SDG13 – Climate Action

These social entrepreneurs are accomplishing Sustainable Development Goal 13, Climate Action: Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts

Delivering Efficiency with Marc Kuo, Routific

Routific uses AI to cut mileage and drive time by 20%-40%. Marc Kuo is the Founder & CEO of Routific. He is a routing expert with nearly a decade of experience in last-mile logistics. But he didn’t always work in logistics. “Being a fresh grad out of school, I just wanted to get into either management consulting or investment banking, simply because of its prestige,” Marc told me. “I was ambitious. I wanted to aim for something challenging. “Once I was in finance, I was on the equity trading floor for one of the investment banks in Hong Kong. It was a glamorous dream job. I was sitting on the…

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Confronting Environmental Change in the Midwest, with Janet McCabe, Environmental Resilience Institute

The Environmental Resilience Institute helps midwestern communities understand and prepare for environmental change. There’s something powerful about understanding how a global trend impacts your local community. For example, it’s one thing to hear about world hunger. It’s another to hear about hunger in your state. But there’s a different feeling when you realize that there’s a hungry kid in your neighborhood. As Tip O’Neill said, “All politics is local.” It’s the same thing with climate change. You’ve probably heard about the global climate crisis. And, when your state is mentioned, you might pay attention. But, when you notice the impact on the health and wellbeing of your local community, well,…

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Jessica Hellmann, Geofinancial Analytics and the Institute on the Environment

If you could invent a post-pandemic world, what world would you create? I hear people talking about the desire to return to “normal.” However, normal was unsustainable. Before the pandemic, there was another crisis, an environmental crisis. A crisis in our food systems, our energy systems, our clean water systems, and our unequal economic systems. Coronavirus did not break our systems. It revealed how broken our systems already are. There is a saying, “Problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.” That is why, when faced with intractable problems like COVID-19 or the climate crisis, I like to talk to thought leaders. On the other…

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A Systems View of the Climate Crisis (and Coronavirus) with Jonathan Foley, Project Drawdown

Project Drawdown has one clear goal: “Drawdown,” the point when greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere start to decline. The world is, rightly, focused on the current pandemic. However, Dr. Jonathan Foley of Project Drawdown invites us to look at the bigger pattern. “The world’s attention is focused on this pandemic, as it should be,” Foley says. “But we have to remember that there is an underlying pattern to these kinds of events. For examples, we’ve had more severe storms, floods, droughts, and more fires in the last few decades because of climate change. That doesn’t mean we only deal with those individual events. We must look at those events,…

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Reducing the Carbon Footprint of the Internet, with Jack Amend and Matthew Reid, Web Neutral Project

The Web Neutral Project is a comprehensive certification program that calculates, offsets and neutralizes the carbon footprint of websites and digital products. Matt Reid and Jack Amend have known each other almost all of their lives. They grew up just down the street from one another. Matt attended the University of Minnesota where he studied Environmental Science. Jack attended the University of California, Santa Barbara where he studied Political Science. While in school, Jack ran a graphic design and web development company as a side-hustle. After school, Jack and some friends put together a creative agency with a focus on cause-driven organizations. Jack’s company used solar-powered servers to run their…

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