Volume 4 Issue 5 | May 9, 2022

It’s very simple. Never give up." - Alexei Navalny

Silicon Valley Chapter Monthly Newsletter

In this issue: May Monthly Meeting: Imagine a plastic-free future with products designed to disappear. That future is here. Decarbonization Action Team: How You Can Help California Go All-Electric. SV Families Program News: Help kids cope with eco anxiety; Youth taking action Communication Team Updates: Meet our Twitter manager; Zimmerman's column Speakers Bureau Updates and Regenerative Agriculture Talking Points. Legislation and Public Policy News Book Review. The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World. Simple Ways to Take Action Join a Committee: Make a difference!

May Chapter Meeting: Join Us On Zoom Monday, May 23, 6:00 - 7:30 pm Imagine a Plastic-Free Future with Products Designed to Disappear. That Future is Here. Come to this month’s meeting and find out how a local, leading high-tech innovator is making that future a reality. Join us to learn about a new technology for creating seaweed-derived, emission-avoiding alternatives to plastic. Sea Briganti, Loliware CEO/Founder and Dr. Victoria Piunova, CTO will share Loliware’s mission and progress toward replacing single use plastic with bio-renewable and biodegradable alternatives. Their SEA technology is a new category of materials made from regenerative, carbon-capturing and ocean-farmed seaweed. SEA Technology is universally compatible with existing machinery and therefore dramatically more scalable and affordable than other plastic-free alternatives. Join us for a lively discussion about a future without plastic. Your chance to win a sample kit: By attending the meeting you have an opportunity to win a Loliware kit of their breakthrough products!

Meet Our Speakers

Sea F. Briganti, CEO and Founder Sea F. Briganti, Loliware Chief Executive Officer and Founder, is an award-winning climate activist, VC-backed product developer, and social innovator. Sea graduated at the top of her class at Parsons School of Design and went on to build innovation pipelines for global CPG companies such as Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Nestle, and L’Oréal, with a lens on sustainable packaging.

Dr. Victoria Piunova, CTO Dr. Victoria Piunova, Loliware Chief Technology Officer and former IBM Researcher, brings over 10 years of experience in sustainable materials development for applications in biotechnology and sensing, including having invented 25 issued US patents and authored more than 30 publications in peer-reviewed journals. Victoria is a recipient of Young Investigator award (2018) and Young Industrial Polymer Scientist Award (2021) from American Chemical Society and holds a prestigious IBM Master Inventor title.

Join Us! Monday, May 23rd, starting at 6:00 pm Join Zoom Meeting Meeting ID: 896 0372 2663 Passcode: 814834 +1 699 900 9128 US (San Jose)

If you missed our April monthly meeting...you can still catch the presentation. Donna Ball, a scientist from San Francisco Estuary Institute gave a fascinating talk about nature-based resilience against climate change along our shorelines. Here is a PDF and recording of her presentation.

New member welcome...thanks for joining! Terry Edwards

DONATE

Please donate to support our Chapter's work to expand outreach, communication and our climate defense programs. Your financial support can make a big difference to protect our planet and ourselves from the ravages of climate change. Please donate whatever you can afford. Any amount will help us take action. Thank you!

Chapter Member Bill DeVincenzi Named Climate Smart San Jose Champion of the Year for 2022

Climate Reality Silicon Valley is very pleased to announce that member Bill DeVincenzi was named Climate Smart San Jose Champion of the Year for 2022 by the City of San Jose.   Bill was recognized for his work with Climate Smart San Jose, Faculty in Residence for Sustainability at San Jose State University, Climate Reality Silicon Valley Chapter Speakers Bureau, Elders Climate Action and founding the Villages of San Jose community Sustainability club. The award was presented by Vice-Mayor Chappie Jones at the Tuesday, April 19th City Council Meeting at San Jose City Hall.

In attendance were San Jose mayor Sam Liccardo, San Jose State Provost Vin Del Casino, Climate Reality leader Harriett Harvey-Horn, and Beth DeVincenzi, the “wind beneath his wings”.   Many congratulations Bill!

Decarbonization Action Team News

By Karen Nelson, Chapter Co-Chair and Decarbonization Action Director

CRP Silicon Valley Chapter is Now a Switch Is On Ambassador

Our chapter is now an official Switch Is On Ambassador. Our participation is being managed under our decarbonization action campaign umbrella.  As part of the program, we have members and a team working on developing tools that will support consumer understanding about how to engage with contractors regarding: Installation of heat pump technology for HVAC and water heaters Creating a better understanding of induction cooking advantages and options.  Join us if you’d like to help our community go All-Electric. Email Karen Nelson for details. For more information regarding the Ambassador program, click here.

GoGreen: A Simple and Fun Way to Make a Difference.

Our chapter has teamed up with GoGreen to help our community become more sustainable. There are so many actions we can take. And GoGreen is an easy way to connect with friends or neighbors, learn about sustainability and resilience, and take actions that make a difference. No experience required! All you need to be successful is to care about these issues and have a desire to make an impact.  How does it work? GoGreen will provide everything your team needs to complete a series of fun and interactive meetings on solution and resilience topics including videos, games, actions and discussions. For each topic, you will have the option to choose actions to complete.

Who will be in your team? You decide! Invite neighbors, friends, coworkers, family, your book club, running crew, faith community - any community you are part of that you would like to invite to join you.  What will you accomplish? Together, you will learn about climate solutions and how to reduce your carbon footprint, reduce air pollution, save money, get prepared for disaster and create a more resilient community. You will be able to track your progress and see all that you have accomplished both individually and as a group. The best part - working together you will create a supportive team to share ideas and resources, encourage each other and have fun along the way!   What is a Team Leader? You will kick off the team and get things started! You will bring people together, facilitate an introductory meeting and be the point person for the team with program leaders. And after you get started you don’t need to host every meeting but you can if you prefer to take the lead in the meetings! For Team Leaders we estimate the time commitment to be about one hour/week. Contact Karen Nelson to learn more.

California Breaks Record With 99.87 Percent Powered by Renewables for First Time.

On Saturday, May 1, energy demand statewide hit 18,672 megawatts at 2:45 p.m., and at 2:50 pm the state reached 99.87% of load served by all renewables, which broke the previous record of 97.58%. Read the full article here.

Legislative Analysts Office Report to California Legislature: Prepare for Sweeping Effects of Climate Change

From housing and health to transportation and education, the Legislative Analyst’s Office report provides a litany of sobering climate change impacts for California legislators to address as they enact policies and set budgets. Painting alarming scenes of fires, floods and economic disruption, the California Legislature’s advisors recently released a series of reports that lay out in stark terms the impacts of climate change across the state and make clear why every Californian must take action to fight climate change. Click here to read the report.

Help The Community Make Our Buildings Sustainable Want to help Silicon Valley dump fossil fuels and move to an all-electric lifestyle? Let Karen Nelson, Director of the Decarb Action program know you’re interested to learn more. Email Karen Nelson

Silicon Valley Families Campaign By Marn-Yee Lee, Chapter Co-Chair and Silicon Valley Families Director

Helping Youth Cope With the Realities of Climate Change Eco Anxiety! Climate Anxiety! Yes, that is the new reality of our youths today. Even if you don’t want to talk about climate change with your kids, they somehow know about it. From school. From the media. It is a reality they will live in as they grow up. So, what to do about it, as parents and educators? This excellent article, by a professor at University of Toronto, suggests that since we as educators and parents can neither soften the scientific evidence of climate change, nor pretend that climate change isn’t here, we need to find ways to convey the hard scientific facts, while fostering kids’ resilience. (The article has lots of great links, too.) In summary, we need to help youths: Accept (and cope with) the realities of our time Acknowledge their emotions, helping them work through it through conversations, joining environmental clubs, journaling (especially in nature) and more. Learn how to use mindfulness for stress relief and grounding Expand how reality is conceived Express themselves creatively through art Redefine hope Be sure to check out the article for details.

Silicon Valley Family Youth Are Taking Action Check Out This Climate Action Checklist This month, one of our youth members, Aman, 13, from San Jose, created a great list of Actions Households Can Take with ideas divided into small, medium, and large changes you can make to help save the planet. Check it out and then take Aman's advice and "share it with everyone you know, brainstorm new ideas, join climate groups, and always consider the Earth in your everyday actions, purchases, and trips." Thanks, Aman! Youths Tabling and Making Presentations This Earth Day, two of our youths, Lisa Charpontier's daughters Mani and Mila, tabled at Palo Alto's Rally for Earth and joined the march. This dynamic duo also taught a class on climate change to 4th and 5th grade students at Hammer Montessori in San Jose. Great job!

Join Us As An SV Family Campaign Volunteer We continue to look for volunteers -- especially youth, parents and grandparents, to help us develop presentations suitable for kids of different ages, and to work on activities that we can do online or in-person, at libraries and schools.  If you're interested in joining up with our team, contact Marn-Yee Lee.

Communications Team Update

Nicole Michele is Giving Us a Voice on Twitter

Our new Communications Team volunteer, Nicole Michele, is expanding our voice on Twitter, helping to bolster climate truth on the social media platform. Nicole is part of a three generation Climate Reality Project Leader triad as she, her mother and her teenage daughter are all trained leaders. Before the pandemic Nicole helped organize her daughter’s school’s first Climate Strike and all three were active in other face-to-face climate events. But when the pandemic hit, they decided that they could continue the climate conversation and help build momentum for change on social media. They created @3genclimatechange, utilizing Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and a small footprint on TikTok. Their platforms are still going strong. Now, Nicole is helping vitalize our Twitter feed. You can help amplify the work that Nicole is doing by checking out our Twitter feed here, following it, writing comments to help build the conversation, retweeting, and sharing tweets with friends and family. Let's get the conversation going! Thank you, Nicole, for helping our Chapter make a bigger difference!

Erin Zimmerman: Monthly San Jose Spotlight Column

The Importance of Environmental Literacy For decades, educators and legislators have failed students regarding environmental education. California’s Environmental Literacy Task Force noted in 2015 that, “K-12 students in California do not currently have consistent access to adequately funded, high-quality learning experiences, in and out of the classroom, that build environmental literacy.” The lack of education on climate change, and the role of humanity in it, is unacceptable. Read the full article here

Speakers Bureau Team News

By Campbell Scott, Speakers Bureau Director

Earth Day has come and gone … … and so have Earth Week and Month. Members of theSpeakers Bureau were especially active in April, attending several events at community centers, farmers’ markets and libraries in the area. There were six presentations/discussions that we know of, and we also know that some are not reported (hint, hint). The “Fair” in Mountain View was particularly well attended. In addition to a discussion about climate actions that we all can take, there were presentations by other organizations about reaching zero waste, SVCE’s electrification program, and more There were also opportunities to test drive a variety of EVs and to taste-test meatless tacos.

Help us to find new audiences As always, if you know of a group that may want to learn more about climate change and what can be done about it, please provide them with contact information to Silicon Valley Chapter’s Speakers Bureau. Details and instructions can be found at https://conta.cc/2WMmjQQ Talking points Talking points are provided to assist you in preparing your presentations and to aid discussion with your family, friends, and colleagues. Tropical forests are sensitive to climate change How often have you been told by a skeptic that more carbon dioxide accelerates plant growth, and therefore we should not limit emissions? Well, that may be true in greenhouses where temperature, humidity and soil nutrients are also controlled, but it is not true in tropical rainforests that are subject to outdoor weather conditions. A recent study published in Nature Geosciences and summarized in Mongobay shows that heat and drought strongly affect tree growth in tropical forests, and that warm, dry conditions can lead to the death of trees. When enough trees die and begin to rot, the forest no longer acts as a carbon sink, but turns into a net source of carbon dioxide. Check out the links above to learn more. Towards a circular (battery) economy The social and environmental issues around mining ores for the production of devices used in our diverse technologies includes the problem of waste disposal at the end-of-life. Most of us have heard about the extraction of metals from electronic waste that includes copper wiring and gold or silver plated contacts. These are valuable metals, present in quite pure form and worth the expense of extraction. In contrast, the materials in lithium-ion batteries are thoroughly mixed: typically, manganese, cobalt and nickel in the cathode and lithium in the anode, electrolyte and cathode.  Until recently it was not worth the cost of extraction, and so old batteries accumulated in landfills, sometimes segregated by foresighted collectors. Now mining falls short of the demand for these materials and the economics is shifting. Some companies are “mining” landfills and others are improving the purification process. These and advances in manufacturing processes are ushering in an era of circular economics, less mining, less energy consumption and less waste.

Do You Have a Booked Presentation? If any of you are giving presentations that we don't know about, please let Campbell know, so we can track it for our chapter records and for The Climate Reality Project national team. Or, if you have led a climate discussion or given a talk recently, however informal, and regardless of the size of the audience, be sure to let Campbell know about it so he can post to the CRP HUB.

REQUEST A PRESENTATION

Legislation & Public Policy Update

by Karen Nelson, Legislation & Public Policy Interim Director Latest News  This month, Laurence Gathy needed to step down as Director of Legislation and Policy. We truly thank Laurence for starting and leading a very active team that has the energy and motivation to make a difference.  I want to share that the team will continue. At this time I will act as interim director to maintain our momentum as we look for a new director. If you are interested to help the chapter make a vital impact on climate change and want to learn more about the Legislation & Policy Director role, contact me at knelson@pacificmedia.com For now, we will slightly narrow our focus to support passage of bills that are aligned with the strategy and priorities of our Chapter. We will emphasize educating our membership about their value to climate mitigation and ask for member and public support via letters, calls, and public testimony. All these have been part of our traditional legislation effort. Click here for a list of California bills we will be focusing on. Reach Code Adoption We will also work for the adoption of local jurisdiction reach codes as we did in 2019. Our new round of reach code effort, based on California’s upcoming Title 24 code set for implementation on January 1 2023, will continue to strengthen local codes that move us to further electrify our buildings. Our chapter’s reach code team is forming now and includes: Campbell Scott (Los Gatos), Erin Zimmerman (Sunnyvale), Gary Latshaw (Cupertino), Dariush Rafinejad (Los Altos), Sean Mendelson (Campbell), Karen Nelson (San Jose). We ideally need multiple people for each jurisdiction and especially San Jose. We need monitors in Palo Alto, Mountain View, Morgan Hill, Gilroy, Milpitas, Saratoga, and SantaCruz, Santa Clara, San Martin, Monte Sereno, Santa Clara County and Santa Cruz County. Los Altos Hills has just 7,000 inhabitants and so is not a priority at this time. If you live in one of the areas that need a monitor, please let me know. And if you want to partner with someone, email me at knelson@pacificmedia.com.

Take Action More Often, With Less Effort

Get the Climate Action Now App The Climate Action Now app makes it exceptionally easy to take meaningful climate action on your phone in just seconds or minutes. Most actions you take earn points, and when you’ve earned enough points, CAN will plant a tree on your behalf.

If you haven’t already downloaded the Climate Action Now app, consider getting started to quickly take action that takes only seconds to do. Go to https://climateactionnow.com/  When you sign-up, be sure to use CODE 141 that designates you are a Silicon Valley chapter member. CRP headquarters is tracking each chapter's CAN participation.

LEARN MORE

Climate Change Book Review

The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World Author: Jeff Goodell Publication year: 2017 Publisher: Little Brown and Company Length: 352 pages

Review by Nancy Truher This book is worth reading to inform your conversations and actions. Key points made in the book include: Most scientists acknowledge that the 2014 IPCC estimate of 3 feet 2 inches of sea-level rise by 2100 is far too low. Six feet by 2100 is still too low. In urban areas, the floods that pour into the city are not going to be luminous blue waters. They are going to be dark, smelly, and contaminated.   The Pentagon manages a global real estate portfolio that includes over 555,000 facilities—virtually all of it will be impacted by climate change in some way. A former commander of Naval Station Norfolk said, 'You could move some of the ships to other bases or build new smaller bases in more protected places, but the costs would be hundreds of billions of dollars. What kind of world are we preparing for?'   In Rotterdam, unless walls and levees are raised for many miles around the Maeslant barrier gates, the sea will come in from other directions, making the opening and closing of the gates moot. These structures are not about solving the problem—they are about buying time until we better figure out how big the problem really is.

Our Monthly Book Reviewer: Nancy Truher is a master reader on the subject of climate change and has curated a list of books (from the hundreds she has read on the subject) that she will be sharing book reviews of in our monthly newsletter. THANK YOU, Nancy! Want to join our local climate book club? Nancy Truher and Debbie Mytels established a popular Climate Change book club six years ago and it's still going strong! If you are interested in joining, email Nancy Truher.

Get Active. Make a Difference.

To achieve our goals, we need your help. In 2022, any time you have, whether on-going or occasional, through individual or team actions, will advance our 2022 goals. To learn more about our campaigns and connect with team leaders, visit our website page, How We Take Action.

Join the Climate Reality Project

For our readers who are not Climate Reality Project (CRP) members or members of our Chapter, we hope you join us. There is no cost and you’ll be able to follow CRPs efforts and hear from Al Gore and others on a regular basis. And be sure to join the Silicon Valley Chapter when you sign up.  https://www.climaterealityproject.org/signup

Public Page

Private Page

Newsletter created by Deborah Warner, Karen Nelson, our chapter leadership team and chapter member contributors.

The Climate Reality Project: Silicon Valley Chapter