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