No. 146: Grassroots Disaster Response

Greg Rancourt -

When disaster strikes, who will answer the call? Increasingly, this responsibility is shifting from the government towards nonprofits and volunteer response groups.

That sort of grassroots response is the kind of civic duty I'd love to see more of in this country, but it's an incomplete answer for the victims of natural disaster. This week, we're discussing some of the strengths and weaknesses of an increased reliance on non-governmental organizations to respond to tragedy. Personally, I think it's going to take a combination of private industry, social entrepreneurship, and a commitment to our communities to fill the gaps left by our government.

I'm keeping it simple with the featured job this week and showing off one of the many B Corps in the food and beverage space, Stumptown Coffee. You'll also find a series of quick summaries on sustainability, social impact, and measurement that serve as a great introduction to some of the touchstones of a social impact career – you know I love to keep it educational.

~ Greg

What we're reading

With FEMA facing elimination under the Trump administration, volunteer disaster response groups are emerging to fill the gaps left behind. (NYT)

  • President Trump has signaled the intent to eliminate FEMA late this year, after the current hurricane season. FEMA has already lost about 25% of its workforce since January, however, meaning the agency is already on shaky footing if a major storm hits the year.
    • Coupled with changes to our hurricane monitoring infrastructure – see the Civic Corner section below – we're about to find out how well-prepared we are to predict and respond to natural disasters.
  • Nonprofits and volunteer groups have been stepping up. We saw a significant grassroots response after Hurricane Helene, and these kinds of groups have been around for years.
    • The United Cajun Navy formed after Katrina hit Louisiana for example, and Team Rubicon formed after the earthquake in Haiti 15 years ago. Many smaller groups are supporting disaster relief as well, but it's unlikely that they can replace both the capacity and coordination of federal efforts.
  • I appreciate that these smaller groups are stepping up to fill the gap, but I think there needs to be a centralization of relief efforts, if just for coordination purposes.
    • These groups are well-intentioned, but without effective alignment, they may duplicate efforts or create confusion for victims. It doesn't necessarily need to be FEMA, but that strikes me as the most obvious candidate.
    • That kind of coordination may come at the cost of speed, however, which is one of the strengths of these disaster relief groups: they can respond quickly without the same level of bureaucracy that faces the federal government.
  • This shift raises fundamental questions about what we expect from government versus civil society, particularly when the stakes are life-and-death emergency response.
    • We've seen our government shrink over the past few months, and this relationship between federal and community disaster response echoes my concerns about the role of private industry to fill the gap in government services.
    • As I see it, those services are still essential whether the government pays for them or not. Will businesses bear the brunt of extra healthcare and education costs, for example? Will we see a new wave of social entrepreneurship to replace social services? Or will civic duty compel a larger portion of the country to volunteer their time? Time will tell.

Job of the week

I love me a cup of Stumptown Coffee – the aroma teases me every time I travel through the Portland airport – and this week they're hiring for a Business Development Manager for their national accounts.

Stumptown is a Certified B Corp based in Portland, OR, and this role is based out of their headquarters. About 50% of your time would be spent traveling, however, so this is the kind of BD role that could scratch your travel itch in addition to making a difference: their B Corp score leans heavily towards Direct Trade supply chain management which provides better financial outcomes for the farmers who grow their coffee.

Community roundup

  • What happens to all of those old electric vehicle batteries when they lose their capacity? They are finding new life as storage for renewable energy. (The Verge)
    • Redwood Materials receives the equivalent of 250,000 EV batteries each year and repurposes them for use in storage systems. The remaining capacity may not be enough for an electric vehicle, but they still have sufficient capacity to find a second life.
    • The company was founded by Tesla's former chief technologist, and in that context, a venture like this makes a lot of sense: you can imagine a case where automakers need an end-of-life strategy for EV batteries, and this gives them a solid way to "dispose" of them in a way that continues their positive impact.
  • Bottle deposit programs incentivize people to recycle by paying a few cents for each bottle recycled, but researchers ran a test where they replaced the payment with a lottery – giving people a chance at a larger prize for each bottle recycled – and found it greatly increased the number of recycled items. (Fast Company)
    • This idea that people set aside small rewards for a chance at a larger one isn't new, but this is the first time I'm seeing it applied to something as ubiquitous as recycling. How could we take advantage of this behavior to drive other positive impacts?
  • Speaking of researchers, a group of MIT scientists have developed a way to harvest water from the atmosphere using hydrogel. It reminds me of SOURCE, a company in Scottsdale that builds similar technology. Hopefully we'll see the MIT group advance to the tech transfer stage as well to provide it as a commercial application. (Fast Company)
  • The Arctic Repair Conference in Cambridge, UK just concluded, which is a conference where attendees discuss climate engineering techniques for the purpose of slowing the loss of the polar ice caps. (The Guardian)
    • You would probably recognize some of the techniques that were discussed, including cloud brightening and thickening ice sheets by drilling holes to encourage new water to freeze onto the surface. There continue to be concerns around geoengineering and what could go wrong if we mess too much with the atmosphere.
  • Lastly, I'll leave you with a series of infographics comparing clean energy investments in China and the United States. (NYT)
    • As you may know, China is making immense investments in clean energy technology, both in terms of manufacturing and in terms of their own domestic energy capacity. Aside from capturing global market share, I never really understood why.
    • Evidently, China does not have much fossil fuel production capacity compared to the United States, and they need to import oil and gas to support their population. By investing in clean energy, they are able to reduce their dependence on those foreign energy sources.

Civic corner

  • The Big Bend National Park Boundary Adjustment Act passed in the Senate last week. If it is signed, it would add around 6,000 acres to Big Bend NP which currently stands at 800,000 acres. (USA Today)
    • Although it passed with bipartisan support, I wouldn't count this as a done deal yet. This effort has been years in the making, and it even passed the Senate last year as well.
    • The intent is to give the Big Bend Conservancy the ability to donate the land it purchased along Terlingua Creek; the federal government can't acquire it through purchase or eminent domain.
  • Exxon Mobile had appealed to the Supreme Court to overturn a $14.25 million civil penalty over air pollution in Baytown, TX – the largest penalty in a citizen-initiated lawsuit under the Clean Air Act. The Supreme Court rejected their appeal this week, meaning the penalty remains in effect. (Reuters)
    • This has echoes of what we discussed in No. 142: Community Air Monitoring. In that case, Louisiana had written a law that protected polluters from community accountability, so I'm heartened to see a positive result out of Texas.
  • A growing number of states are passing "coercive control" laws designed to expand the definition of domestic violence to include nonphysical tactics. (The Marshall Project)
  • The National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration has stopped providing hurricane monitoring data from a set of satellites jointly operated with the Department of Defense as of June 30th. (NYT)
    • According to the former head of the hurricane team at the National Hurricane Center, this will result in about half as many microwave images as they had before, which translates to multiple hours of delays between measurements.
    • We haven't seen a big storm yet this year, so I'll be interested to see how NOAA's decision affects forecasting when it dominates the news cycle. People are more open-minded about climate change when they like their meteorologists. Could meteorologists also influence the public's opinion of government cuts?
  • The Supreme Court was busy this week with decisions that affect a variety of social impact topics, like upholding South Carolina's ability to deny Medicaid funds to Planned Parenthood, maintaining free preventive care services under the Affordable Care Act, and allowing parents to opt their kids out of school lessons featuring LGBTQ characters. (NPR)

Hot job opportunities

Resource of the week

When I was going through the B Impact Assessment a few years ago, the section that threw me for a loop the most was the one on Environment. The reason was simple: measuring environmental impact is not always intuitive. In my case, I was working out of a co-working space and trying to figure out what my slice of the electrical and water usage was – a tall order unless you have a solid relationship with the operators.

The B Impact Assessment is not the only framework available for measuring environmental performance, and as I was perusing job opportunities this week – see above – I came across a fantastic summary of sustainability measurement from Brightest. Their guide on carbon accounting in particular would have helped me a lot back then.

If you're already working in a sustainability role, there's a good chance you're familiar with the nuts and bolts of measurement already. If you're not, I'd recommend checking out the resources on the Brightest website – they did a great job simplifying the basics.

Test your knowledge

With so many energy sources out there, it's easy to overlook one or two along the way. Last week, I asked you about how to generate energy from the Earth's heat, or geothermal energy.

I grew up in Idaho where it is relatively popular, and the technology has grown over the years. You might remember a few job opportunities from Dandelion Energy in past issues of the newsletter – they spun out of Google X a while back and install geothermal energy in the Northeast. In general though, you're more likely to find it in the Western states – the U.S. Energy Information Administration as a nifty chart that shows you where geothermal energy is more available.

The EPA comes up a lot in this newsletter, so it seems only appropriate to go back to its origins for this week's trivia question:

The EPA was formed under which president?

Email me your guess, and I'll send one lucky winner a couple of One Work stickers!

I am starting to research used EVs now that my car is about 10 years old, and I'm tempted to pull the trigger. You may remember that manufacturers were offering significant lease incentives, and those vehicles are hitting the used car market now.

One thing I've learned is that if the used EV is sold for less than $25k and you meet the income qualifications, you can get a $4k tax break. There's an extreme example in Oregon where the state's program combined with the federal program can net $9k off the cost of a vehicle. Factor in your trade-in, and you might be looking at a lightly-used EV for under $10k. Pretty sweet deal if you ask me – which is why it's becoming harder to resist the impulse to make a purchase.