$1000 grant for individuals working on climate change, no strings attached
climategrants.earth
climategrants.earth
That said, I'm having a really hard time imagining a scenario where $1k would make an impact. It could sustain an individual in a poor or developing country, but it's not enough to finance research equipment or any large scale activity.
That said, it's possible that I lack imagination, and that people will find good uses to that money.
perhaps something like spending 100 hours cleaning up a watershed that feeds a river, or putting sensors out and collecting data of how some feature or lack of feature affects temperature?
just a few small projects off the top of my head that could be done on a small budget and still make a difference somewhere. I don't think that every project needs to be a grand endeavor.
this could end up being a "good" example of "nickel and diming".
The impact of that on global warming is nil. You'd be just trying to solve some other problem, not the one you wanted.
On the sensors, you can get many with $1k, but you won't be able to spread them and much less make them communicate with a central or each other.
If you were already going to do something and needed money only for acquiring materials, and have a large expertise on how to put complex machines together, you may be able to collect enough information to get a vary narrow view of the problem. But I think if there's any way to help on that budget, it will be by creating some sort of community.
LORA modules, coupled with a sensor, can be spread far out for less than $4 each, I've spread them out myself while living out on acreage.
> But I think if there's any way to help on that budget, it will be by creating some sort of community.
which is yet another good use of $1000 - I don't think that the person who is offering this is hoping that the people that apply make a profit, likely they are hoping that people who apply can help amplify the money by putting their own expertise to work.
as in, I know I could build a data gathering and reporting framework that could run on aws/rds, but sure wouldn't mind if someone else paid for the hosting. that's kind of what's great about this.
Often these programs require the fundee to get 30%-50% of the financing from non-government sources, so this could potentially count towards towards that figure.
Edit: Seems like organizations can’t apply, so maybe this point is moot.
At that scale of money my only idea is to just buy EU CO2 certificates and sell them for 4x in 2035 or something. I would obviously return the money because this is such a "lazy idea" but if everyone did this we would see CO2 go down. The reason why it has to be done in this roundabout way is that apparently nobody except me likes the idea of a CO2 tax.
Maybe this grant is enough to employ eastern European researchers though.
Are there any other examples of funding at a relatively low dollar amount that have resulted in outsize successes, in this space or others? A $1k grant is great but to me it doesn’t seem like that would be the barrier to getting an idea going. Maybe I’m speaking from a place of privilege and not considering other knock-on effects though so I’d love to know of any other successful examples of small grants like these.
In the meantime I’m going to think of some $1k sized ideas to see if I can come up with anything worth submitting!
I mean, "fixing climate change" is like going on a diet. We pretty much know what we need to do, we just don't want to because it sucks.
It's not like we need a 0.01% change in emissions here, so what can $1000 a month do?
Consider 2020, where transportation took a major downturn over large parts of the world. Sure it made us emit a bit less CO2, but nowhere near what's required. And it's not like anyone wants that to continue.
But the usually means research now becomes a hobby, an after thought once work and family needs are satisfied. Doing research as a hobby is a lot harder then doing other things as a hobby. However, imagine if you could live off a grant for a year or two, and just the grant, then you could just take the risk, do something crazy.
Maybe it fails, but really isn't that the point? That's why the independent researchers left the academic game in the first place, because the system wants you to minimize risk (which in my mind is anti productive, risk should be more supported in research)
So give the independent researchers the opportunity to take the risk, and see what comes of it! Of course, 1k is not enough for U.S. citizens, but it could be for some other countries.
It is worth spending a few hours coming up with a good proposal, submitting it, and if you win having an extra $1000 in extra money to do with as you please.
It is not possible solve climate change with market forces (i.e. price the negative externalities into products like oil and gas through taxes) and neoliberalism ignores the very corruption that is inherent to a capitalist system where more money buys more influence over policy.
Why not?