“When digital transformation is done right, it’s like a caterpillar turning into a butterfly, but when done wrong, all you have is a really fast caterpillar.”George Westerman | Principal Research Scientist with the MIT Sloan Initiative on the Digital Economy

“Philanthropy is commendable,” Dr. King wrote, “but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice which make philanthropy necessary.”

we should not support the institutionalizing of the right to be intolerant. If Eich thinks that same-sex marriage is against his beliefs, that’s fine, even if you (as I) disagree with him. But, by making a commitment to impress that belief upon others, he created a situation where his freedom of expression trampled the freedoms and rights of others. If Eich disagrees with same-sex marriage on religious grounds, that’s also his First Amendment right. But unless there’s a law requiring religious institutions to officially support same-sex marriages, his right to practice a religion is not infringed upon by their legality. And, again, I stress the critical difference between disagreeing with something and campaigning to write that disagreement into law.

Also, through groups like ClimateAction.Tech and publicly created documents like the Sustainable Web Manifesto, a burgeoning global community of designers and developers has emerged to address these issues head on, which is also encouraging. In 2013, Mightybytes created Ecograder and Sustainable Web Design to help website owners better understand the environmental impact of their digital products and services. We hope to redesign the former in 2021. We’re in the process of redesigning the latter with Wholegrain Digital, another B Corp agency that also created a website carbon calculator. Many similar projects, like Branch from ClimateAction.Tech, are now popping up left and right. It’s an exciting time to be a purpose-driven designer or developer. 

Patrick: Being a software developer, I mostly look at the technical side. So inspiration primarily comes from communities like ClimateAction.Tech and people who work on lowering the impact of digital services.Tom Greenwood wrote a wonderful book on sustainable web design. And there's Chris Adams, who's one of the founders of the Green Web Foundation, promoting service providers that use 100% green energy. And there's also Christian Kroll the founder of Ecosia, which is a climate positive search engine. He shaped that organisation in such a way that its goal is really to make a difference, to make the world better and and not to make a profit, which I think is a wonderful idea.

we believe that knowledge must be shared in order for humanity to survive and thrive—and that it is essential to help fight climate change.

The open movement must develop a clear and deep relationship of collaboration with the climate movement, most importantly because the latter is the locus of political renewal and connection of an intersectional approach to action and change.

“After all the hundreds of millions of dollars we have spent on ed-tech, when we had five days to pivot not one person in my shop tried to call the ed-tech vendors to ask for help,” Shirky said

This means that everyone in Germany with a landline or cell phone had the same chance of being selected to participate.

To be clear, I am not advocating overthrowing the state or any of the other fear-mongering mischaracterizations of anarchism. I am advocating ceasing to spend all of our resources focusing on the state as the agent of the change we seek. We no longer have the time to waste.

Do you have any recommended resources that helped you learn about climate breakdown?The ClimateAction.Tech Slack is worth your time: some deep knowledge in that community, but it’s still open and welcoming to people stepping into climate issues for the first time.

What resources are powering our projects and how do we manage those resources? Are we willing to approach our work with a set of values that centers several generations after us? And how do we do that?What protections do we need to fight for in the workplace to hold companies accountable around climate justice goals?How do we measure our impact on the climate crisis?Are we willing to sundown projects if mitigating their negative impact on the environment is impossible or creates little impact?

NEW YORK, NY, USA, August 4, 2021—Today, Deloitte announced that it has begun to roll out a new climate learning program for all 330,000 of its people worldwide.

The entire capitalist system is premised on the privatization of gains and the socialization of losses – not in any nefarious fashion, but with the blessing of the law.

just because ESG is about virtue signalling and risk management, does not mean it is meaningless. On the contrary, the very fact that company executives feel the need to “signal” ESG virtues shows how the interplay of digital transparency and shifting social norms is creating a feedback loop that cannot be ignored. If that encourages companies to change strategy, say by cutting carbon emissions, it is good. If it puts pressure on governments to make crucial reforms, like introducing a carbon price, it is even better, particularly if companies are shamed into demanding such policy actions.

Instead, current AI research on sustainability tends to emphasize the quantifiable effects of environmental pollution and climate change, and focus on solutions of continued measurement, monitoring, and optimizing for efficiency.

How will you sustain the virtue of your product?

power doesn't give up power easily. Power doesn't topple very easily. All of these organizers are working in tremendous conditions of uncertainty. 

Take “biopolymers” for example. These naturally-derived materials are biodegradable, but they typically require the searing heat of an industrial composting facility to fully decompose. In many U.S. cities, these facilities do not exist – and placing them in the recycling bin isn’t the solution, either.

we are changing all our traditional teabags into a new type of paper that is entirely plant based and fully biodegradable when placed into local authority composting.

tea bags

Community design makes the problem-finding a collective act also.

Local governments can use participatory “co-design” principles and practices to help ensure that their programs and products that use open data are designed to meet the needs of current and potential users.

an umbrella term covering community planning, community architecture, social architecture, community development and community participation, all of which emphasize the involvement of local people in the social and physical development of the environment in which they live.

Equity-Centered Community Design (ECCD) is a creative problem-solving framework developed by Creative Reaction Lab that supports the development of equity-centered approaches that will dismantle oppressive systems.

The primary objectives of Local Contexts are to enhance and legitimize locally based decision-making and Indigenous governance frameworks for determining ownership, access, and culturally appropriate conditions for sharing historical, contemporary and future collections of cultural heritage and Indigenous data.

The open movement failed when it centred freedom over justice. It failed when it placed abstract principles above actual human lives. It failed again when misogyny, racism, and colonialism went unchecked and unchallenged. When the movement failed to understand structures of oppression and chose instead to emphasise individual solutions to collective challenges, it failed. It failed again and again and again when it chose to privilege a bizarre and fetishised rationalism over the lived experiences of embodied human beings.

Despite the desires of the open movement, the transformation of some of the benefits of the “sharing movement” that were part of the open Internet —from carpooling to couch surfing to the importance of privacy and anonymity for financial transactions— ended up serving as a blueprint for some of the worst practices for basic job security or environmental protection, ranging from Airbnb to Bitcoin to Uber. The intellectual freedom that was fueled by open forums and websites and blog conversations ended up in walled gardens, carefully controlled by corporate mammoths monetizing people’s time, skills, and attention. The sharing community rapidly turned into the sharing economy. 

No other tool brings together all of your organization’s important discussions and decisions.Loomio offers a workspace for discussion and decision making, bringing together conversations, information, opinions, proposals and outcomes in one place. Loomio is the heartbeat and living record of your organization.

Request for recipes (maybe you have a good gluten-free pizza dough recipe?)

Extendable workflow automation

Milestone

Yes, signatories are held accountable through their choice of regular, publicly-available reporting, and the public-facing commitments they make when signing The Climate Pledge.

We have to decide when our efforts to influence the system are merely serving to reinforce our fears of powerlessness in the face of profound change. We are not powerless. We have ourselves. We have each other. Perhaps it is time for our interconnection to become our focus.