Burning Man, for Climate Nerds

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This week, I want to talk about my favorite conference in the world, Climate Week. I just got back from the San Francisco edition of Climate Week (there are Climate Weeks in a lot of cities now), and I feel pretty damn reinvigorated!

I love Climate Week. If you haven’t been to one, all I can say is, go. I describe it as Burning Man for climate nerds, because it’s a very moving, very soulful, very fulfilling, very inspiring event, but also a pretty rock star party — great food, drinks, dancing, karaoke, awesome people … like Burning Man, there’s something for everyone, and it can be whatever experience you want it to be. And unlike Burning Man, it’s relatively easy to get to, easy to clean your stuff after, has showers, and doesn’t require a massive investment. Also, it has a definitive positive outcome, whereas the Burn *sometimes* does. LOL

I ate crickets. I drank sustainable wine. I sampled chocolate that had been grown from stem cells that tasted exactly like the real thing. I saw someone turn on a light bulb that was powered by an inert piece of metal. I attended a nature-based nervous system reset in Golden Gate Park. I watched a pitch-a-thon by brilliant startups at a climate tech VC firm. I met climate journalists from Axios, Reuters, and more. I fell (platonically) in love at least 20 times with amazing humans I met that were doing something incredible and thought nothing of it. It’s just who they are.

In all, I attended probably 20 events over 5 days, at venues all across the city. I listened, I meditated, I participated, I partied, I ate, I drank, I helped out. I even led a workshop to help climate activists thrive and handle the stresses we face as a community, which we offer to any organization working in sustainability as an employee engagement program.

Here’s a link to the workshop I did at Anchor Coworking in San Francisco, a great community gathering spot full of interesting startups and cool people.

We offer this workshop to companies and organizations working in the climate space on a sliding scale. Here’s more info on that.

The most mind-blowing tech I saw was from Impulse Labs, a San Francisco based startup focusing on appliances. Their induction cookstove is absolutely incredible. Induction is awesome on its own — it cooks better than natural gas, with perfectly even heating and the ability to dial in a temperature with insane precision. That, and by now I think we all know that natural gas stoves release carcinogenic gases inside our homes, which of course is not good for us.

I watched them melt chocolate directly in a pan (not in a double boiler, which is typically how you have to melt chocolate to not burn it or smoke it), and I sampled half a dozen ripe strawberries dipped in perfectly melted chocolate just to prove that it was real — for you, my CleanTechnica subscribers, and I hope this proves that there is no length I won’t go to, no sacrifice I won’t make, to test clean technologies and save the planet!!!

The chocolate sat, perfectly melty, for half an hour with no problem, because they were able to dial the temperature to exactly 122 degrees, keep it right there, and perfectly, evenly heat the pan. Second, induction cools as soon as you stop using it. I put my hand on the surface right after the pan got picked up, and did not get burned. Third, the power was insane — it boiled water 5–6× faster than gas or conventional electric stoves.

But wait, there’s more. This induction stove does not require a 220 line. Impulse has integrated a battery into the appliance, allowing it to trickle charge on a regular plug and discharge with enough power to boil water 5–6× faster than gas. The installed cost of the appliance is therefore WAY less than traditional inductions, and thus removes a significant financial barrier in new construction and conversions from natural gas to electrification.

No, no, that’s not all — there’s more! The device is also smart. It knows when there’s excess solar on the grid and electricity is therefore at its least expensive, and it can then suck that energy down, ensuring that the device is powered by inexpensive, clean energy rather than dirty, expensive natural gas or coal as much as possible.

That technology is here and now. The company has raised a ton of capital to expand, and it is developing other smart appliances as well. The future is now, people.

I had my mind blown at a Climate Reality Project (CRP) meetup. It was a great session, full of interesting and engaging people from all walks. They did multiple sessions, and the second one I went to was one on climate misinformation and disinformation. Misinformation is defined as unintentional misunderstandings about how climate science works or the solutions to climate change. Disinformation is defined as the intentional push by fossil fuel funded PR firms and think tanks to confuse the public. Most of the folks in this session (there were 20–25) had been trained by the CRP, and many had taken their training and given public talks with it. I met one who aggregates information and creates curriculum and lesson plans that it gives away to teachers across the country to teach climate science and solutions, which was great — I’m planning an article or a podcast with her soon.

But the thing that blew me away? Of those 20–25, literally none were aware that the fossil industry aggressively spends money to scare and confuse people about clean technologies.

I told them that at Climate Week New York, I had attended a packed room session about disinformation, showing how fossil funded consultants had done community engagement across rural Ohio and scared enough people that the state is now almost entirely blanketed in county-level anti–clean energy laws. There are only a few counties left in Ohio where the citizens there can make their own power, be resilient, and invest in their own communities with things like community solar, utility-scale solar, or wind farms. The ones that do are making tons of money for their schools and creating jobs. The ones that don’t are losing economically, with their money siphoning off to faraway natural gas or coal plants.

Literally none of the people in this session knew this was a thing.

And then…?

After the session, several of the CRP leadership pow-wowed, and they are now integrating this sort of information into their future trainings. This is the power of conferences — CRP is a powerful force for good, and now they’re off and running with a mandate to educate the world about fossil-funded fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) campaigns and PR schemes to keep us addicted to dirty fossil fuels.

The problem is on its way to being solved by an organization that is perfectly set up to do it.

So, how were the crickets? Not bad, actually! The company is providing cricket powder as a high-protein supplement to food programs in developing nations, and integrating it into a whole suite of new food products. The carbon footprint of cricket protein is, of course, a tiny fraction of cow protein. This is a climate solution that, until someone does it, is just a good idea on the drawing board. I’m so, so grateful to have seen that there were tens of thousands of people working on stuff like this, who took time to convene and spread these ideas, to create businesses, to create solutions, and to act!

My new pre-bed routine now includes a prayer of gratitude and the sending of love and support to all the climate activists around the world who will be working on solutions while I sleep. I sleep better, knowing there are millions and millions and millions of folks out there actively making the world better, and then I wake up more refreshed and ready to get at it myself the next day. Try it, if you want. And try to see if you can feel the love and gratitude I send you from my time zone to yours before I hit the hay. Try hard enough, and I bet you’ll feel it, and smile. 😊

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