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Ask HN: How can I as a coder contribute to climate change?

by Debonnys on 11/12/16, 3:16 PM with 28 comments

After watching 'before the flood' I started wondering how I could use my skills as a software engineer to contribute to climate change.

Does anyone know projects or other things I can have an impact on?

  • by FroshKiller on 11/12/16, 3:40 PM

    This isn't the first time you've posted this. Here is the response I decided not to post last time.

    You will probably never write a magic thousand lines of code for this. You'll probably have a far greater impact if you do a few simple things we should all be doing anyway:

    * Turn off lights you aren't using.

    * Turn your air conditioning up or down by a few degrees.

    * Turn your water heater down a few degrees.

    For computer-specific stuff:

    * Don't leave computers running when not in use.

    * Dim your displays.

    * Use your laptop's battery rather than leaving it plugged in all the time.

    I know it's not exactly interesting stuff, and it certainly doesn't build your CV, but neither of those things is actually important when it comes to climate change.

  • by kogir on 11/12/16, 3:47 PM

    The biggest impact most people can have on climate change is not having kids. Think of all the energy they'll use in their lifetime(s). You can prevent all of that.

  • by shoo on 11/13/16, 9:13 AM

    Here's one way to think about it: as an individual, changing your behaviour will have essentially zero impact upon global climate change, if your change is independent of other people's behaviour.

    I reckon the only way to have any substantial impact is to influence others to change their behaviour / help drive political and economic change.

    * our global economy needs further regulation to bake the cost of externalities (CO2 pollution) into the economy. Without a carbon tax or similar mechanism we get what we have today: polluting activities (on both supply / demand side) are effectively subsidised, so there is no incentive not to do them. We need to lobby for this.

    * some in the climate movement talk about the "climate emergency" and want to phrase the response as some kind of world-war era national economic mobilisation. I think this makes sense, but this will only happen politically if a majority of the population think there is an emergency.

    * someone else in the thread has already mentioned Jevons paradox - where improving the resource efficiency of a process in a market can result in an increase in overall consumption of the resource. Separately from that I think demand reduction should be a clear win. What can you do to reduce demand for energy?

  • by peller on 11/12/16, 4:05 PM

    To actually understand what we as individuals can do, I recommend reading the Sustainable Energy book.[1] It's free online.[2]

    As a developer, you can educate and help people conserve energy. Heating and cooling are enormous culprits. Learn to be comfortable at 60-65 in the winter, and 75-80 in the summer. Transportation is a big culprit as well. Buy a bicycle and use it for everything under 10 miles. Of course green technologies are helpful, and I don't mean to discount them, but the reality is that our cultural attitudes towards consumption are just as much of the problem.

    To visually see what I mean, check out this graphic from the book: http://www.withouthotair.com/c18/page_109.shtml The red bar on the left represents a typical Britain's consumption (which, mind you, is statistically less than the typical American's). The green bar on the right represents the pie-in-the-sky most insanely optimistic output of all the green technologies. Like, if they covered the entire country in solar panels and surrounded it with windmills and tidal power. It's basically a completely unreasonable estimate of the top-end of green energy production, and it doesn't even match the consumption bar.

    [1] http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4070074-sustainable-energ...

    [2] https://www.withouthotair.com/

  • by musha68k on 11/12/16, 4:06 PM

    Hi there,

    check out Bret Victor's essay "What can a technologist do about climate change?" if you haven't read it, it's very good:

    http://worrydream.com/#!/ClimateChange

    Discussion on HN:

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10622615

  • by nickpsecurity on 11/12/16, 9:37 PM

    If you want to contribute to climate change, I think you should push for more JavaScript/J2EE/.NET apps, 4K streaming, Big Data frameworks, mainframes, and proof-of-work blockchains. Make sure people build them in areas that generate electricity with non-renewable resources. Avoid any energy-saving tech in the datacenters, offices, or your home.

    If you want to reduce climate change, I think you should just follow FroshKiller's advice. You might also evangelize solutions to the public and politicians that provide decent compromises with reduced pollutants. You should also pay campaign contributions to politicians most likely to do that as this counts more than ten thousand opinions from voters. These will collectively probably achieve nothing given industrial nations overall don't care about climate change vs money, jobs, and disposable goods. You'll at least be doing your part.

  • by nwrk on 11/12/16, 3:56 PM

    Here is a list which apply to everyone [1]

    You can also stop buying products from most damaging companies [2]

    [1] http://www.un.org/climatechange/take-action/

    [2] http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/08/just-90-companies-are...

  • by afarrell on 11/12/16, 3:54 PM

    Make videochat work reliably so people don't need to get in airplanes to conduct business across continents.

    Make it easier to model genetic engineering so we can produce crops with less use of the Haber-Bosch process.

    Make public transit easier to use.

    Make it easier for people to coordinate life without a car.

    Make inexpensive FLIR cameras for people to find leaks in their home insulation. NOTE: if this becomes widespread, it will be legal for police to use those same devices to look into people's homes.

  • by wreath on 11/12/16, 5:56 PM

    You can look for companies that leverage technology to reduce climate change. I worked for Ecosia.org and they did exactly that.

  • by cathartes on 11/13/16, 4:49 AM

    In all seriousness, why not find a job working on web apps or databases that enable climate researchers? Or even wildlife biologists studying the impacts of climate change on biodiversity? There is no shortage of technical challenges in these fields, but there is a dearth of technical expertise to surmount them.

  • by posterboy on 11/12/16, 3:43 PM

    I heard bitcoin was nothing but a contribution to climate-change /s

  • by Tomte on 11/12/16, 8:38 PM

    Please don't.

  • by Mz on 11/12/16, 11:22 PM

  • by joeclark77 on 11/13/16, 4:13 AM

    Burning some old tires in the backyard ought to do it.

  • by crispytx on 11/14/16, 11:00 PM

    Commute to work in a large pickup truck.