clear: the impacts of climate change will not wait.

The United States is under pressure to support Vanuatu’s resolution to the UN general assembly calling for the Hague’s International Court of Justice to rule on the responsibility of nations to address the climate crisis.

Shareholder measures at top global companies to requiring the companies to eliminate deforestation from their supply chains are winning votes with startling frequency now, often pushed by the environmentalist investment firm Green Century.

Dozens of acronyms for ARPA-E projects — boy, ARPA-E takes acronymization to the next level

It’s the final day of the Department of Energy ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit, where hard-working technologists have been meeting in National Harbor to “think about America’s energy challenges in new and innovative ways.” The scientists and engineers met with venture capitalists and loan officers and heard from big names like Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, billionaire venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, fracking shill Ernest Moniz, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, White House advisor John Podesta, and Willow project champion Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska).

Sessions ranged from pie-in-the-sky technologies like inertial fusion energy to ready-to-deploy methane-leak detection systems, as well as conversations about decarbonizing public transit, ocean energy technologies, and “progress on the design and manufacturing development of compact diffusion bonded microchannel heat exchangers using high nickel superalloys.”

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JERBS: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is hiring dozens of staff to support its expanded environmental justice grantmaking and programming. In its DC headquarters and in each of its ten regional offices, the EPA is seeking both a permanent-hire in-office environmental protection specialist for its EJ program ($48K - $84K depending on experience) and a remote specialist on a two-year contract ($46.7 - $91.8K, depending on experience, remote). Here’s a link with all the listings.

Climate Power has 18 open positions, everything from entry-level communications assistant ($53K, remote) to senior-level jobs like political managing director ($164K-$195K, DC preferred) and survey-research director of insights ($114K-$135K, DC preferred). They’re also hiring a national press secretary for their En Accíon Latino-media initiative ($8K-$102K, remote).

The Wilderness Society is hiring a senior manager of renewable energy on their Climate Policy Advocacy Team ($90K-$105K, Denver or DC preferred).

Climate Cabinet is hiring a public power (cities) program director ($80K-$100K, remote).

The Climate Action Campaign is looking for a regional organizing manager with three to five years experience ($60K-$65K, DC).

Western Resource Advocates has multiple open positions, including clean energy program director ($125K-$165K, mountain West) and Colorado clean energy policy advisor ($55K-$121K depending on experience, Denver/Boulder).

Climate Nexus is hiring a survey science manager ($90K-$100K, remote), a communications manager for its Water Hub program ($75K-$90K, remote), and an associate director of campaigns for its Methane Accountability program ($105K-$115K).

Oceana is looking for a field director for its ocean conservation campaigns (DC, no salary listed).

Latinx ocean stewardship organization Azul is hiring a national policy associate (DC, $60K-$65K).

Niron Magnetics, a tech start-up developing non-rare-earth high-power magnets, has several openings at its Minneapolis office: business development manager, government contracts manager, and nanomaterials R&D engineer (no salaries listed).