
Climatescape.org – Mapping the global landscape of climate-saving organizations - leventov
https://climatescape.org/
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bloudermilk
Hi all, creator here–so cool to see this on HN.

I made Climatescape after seeing dozens of people go through a similar process
of cataloging interesting climate-focused companies in spreadsheets, notes,
and elsewhere. The goal is to unify these efforts and provide the content free
to anyone who might find it useful. The website is open source[1] and content
is Creative Commons licensed.

This is really just the beginning of what I'd like to see the project become.
We want to go deeper by including key org attributes like headcount, location,
investments, and more. There are also plans to increase the breadth of the
database by including books, podcasts, events, data sets, and other important
resources related to climate.

If anyone is interested in contributing please get in touch! brendan [at]
sinceresoftware.co

[1]: github.com/bloudermilk/climatescape

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nolroz
Cool resource! I just started down this path as a strict requirement for my
next career move. It would be awesome to include job listings and requirements
for people that want to find a job at a climate focused company.

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bloudermilk
Thanks so much and congrats on your new career trajectory! We'd love to
integrate with some job boards in the future. In the meantime I can point you
to a blog post with some great advice on this topic:

[https://medium.com/@leventov/how-to-find-a-job-in-a-tech-
com...](https://medium.com/@leventov/how-to-find-a-job-in-a-tech-company-
helping-to-combat-climate-change-practical-guide-e212e262a32)

~~~
nolroz
Thank you for the info! Good luck with everything!

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diafygi
I feel like political/advocacy/regulatory should be a category. Organizations
like Vote Solar, SEIA, Mission:Data, Sierra Club, etc. have most impact
fighting climate change because the policies they push through have huge
industry-wide consequences.

Also, for energy, how wide do you want to cast the net? Solar and wind
generation is now more cost effective than fossil generation, so traditional
utilities and utility vendors are now doing huge climate-change fighting
efforts, just because it's cheaper. For example, GE has a solar division that
is developing huge commercial projects that offset a fuck ton of carbon.
Should GE be on the list?

I worry that this list is giving the impression that fighting climate chance
is a selfless endeavor, when nowadays much of the carbon offset work
(especially in energy) is done by established entities because it's simply
cheaper and in their self interest.

Also, what about governments? Countries, states, cities, and regulators are
passing more and more 100% carbon free mandates. Those are vastly more
impactful that anything else on this list. Shouldn't they be included on the
list?

Finally, a search or full list to Ctrl+F would be nice so I don't have to
click through multiple categories to see if a company is included.

Thanks very much for the effort to put this list together, and I wish you the
best of luck!

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bloudermilk
Thank you for all the thoughtful feedback.

You bring up some great points regarding categorization–choosing a sensible
taxonomy has been by far the hardest part of this project so far. I'd love
some help in this area if you or anyone else is interested.

> Should GE be on the list?

I've been asking myself this same question for weeks and haven't come to a
conclusion yet. What do you think? How about O&G companies with big green tech
budgets?

> Also, what about governments? ... Shouldn't they be included on the list?

I think this would be a very interesting data point to track indeed, though I
suspect someone else is already tracking this.

> Finally, a search or full list to Ctrl+F

Agreed, added this to our backlog.

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sails
> How about O&G companies with big green tech budgets

This troubles me endlessly. My gut says no, as I can't imagine some of the
largest companies in the world reorienting sufficiently, and I feel that they
should quickly become sidelined as relics of a different time. But it seems
unreasonable to think they don't have some value to add with the large budgets
and pressure they are under.

Gladly be informed on this topic!

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ebiester
I argue that it does, as someone doing a search for competitors or
alternatives might be caught unaware if this is a blind spot for them. For
example, you have Drivy (bought by GetAround... a while back?) and yet you're
missing a large portion of the CarShare landscape. Do you count Zipcar? (Avis-
Budget group, but the largest player and running EVs in London). Maven? (GM)
DriveNow/car2go? (BMW, and EV-centric in Europe) And that doesn't even get
into smaller players like Innova (EV-focused) or BlueLA (LA-only but
EV)/BlueIndy/etc - or Autolib/Cite Lib/Carma...

* Full disclosure: I'm employed by Zipcar. But I'm also an alternative transit geek in general.

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greaterscope
I second the point that it's helpful to know the actual landscape, so the
division within GE should definitely be listed. After all, if they end up
contributing something positive it deserves visibility.

And your mention of Zipcar, Maven, etc makes me think it'd be great to include
the entities that own or fund each organization. Definitely means there's more
information to hunt down, but crowd-sourcing can lessen that pain.

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codingdave
It is interesting to see a list of organizations compiled in one place, to get
a sense of what is going on in the world.

But I read the headline wrong. I saw the words "Mapping" and "landscape", and
was expecting actual maps. I thought I'd be looking at visualizations of where
in the world each organization is having an impact.

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Pietertje
Same here, I expected a list or map which gives an user the ability to see
which organizations or projects operate nearby. It would be really cool if you
could see which projects are nearby and you might be able to participate in. I
really like the idea though. Hopefully your site will inspire others.

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slowtec
The "map" You are looking for already exists :)
[https://kartevonmorgen.org/](https://kartevonmorgen.org/)
[https://github.com/kartevonmorgen](https://github.com/kartevonmorgen)

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jawache
I've been looking for a curated list like this for a long time, thanks for
creating!

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jkaljundi
Since forestry is so big, I would suggest to keep it separate. Also broad
biodiversity and nature organisations probably should have a separate
category, not me under land use.

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blueski
Thanks for putting this together! I've wondered before if Kittyhawk and other
flying car companies count as climate-saving organizations. Flying small
personal aircraft will always use vastly more energy per mile than vehicles
that can roll along the ground - and even if there are no emissions in flight,
the energy cost and likely emissions of making the batteries and equipment
will be non-negligible.

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bloudermilk
My personal opinion is that we're not going to convince people to stop flying,
so we should decarbonize air travel regardless of its relative efficiency.

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Angostura
We don't have to convice everyone to stop flying. We can start with to
convincing everyone to fly _less_. Decarbonise in the meantime, if you can, of
course.

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tensor
I don't think this is a very practical approach. People both need and want to
fly places. We need to accept that and find ways to make flight greener.

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pimmen
But the richest 10% of people are the ones who make far more than half of all
flights [1]. They could certainly fly less.

[1] [https://www.inequalityintransport.org.uk/book-author/news-
bl...](https://www.inequalityintransport.org.uk/book-author/news-blog/todays-
transport-policy-benefits-rich-more-poor)

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evanhynes
Hi Brendan! Evan here from ClimateCareers! Https://climate.careers

My team and I are already working on the next iteration of our product, which
will be going far beyond jobs. I'd love to find time to chat and explore
opportunities to collaborate!

Sending you an email now :)

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beastcoast
Initially read to me as “climate escape”. Not sure if intended.

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imagetic
There should be a category for sustainability/food.

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nullreference00
Is this project intentionally leaving out political organizations? Fighting
the politics of austerity and capitalist oligarchy is more important than
evaluating photovoltaic efficiency/viability.

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bloudermilk
We have a “Government & Policy” category that was a little light to launch
with. Would be happy for you to help us fill it out!

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lucb1e
Might be the mobile view, but the descriptions are both cut off and
meaningless.

> We deliver when others can’t. We conduct research and development, manage

Is all that is visible. It goes on to say (in the full description) that they
do this R&D for clients. So like what do they actually do, beyond claiming
they're better than you and me?

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bloudermilk
Thanks for taking a look. It's a laborious process to collect good
descriptions for each submission–some are better than others. The text is cut
off intentionally, rather lazily now, but we're planning on making it clearer
visually that this is intentional and allowing visitors to expand each record.

