A hackathon to kick off NYC Climate Week 2026
It’s 2026 and we have all seen the simultaneous heating-up of both the AI economy and the average global temperature. Given the rapidly unfolding change, it’s easy to feel helpless, uncertain, or concerned when AI usage and tokenmaxxing exist in one sphere and planetary boundaries and climate urgency exist in another. How much does compute usage matter anyway? What is our responsibility of AI in society? And what can we actually control both personally and professionally?
As part of the kickoff to Climate Week 2026, we are going to engage directly with these questions, together. This is a multi-disciplinary hackathon, and you do not need to come in knowing how to code! Your solution can be a poem, a business plan, a research study. And yes, you can build software, but if you plan to build like a super regular normal app as your solution, please make sure to partner with a team members with interesting ideas that can expand your thinking.
Inspiration tracks for solutions:
Solutionsmaxxing
Carbon positive AI setups
Emotions, ethics, and culture
Compute used for this hackathon will be tracked/estimated, and carbon offsets will be purchased.
Participants will have 4 hours to develop something to share. Whether you're into software, hardware, art, communication, policy, finance, business, or just somone who is curious, we hope to see you there.
To attend only the demo portion of the event, please select the "demo only" option when registering, and please plan to attend from 4:30pm to 6:30pm.
Food and beverages will be provided.
Agenda
11:00am gather and meet
11:30pm small teams are formed, problem context from industry experts
12:00pm hack
4:30pm hackers present their demos
6:00pm judging and networking
What to bring: your climate-interested and solutions-focused attitude, your laptop or pen+paper, and your unique skillset.
Challenge Statements: the challenge statements will focus entirely on the intersection of AI usage and climate. More details and datasets for these challenge statements will be announced leading up to the event.
Deliverables: the format is intentionally open-ended. More detail on how to format and submit the deliverables will be announced leading up to the event.
Teams: you can create your team of three at the event, or come with a team already formed.
Why this problem? It’s one of the most often requested hackathon topics. Will we come out the other side with our beliefs intact? Who knows!
Interested in sponsoring this hackathon, have an idea for the Challenge Statements, or want to help in some other way? Reach out to danbakke1@gmail.com