Greening Basecamp

Basecamp recently set out to do a carbon accounting, looking at the company's emissions, as well as meaningful ways to offset and mitigate those impacts. Jane Yang and Elizabeth Gramm, the two Basecampers who took on this daunting and nuanced project, come on the show to discuss not just the work itself, but how they've been processing the fear, skepticism, grief, and hope that come with trying to address the climate crisis.Show NotesThe United Nations 2018 special report on global warming of 1.5ºC (PDF) - 1:52"Why Air Quality Matters," David Heinemeier Hansson's presentation to the company about indoor air quality - 2:26The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells - 4:01Explainer on Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions - 5:46Basecamp's former office in Chicago - 6:22"Spending in the Clouds," our episode about looking for savings on Basecamp's cloud services - 6:59Books by Basecamp - 10:18"Towards carbon negativity," Jane's first post about the project on Signal v. Noise - 10:56"Want to Do Something About Climate Change? Follow the Money" (NYT) - 13:05"You Never Forget George Pappageorge," our episode about closing the Chicago office - 16:25Microsoft's Sustainability Calculator for its cloud services - 17:59"Basecamp has offset our cumulative emissions through 2019," Jane's follow-up post on SvN - 22:09Cool Effect - 25:05GoClimate - 25:06ClimateAction.Tech - 26:08Wholegrain Digital - 26:35"The Chicago plant that sparked a hunger strike amid environmental racism claims" (The Guardian) - 27:04350.org - 27:38Elizabeth's Reading RecommendationsA January 2021 article by David Wallace-Wells about the pandemic and climate changeWhat We Think About When We Try Not To Think About Global Warming, Per Espen StoknesHope and Grief in the Anthropocene, Lesley HeadThe Sixth Extinction, Elizabeth KolbertThe Ecology of Wisdom, Arne NaessThe Mushroom at the End of the World, Anna Tsing<