What you can do is:
* a) find someone working on climate change, and help write software for them part-time as a volunteer
* b) brainstorm an idea for a site/app, and build it yourself (and of course post it to HN)
* c) quit your job, join an organization focused on climate change, and do some work
* d) start researching more about climate change until you can make a better choice about a or b or c
If you can't commit a big chunk of time to it, then research good orgs focused on climate change, and donate money to them (or angel invest in them). That's the next best thing you can do.
We've done it due to Covid and it mostly worked OK. Now it has to be improved and expanded.
This means that the following are going to take too long:
- "Doing your part", i.e. the regular "don't eat meat", "consume environmentally friendly things", and all those things that will only work over a horizon of 100+ years.
- Accumulating a ton of wealth and then using it to lobby. This would have worked 50 years ago but we need people to use this kind of big money NOW.
- Helping activists set up their websites and other tech things. We're past the point where activism alone will save us.
Our world has just started runaway heating, and Arctic methane is now being released, which is 100x worse than carbon. The ONLY thing that can save us at this point is a hail Mary shot of sequestration of greenhouse gases and at the same time, active cooling of the planet. Build this kind of tech, or join others building it. There are a few companies coming out that do this kind of thing. We need breathing room above all else, because even with tech 50 years is very little time.
Edit: Aaaand now the downvotes. I don't know why I even bother contributing here.
If you need less money, work for a nonprofit focused on environmental issues or research. Working for a politician's campaign might be a good way to apply tech, marketing, or management skills.
Don't volunteer. The vast majority of the value is for the volunteer, not for the nonprofit.
When you're a (very) part-time volunteer, you'll never get deep enough into their problems that your contributions will outweigh the cost to manage/train you.
It's better to advance your own career and donate money to full-time people who are able to devote all of their work time to the issue.
(Source: ran a nonprofit for a few years that sourced skilled volunteers for other orgs)
* Reading a lot! I recommend Bill Gates' "How to Avoid a Climate Disaster" and Paul Hawken's "Drawdown". The path to zero carbon emissions seems impossible, but the more I read, the more the solutions seem intertwined, which gives me hope.
* Writing down my ideas and the information I learn. Helps me to organize my thoughts and find the holes in my thinking. Here is a link to my blog (this is the first time I've shared it with anyone other than my wife): https://simpleclimatefixes.herokuapp.com/
* Talking to people. I have a few friends that work in sustainability and in the energy sector. I have also been calling and meeting with local solar panel installers and manufacturers. Trying to understand the challenges they face.
* Coming up with ideas and trying to build them. I'd be happy to help other businesses (probably part-time, but potentially full-time), but I think I'll be more useful if I have a better understanding of the landscape and there is no better way to be acquainted with an industry than trying to start a business in it.
I'm currently in the early stages of vetting an idea in the residential solar panel industry. I'd be happy to share it if anyone is interested. Love to hear feedback!
1. Run a small solar array on my balcony, with recycled lithium batteries for storage. I've made ~100kW of power which I use to basically charge all my devices.
2. Growing Algae two do two things- producing biomass to convert into bio-fuel down the road, and remove carbon from the air.
Rooftop solar & going electric (and destroying your gas car so you're taking it off the road) is the easiest to do, followed by helping others do the same. Off the top of my head, if you own your house see if you can work out a group deal with your neighbors and subsidize their cost. https://ecologi.com and https://www.arcadia.com can give you a feeling of doing something (while actually doing something, even if it's very small.
None of these things really move the needle. If you want to do something, the cold reality of it is some constructive destructive actions need to be taken against the largest polluters- energy companies, major food conglomerates that consume large amounts of plastic, commercial shipping, and others. Pick your poison.
Yoooo. So here's an actual, legit idea I have. A community platform to raise money to donate roof-top solar systems to public schools. Has to be focused, where it's clear the goal and the target area. "We're raising $1,000,000 to fund a solar system in this region. Here are our candidates and our local contract partner." Once that's accomplished, you find a school and get the green light. You work with the contractor to secure an actual cost, and then fundraise for the rest. Then it's installed. Target schools and districts in areas of high coal/dirty power and fund-raise for a full roof-top system for them with some energy storage.
This does two things- allows the schools to spend money elsewhere which helps improve the quality of life in the are (and I'm sure it will be known where the money comes from, but also removes a fairly large consumer of municipal energy.
I would suggest focusing on work that motivates and scales, just as people do in the for-profit sector. Activism that puts political and economic pressure on the large corporations who are the worst polluters provide the biggest bang for the buck. As just one example, there is a movement to divest from fossil fuel companies. Better software might help activists reach more people and mobilize them to pressure the boards of the universities they work for, etc.
Another issue we currently have in the country is that corporate interests collect huge amounts of data to sway elections, while activists without those same deep pockets are outmatched and outgunned. So any software that helps support voter turnout, voter equity, etc., would also indirectly help address climate change and other injustices.
If you're not totally set on doing direct work for climate change, you could consider a similar strategy. In my case, I think it's probably more impactful than I could be if I tried to pivot into a climate-related career.
Ironically enough, even though Chinese is the biggest contributor of greenhouse gases right now, they're likely going to be the least in a few decades, considering how much engineering they're putting into nuclear reactor research and experimentation.
Basically he had the same question, talks about the themes in the posters, empower - engage - cultivate - electrify. When asked what the average person can do, his answer was basically 'donate money to elect democrats' and honestly I agree. You can spend thousands of dollars or thousands of hours of volunteering, but its the politicians that are deciding how to spend trillions. Outside of that, I can recommend the book "Climate - a new story" by Charles Eisenstein, it argues against focusing on a single metric of CO2 ppm (and includes an aside on the war-analogy we default to when we decide to fight something ;). Basically it suggests we focus more on creating a healthy biosphere, explains the connections between weather, chemistry, and life. It's got me convinced that planting trees is the right approach, but not just to sequester carbon, but to increase the amount and variety of life on earth.
But working for "the next Tesla" would be the most potential positive impact, given that Tesla has already achieved its goal of forcing the car industry towards EVs.
You could make a list of the most harmful industries and work at a company trying to force them into change, like Tesla is doing with the auto industry.
Lobby your company to create eco scholarships to fund ecological degrees.
Work on 3d modeling and help design devices which can change how we build homes and lower energy costs through passive designs.
Find ecology centric open-source projects and donate your skills.
We are trained to build a carbon intensive world. Our tools, our philosophy and our expectation require ssomehow more clusters hidden on a fancy new cloud architecture. Our optimization will be not compensated by the rebound effect.
Personally, I am totally a part of it. My neural networks require 64 V100 GPUs to be trained. And that's the optimized version!
I think we should seriously reset our way of life and create a new fun life that is sustainable and inspiring.
I believe that the agriculture is the area with the highest leverage effect. So my plan for the next 3 years is to sell all the shits I invested in, buy a farm, grow vegetables without chemical fertilizers, and invite my friends in joining this journey. What not adding some visual based monoriting tools or, some small robots, to automatize and scale this permaculture approach. That's fun and I am not so bad at it.
I looked into the vegan vs locavore tussle and it seems to me they fought to a standstill. So I still eat meat(I'm low carb for health reasons). I buy from the farmers market and I'm lucky to have access to a local bison farm(carbon negative - look it up).
Next I’d say decarbonize your life! Most people emit everyday carbon from a small number of big things: transport, home heating and cooling, etc. Luckily, all the fossil fuel powered machines that do these things have electric replacements that actually save money in the long run! Electric cars already have the lowest cost of ownership of any car and heat pump space and water heaters are waaay more efficient than burning gas or oil. So replace you car with an electric the next time you need a car, replace your furnace with a heat pump, replace your gas stove with an induction stove, etc. Pretty much everyone in America needs to do this ASSP if we have any chance of hitting 2 degrees and your example would influence those around you.
You can also donate to Rewiring America which is the only organization I’ve found with an actual concrete engineering-based plan to meet climate goals: https://rewiringamerica.org
Real problem and solutions:
- energy -> Need hydro or nuclear. Everything else is just marketing bullshit. Windmills aren't reliable, you still need a way to store the energy and have a backup. If you factor in the cost of that backup and other solutions, you soon realize that hydro (or nuclear if hydro isn't possible) is way more cost efficient.
- transportation -> Living in a suburb should have a penalty cost. Just compare the environmental impact between an apartment in a city and a mansion in a suburb with 5 cars. One is killing the planet much faster, there should be a penalty for it. I'm not saying forbid living in a suburb, I'm saying there should be an additional cost to living in a suburb because of the environmental impact.
- greenhouse gases -> penalty cost in proportion to the damage caused (for instance, buying meat from livestock should be WAY more expensive.)
It seems like we'll need to wait until the Earth is almost doomed before implementing these policies, but then it might be too late. Maybe another way is to have a "bad guy climate change" that all political party would need to take into account as part of their mandate, so the votes would be about who can best solve these issues rather than whether they should be tackled.
If you don't want to do politics, it seems like something related to modeling and/or controlling machinery is probably relevant. Solar concentrators for high-temperature manufacturing (particularly cement/aluminium), ultra-high-temperature electrolysis of steel, and better heat pumps to replace gas heaters, all come to mind as important carbon-reducing technologies that might require a software component, although I can't say exactly how.
We won't make it with individual contributions of consuming a bit less. Of course it makes sense to do it at some degree.
Go to every climate strike out there. Including 24.09.2021 is the next global climate strike. Make sure to be there and take your family, friends and colleagues with you.
2. Have less kids or no kids.
3. Drive an EV or don't own a car at all (if possible).
4. Avoid air travel.
5. Eat less meat or no meat.
6. Work for companies who are growing rapidly in the EV, renewable energy/energy storage, carbon sequestration, and lab grown ag space. Push out fossil fuel usage for electricity and transportation.
(in that order)
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/12/want-to-...
Lets start with the assumption that it is possible to make a meaningful impact on climate change by significantly reducing our consumption, this requires significant sacrifices to an individuals lifestyle.
I'm talking big pictured stuff like not eating meat, no more international travel, no personal vehicles, less spend on medicine reducing life expectancy, limits on number of children.
Lets say we have credible evidence that if these things are done the situation will improve.
Now whether you take the perspective of being an individual, member of a community or even a country, why would you make those sacrifices if you have no guarantee that everyone else will. It's a big price to pay to 'set an example'.
If that doesn't work we're fucked.
I wish it were easier. I don't believe it is.
Happy to relax restrictions for you to access data if you'd like to poke around and interested in understanding how climate has changed in various locations around the world.
Join Airminers! Carbon capture is really the only solution at this point. https://airminers.org/
did a great video on this earlier today
Of course we don't need eat meat every day but stop eating meat completely sounds like hypocrisy for me and could be dangerous for health, especially for kids.
1. Think about how many kids you want to have and then have at least one less than that number (assuming your number was greater than zero to begin with).
2. Give these two answers whenever you are asked this question in the future.
But additionally I'd say it's something that conservatives and liberals can agree on. We'll disagree on what to cut, but I think lots of people see the national debt as a problem. To make any dent in this whole thing we'll need support from both sides. It's no help to communicate in an echo chamber.
Look up "effective altruism" and find some recommended charities to donate to.
Surely that'll help even more, since it includes everything at once - no meat consumption, no travel, no cars, etc.
Edit: This guy eats meat without any greenhouse emissions https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TO-LFVHpA4s