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Ask HN: Who Here Is Working to Fix the Environment?

• billconan 7y ago
  I want to work on robotic garbage recycling, eco friendly cooling technology. But I also need to make a living :(
  • bad_login 7y ago
    Robotics solutions targeting recycling https://zenrobotics.com/ https://zenrobotics.com/
• bigato 7y ago
  I hear crickets sounds But soon we may not have that privilege
  • bristleworm 7y ago
    It's crazy. A few weeks ago we noticed many of our outdoor plants were suffering from aphids. Usually ladybugs and their larvae take care of this. It's the middle of summer now and I have yet to see a ladybug.
    • childintime 7y ago
      Or skimmers.
  • jacknews 7y ago
    But do cockroaches make a sound?
    • bigato 7y ago
      yeah, they make people scream
• bristleworm 7y ago
  It's not much, but we specifically selected insect-friendly plants when planning our garden. I'm creating an app to help others do the same.
  • ptah 7y ago
    that sounds interesting. do you have any links ?
    • bristleworm 7y ago
      this website helped a lot: https://www.buglife.org.uk/activities-for-you/wildlife-gardening https://www.buglife.org.uk/activities-for-you/wildlife-garde...
• amiga_500 7y ago
  Who is working on trying to make people feel compelled to buy more stuff, that they don’t need?
  • pio42 7y ago
    This is the only question we have to ask.
    • rdudekul 7y ago
      How can we ask that question, if the companies we work for and all the work we do, is asking exactly the opposite question?
      • bigato 7y ago
        this is an area where i think that voting with our wallets as consumers is one of the best courses of action, if not the only, that can yield results
        • abyssin 7y ago
          Neoliberalism replaces the citizen with the consumer. Voting with your wallet is part of the ideology that destroys public power, creates short-term selfish thinking and behaviour. So I don't think counting on wallet voting makes much sense in reality.
          • tossAfterUsing 7y ago
            i was pretty young (<10) when i realized the television was always referring to me as a "consumer" and it felt awful, even then. if anything, i'm a "customer". i hadn't, until today, realized that it was a Neoliberal thing. thanks for your comment.
            • abyssin 7y ago
              As Mises wrote: "When we call a capitalist society a consumers' democracy we mean that the power to dispose of the means of production, which belongs to the entrepreneurs and capitalists, can only be acquired by means of the consumers' ballot, held daily in the marketplace." https://mises.org/library/meaning-market-democracy https://mises.org/library/meaning-market-democracy
• martincollignon 7y ago
  Alright, I got criticized for spamming on other climate change posts for copy-pasting links, so here's what I'm doing. My background is growth/marketing, having worked at startups, Uber and Google. I'm quitting Google end of summer to work on climate change full-time, but right now I'm helping out 2 tech communities [1][2] and one startup working with open-source projects, calculating people's CO2 emissions in a privacy-by-design manner[3]. After the summer, I hope to join that startup full-time (if they want me ;-) ) and help also in politics with the Citizen's Climate Lobby[4] and their effort to pass a Carbon Fee and Dividend legislation globally. Even if you don't work full-time on it, there are plenty of ways you can help. [1]https://climateaction.tech/ https://climateaction.tech/ [2]https://techimpactmakers.com/ https://techimpactmakers.com/ [3]https://www.tmrow.com https://www.tmrow.com [4]https://citizensclimatelobby.org/ https://citizensclimatelobby.org/
  • jsingleton 7y ago
    Impact Makers are running a hackathon (https://fixathon.io/ https://fixathon.io/). Info deck if you want to sponsor: http://bit.ly/fixathon-sponsor http://bit.ly/fixathon-sponsor
  • deleted 7y ago
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  • badcede 7y ago
    People criticized you for spamming HN with your links so you decided to do more of it?
• ForHackernews 7y ago
  I keep saying this and getting downvoted for it, but there isn't any magic bullet technology fix. Even if commercial fusion were magically deployed at scale today, there's still too much CO2 in the air, still too many petrol vehicles on the road. The only way we stand a chance is by making sweeping, society-wide changes. The only thing you as an individual can do is try to pressure your leaders for large scale government activity. https://rebellion.earth/ https://rebellion.earth/ https://www.sunrisemovement.org/ https://www.sunrisemovement.org/ To answer your question "Are there any people who are actively working on fixing the environment?" Basically, to a rounding error, the answer is "No". You can see for yourself here: https://climateactiontracker.org/ https://climateactiontracker.org/ National responses range from "critically insufficient" to merely "insufficient".
  • jsingleton 7y ago
    Attend your local authority meetings and ask questions. You might enjoy it! https://unop.uk/get-involved-in-democracy/ https://unop.uk/get-involved-in-democracy/
  • chriswarbo 7y ago
    > there isn't any magic bullet technology fix Of course. That doesn't mean technology (this forum's expertise) can't be used as part of a solution though. > The only way we stand a chance is by making sweeping, society-wide changes. Sounds like something that we could attempt to throw various technologies at; for instance, I'm sure many users of this site are experts in technology for helping spread awareness (i.e. ad/marketing tech), enabling/improving collaboration (e.g. consensus building for legislators), coordination (e.g. for activists), etc. > The only thing you as an individual can do is try to pressure your leaders for large scale government activity If OP was asking what they, as some random Internet user, could do, then perhaps your pessimism would be right. I don't think that's too relevant for what OP is actually asking though, which is what's being done by HN users (a large number of technical experts, wielding disproportionately more power than the average citizen due to expertise in, and stewardship of, technologies with large amplifying effects, like the Web, social media, etc.)
    • 7y ago
• tyleo 7y ago
  As a developer I’d love to know how I could use my skills to help the environment. I feel like I remember seeing some topics on HN discussing this very thing but I can’t find any with a simple search. Does anyone have any suggestions?
  • bloudermilk 7y ago
    Broadly speaking, I think there are two kinds of companies you want to look for: * Those which directly aim to reduce or sequester emissions * Those which could deploy technologies to lower their emissions and save money You can find examples of these in literally every sector. This is a blessing because it means there is a ton of demand. It's also a curse since it can be hard to pick a niche if you don't happen to have some kind of specialization (e.g. transportation or agriculture). I'm actively looking for clients that fit both of those categories. I'd be happy to chat about collaborating or any of this if you reach out via email (see profile).
  • sn9 7y ago
    http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/ http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/
• kisamoto 7y ago
  While not me personally my brother is doing his best. He has been studying glaciers and their recession and surges to try and understand a bit more for the (worsening) predictions. Part of this has been sample collecting and some very interesting analysis of the results in R combined with GIS satellite images that have been captured over time. Unfortunately he has been struggling to find work other than research and so I stepped in to try and help. I would be very interested to hear from anybody who has found gainful employment working to save the environment, especially if they are working in the IT/Geospatial sector.
• drunkenmonk 7y ago
  Working on design of resilient local supply chain of fresh food as part of a fortune 10 company professionally. Personally, shopping only as needed basis and no gas cars in the household. Future to perfect greenhouse farming, designing and retro fitting houses which are as efficient as humanely comfortable.
• throwaway8879 7y ago
  I'm not doing anything directly through work or activism, but I have made a decision to not have children(albeit for other reasons), as have my siblings. I guess that will have more of a long-term impact than recycling, going vegan or getting off of fossil fuel.
  • justplay 7y ago
    huh? No children because you want to save environment, sorry to be cynical.
    • patientplatypus 7y ago
      I also have made the same decision for the same reasons. There are too many of us.
      • justplay 7y ago
        please enlighten me!
        • bigato 7y ago
          less humans means less human impact on the planet
        • neilalexander 7y ago
          I guess the reasoning is because humans are the worst thing that have ever happened to the environment, therefore by producing less humans, we produce less environmental damage.
        • diggan 7y ago
          Now I'm neither of the parents (comment parents) here, but I'm myself torn on the issue. On one hand, having children will contribute to the overall higher consumption, meaning the environment eventually will suffer from the increase in population. On the other hand, having children and raising them as good as you can, can offset the impact (or even have a better impact on climate change as a whole, even though the increase of consumption) other people have on the environment, if you "train" your child(s) to care for the environment.
• todd8 7y ago
  I donated land to Nature Conservancy.
• perfunctory 7y ago
  So if I interpret you correctly, by "working on fixing the environment" you mean tech projects? I don't want to dismiss anyone's efforts but I have become convinced that believing in technological solution to the environment/climate problem at this stage is just another form of denial. We already have all the technology we can use in the short/medium term, and we don't have time for the long term fundamental breakthroughs any more. Improved energy efficiency won't help either[0] We need fundamental cultural and policy change. The question is how to achieve it. Despite popular believe I don't think voting matters. Think about any significant societal change in the last century or so. Women suffrage, civil rights movement, anti-war movement, gay rights. None of these were initiated by the parliament. They all started as a popular rebellion and direct action. So what are we to do. - Change your lifestyle. Less flying, driving, meat. - Divest fossil - Get out of the techno bubble and get your hands dirty with direct action and civil disobedience. e.g. [1] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox [1] https://rebellion.earth/ https://rebellion.earth/
  • collyw 7y ago
    Agree on almost everything you said, but not having children will have far more impact than giving up meat. Going childfree almost like a taboo subject when discussing the environment.
    • charlchi 7y ago
      People in the west already aren't having children. You really want to target everyone else on the planet, the people having 3+ children per woman. Sadly the West is encouraging it's own population to go sterile, but inviting others to live on welfare and giving incentives for those people to have many children...
      • ZeroGravitas 7y ago
        What you describe sounds like an excellent sci-fi movie that I'd like to see, but in reality being slightly below replacement rate is a bit different from "not having children".
• cmos 7y ago
  I work at Woods Hole Oceanographic Research - I started there two years ago. I run a lab that refurbishes the electronics that collects data from the sensors. Technology wise we are fairly slow to adopt new things, and making changes to the infrastructure can take a few years. It is incredibly interesting and fun! There is both a mix of real time issues that pop up that need nasa style engineering to fix (i.e. logging on remotely to a buoy and adding a script to control the power module as a clock that triggers the main loop in the microcontroller interrupt broke) and plenty of mysteries to solve (why did the mooring in the Irminger Sea disappear?) The program I work for is OOI, where the goal is to have long term consistent readings of the ocean. We are funded by the NSF and deploy and recover over 20 moorings with sensors on the surface, along the riser column and at the anchor. Before this job I made video games.. this is far more gratifying. I am redesigning and upgrading the electronics in the buoys one section at a time and already there has been a large improvement in uptime. Oceanography is a fairly new science and there are a lot of opportunities to make collecting and analyzing data easier and more accessible. I bike to work along the ocean for 7 miles, take a small boat for 25 minutes, then another 3 miles along the ocean. We always need engineers.. https://careers.whoi.edu/ https://careers.whoi.edu/ My best advice to live with a lighter footprint? try to be more vegan, take the bus, bike more, vote.
• bloudermilk 7y ago
  I reached a point last year where working on frivolous tech products made me guilty and depressed. As a result I've spent the past several months pivoting my software consulting career to be focused on sustainability. My strategy so far is to: * Understand the science behind the causes and effects that make up the broad problem of "climate change" * Learn as much as I can about current policies, technologies, strategies, etc * Read well-regarded books on the above topics (e.g. I just finished Koomey's [Cold Cash, Cool Climate][0]) * Observe/follow leaders in the space * Meet people who know and care about protecting our environment * Find solutions where I can contribute my software expertise to the greatest effect I'm just scratching the surface but there is light at the end of the tunnel. There is a tremendous amount of work being done across major sectors like energy, transportation, building, manufacturing, etc. that is both fulfilling and well-funded. I'd be delighted to connect with any other HN'ers who want to collaborate or chat. Email in my profile [0]: https://www.amazon.com/Cold-Cash-Cool-Climate-Science-Based/dp/097060193X https://www.amazon.com/Cold-Cash-Cool-Climate-Science-Based/...
  • toper-centage 7y ago
    This year I felt exactly like you. I'm a freelancer for now, but can't bring myself to apply to any of these hip tech companies. I wanted to work for someone doing something that matters.
    • bloudermilk 7y ago
      Please reach out if you're still looking! I'm drumming up projects and will have work for UX/UI designers, software engineers, data scientists, copywriters, and more. My email is in my profile
  • patientplatypus 7y ago
    Neat! Emailed~ :D
• shylands 7y ago
  I'm a big believer in taking action. Even if you aren't sure how you can help by trying you never know what will happen based on your actions. Two months ago I became motivated to help fix the climate, so far I have: Started https://techimpactmakers.com/ https://techimpactmakers.com/ to bring together tech workers to communicate and collaborate around the climate issue. Launched https://climatechoice.co/ https://climatechoice.co/ a website which educates you about how you can help prevent earth’s climate breaking down today. Announced The Climate Fixathon. The world's first online hackathon for makers to help fix the climate. Full launch next week - https://fixathon.io https://fixathon.io My long-term goal is to figure out how to do this full-time.
  • chriswarbo 7y ago
    > My long-term goal is to figure out how to do this full-time. It would be good to know if you come across any advice for this (e.g. specialised job boards, etc.) So far I've managed to avoid jobs I consider to be less ethical (e.g. developing proprietary software, high frequency trading, etc.) Now I'm wondering how I can do something that's a net positive, rather than just keeping the cogs turning in some indifferent corporate machine...
    • ForHackernews 7y ago
      80,000 Hours has a job board for "high impact" jobs here: https://80000hours.org/job-board/ https://80000hours.org/job-board/ I might take issue with some of what they consider high-impact (e.g. imagining how many friendly AGIs can dance in a pin-sized server) but it's a place to start at least.
    • shylands 7y ago
      There are several job boards. I'm trying to figure out how to do it for my own projects. The most obvious way is to think of an idea that helps fight climate change but also makes money (easier said than done). Also been considering if there is the potential to gain suppose on Patreon or similar from the community for working on climate action projects like some open-source developers do.
• justplay 7y ago
  I live in small town and people are so use to plastic that they take plastic for every silly things. I believe awareness is best thing instead of some tech thing how we can solve environmental problem.
  • abyssin 7y ago
    Plastic waste looks like a very small problem compared to CO2 emissions. Cutting CO2 emissions is much harder than acting on plastic waste, and we no longer have time for small actions. We need to radically lower our consumption of goods of any kind.
• LoSboccacc 7y ago
  secondary issue but dad was a environmental engineer at some drilling locations, managing impact and cleanups. guess what job got cut immediately at the beginning of the last decadecrisis? personal action is fine and dandy, but we need to make expensive for company to pollute so one doesn't have to choose between helping the environment and having a family.
• jacknews 7y ago
  Our family has recently changed to a flexitarian menu, cutting beef almost entirely, with many meals being vegetarian, and others substituting some of the meat with potatoes, tofu, green jackfruit, mushrooms, etc. Far from a hardship, we've been delighted by the much more varied new menu. We've also bought some land that had been tropical forest, but was recently cleared for plantation purposes, and we've bio-chared it with waste charcoal scraps from the prevalent nearby charcoal kilns (about 3 tons of carbon sequestered, for the 0.3ha), and replanted it with a sort-of permaculture mix of various flowering fruit trees (we'll add some beehives in a couple of years), and longer-term restorative hardwoods. We also bought another 5ha, waiting the same treatment, and we've encouraged others to do the same. 2 takers so far, for another 3ha. Biochar is recommended as 1-5kg/m2 so 1ha means sequestering 10tons of carbon Assuming the science works (and it seems from online sources that it does - we'll see), I think this kind of biochar carbon sequestration could be quite a big help, and it's a very low-tech solution, which also improves yields, so doubly effective for forest. Of course this is perhaps less-good than if the forest had just been left intact, but what to do?
  • peteradio 7y ago
    Why beehives? What does that have to do with fixing the environment?
    • perfmode 7y ago
      bees are a central part of ecosystem.
      • peteradio 7y ago
        Honeybees are the only bees that live in hives. Unless this guy is European (based on his tropical forest rehab, I doubt it) then they are certainly not a central part of the ecosystem.
        • jacknews 7y ago
          Honeybees (please specify the actual species) are not only in Europe.
• rohan1024 7y ago
  Can we start Reddit community for this?
  • bristleworm 7y ago
    Good idea. There might already be one but I don't know one. Any good name ideas? I'd be happy to help set up, moderate, whatever, but I'm not good at catchy names :)
    • fillskills 7y ago
      Please post here if you do start one or find an active community. I have been thinking of this for a while. Would be happy to join
      • bristleworm 7y ago
        I'll do that
  • philips 7y ago
    This is the closest thing I know https://www.reddit.com/r/ClimateActionPlan https://www.reddit.com/r/ClimateActionPlan
• pojzon 7y ago
  Like I say we have to force law makers hard to punish polluting companies to the extreme where its unprofitable to pollute. Pretty much whole coal&oil industry would have to be nuked, thats why its SO HARD to do anything about it. Corporations lobby politics we choose to harm us - citizens. Next 10 years will be a huge battle between little ppl and corporations. Because single person actions do not matter more than 1%
  • tim333 7y ago
    The UK's carbon taxes are doing quite well and don't seem to have caused too much upset in spite of the coal industry being nuked (https://qz.com/1192753/a-carbon-tax-killed-coal-in-the-uk-natural-gas-is-next/ https://qz.com/1192753/a-carbon-tax-killed-coal-in-the-uk-na...) Energy company execs obviously don't want to go bust but are probably happy building solar farms rather than oil wells if that's what pays best.
• ryanmercer 7y ago
  I'm not but i recognize it to be a problem, sadly it seems those with money seem to want to throw it at pursuing on massive-scale geoengineering and/or pursuing exotic carbon sequestration methods that may or may not already exist. A good example of this being YC with this page http://carbon.ycombinator.com/ http://carbon.ycombinator.com/ I really wish I could get one of these people to liten to me. I'm not a CS type, I'm not an ivy league degree holder (or a degree holder at all), I didn't sell my first company for eleventy-seven mibillion dollars, so I'm not welcome at the table. I wish I could get one of these individuals, or several of them, or even a company, to spin off a non-profit to start hardcore investigating what is going on, what the immediate issues are, what the projected issues are 10-20 years out, and what we need to start doing. if OpenAI can get 1 billion dollars in pledges to build not-so-mean sky net, can we get 10 million, 100 million, pledged to you know... saving the flippin' planet?! Seriously. Sama, throw me at this. Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Dustin Moskovitz, Jan Koum, Travis Kalanick, Jack Dorsey, Google, Laurene Powell Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Steve Ballmer, Reid Hoffman, Facebook, Google, Uber, Airbnb, Stripe, Dropbox, Coinbase, Palantir, WeWork... do you want to keep your customers, your gardeners, your drivers, your personal chefs, your dog walker, do you want to see your bloodline continue with grandchildren or great grandchildren? Then wake up, we've got to do something, we're listing to port and if we don't act fast it'll be 'all hands, abandon ship!' Let's get out there and talk to farmers, climatologists, scientists, researchers, grad students, material scientists, oil/solar/wind/geothermal engineers, agricultural science people. I'll go spend a year, two years, going from university to university-company to company-skype call to skype call, talking to as many of these people as possible so we can come up with a solid look at the issue and then start working on a battle plan. >It seems like if we don't do anything then in ten or twenty years (my lifetime!) there will be a "crunch" where something truly horrific may happen. Personally I feel that if we aren't at least countering the greenhouse gasses we are emitting annually 100%, then we will be up the creek without a paddle and will need to immediately start to focus our efforts on creating 'blueprints' for rebuilding civilization from scratch as a backup (maybe gold plated titanium etched sheets on how to build basic machines and general engineering/physics/etc information in caches around the world) and throw everything we've got into long-term energy and indoor growing technology. I don't think humanity will go extinct but I think if we haven't at least ceased adding more greenhouses gasses 5-10 years from now then we probably will not be able to gain control of it before it spirals (thawing marshes/permafrost releasing methane pockets etc) and we will then need to just focus on ensuring that over the coming decades, or even century, that some record exists for our children or even great grand children to rebuild in the event we collectively lose the know-how to do a lot that we've accomplished because we were too busy trying to survive radical changes to weather and massive food shortages. --- Even if a company made viable/affordable cold fusion TODAY it would take decades to replace all of the current power plants assuming zero increase in demand as there are over 60,000 power plants in the world and just since the year 2000 the world has more than DOUBLED the power generation from coal plants (China alone is building some 300 coal plants around the world as investments and receives something along the liens of 70% of their power from coal). The concrete alone to build all of those facilities would release an insane amount of CO2. China is also adding millions of new drivers to the roads annually, as well as building a massive amount of roads/highways/bridges all across the country so either fossil fuel use will continue to rise or there will be millions and millions of EVs demanding even more power generation. --- As I've spoken to Silicon Valley types with the means to actually fund looking into this sort of stuff over the past year or so, including consulting on it for compensation, I'm just shocked at how naively optimistic some of them are and worse, how some just refuse to acknowledge it as a problem. Attitudes like "don't worry, we will figure it out because we have to". Yeah, sorry, no, that's not always the case... I hate hate hate how VC/Startup culture is like "we can do anything, promise, we got this, we can code so relax we'll figure it out, stop being pessimistic and go away". It's easy to sit in San Francisco where weather varies wildly between blocks anyway due to microclimates but, hi, hello, I live in central Indiana... you can normally start harvesting corn next week here however due to the abnormal rains we've had the past 2 months there is corn in fields out there that's knee high because it couldn't be planted. I drove by so many fields two weekends ago on a 120ish mile trip to northern Indiana that had standing water in them and still hadn't been planted. About a mile from my apartment there exists a new pond, it isn't actually a pond but it is a field that has now had standing water in it for a month due to far more rain than normal. This isn't just in central Indiana either, this is a large part of the country. Higher than normal rains are going to seriously impact crop yields this year, while in Australia they produced roughly 20% less grains than normal last year because of their drought being worse than normal. Anchorage might see 90F this week per a news article I saw this morning which will be a record in recorded history. France has at least one nuclear power plant that might need to go offline due to running out of cooling due to the heat. There are micro plastics in the air now, 'raining' down hundreds of miles from any known source. But hey, it's ok, Silicon Valley's brightest coders are working on it headdesk Come on, let's do something about this. I don't have the means, I have the drive though. Those that have means, wake up, come on, throw money at this! Think of yourselves as the aristocracy on the titanic, did all that wealth do them any good as the ship went down? If someone with the financial means legitimately wants to attempt to take a stab at this I will walk away from my job and throw myself 100% at it. Let's start by talking to as many experts in as many fields as possible. Farmers/scientists/engineers/etc, let's compile all of the data we can and we can even make a series of video interviews with those that are already feeling the impact of our actions as a species and start getting that content out there, raise more and more awareness. A handful of people working on cold fusion, or C4 rice, or trying to geonegineer the planet aren't going to do a damn bit of good unless we get a majority of the population to recognize, and admit, that there is something happening and that we need to stop it fast. Let's get out there and get started. Some of the people I mentioned way above have individually donated more than a billion dollars to other types of causes... look I get that sanitation for remote villages is needed, that gender diversity in the workplace is, that immigration reform is a good thing, but what is the point of all of it if billions of people die from thirst/famine/hurricanes/storms in the next century?!?!
• nixpulvis 7y ago
  I personally don't do much, but my dad's company does. I'll just leave a link here, since I think it's pretty cool software (obviously I'm biased). https://www.homerenergy.com/ https://www.homerenergy.com/
• lettergram 7y ago
  Not really trying to fix anything, but I started bee keeping and have always kept a garden. Suddenly people mention how environmentally friendly in being, so I guess I am.... really I just want to make mead and like honey Bee keeping is fairly easy, but will cost an initial investment of maybe $500. Technology includes wood you build a box out of, some wax guidance for the combs, and some aluminum flashing for the roof. Oh, and bees, which they can ship anywhere in the US via USPS
  • deleted 7y ago
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• samvher 7y ago
  I work for an organization that helps smallholder farmers farm more effectively and sustainably through digital advisory (precisionag.org). Things we try to do are change pesticide behavior (recommend safer pesticides, get people to use only when necessary and in safe amounts), change fertilizer behavior (help them allocate money effectively for replenishing the right nutrients), decrease soil depletion and erosion (adjust tilling practices, increase crop rotation, that sort of thing). The hope is of course that this results in better yields with less damage, but the Jevons paradox has already been mentioned and it's hard to say what the effect will be in the long run. Personally I've just decreased material and meat consumption very significantly, and I try to be careful with flying (but need to do so occasionally for my work). I'm not too hopeful, the main economic systems are fully based on constantly increasing production (which mostly has a physical basis) and effective action would require significant international collaboration (the world does not seem to be getting more united). We will see - maybe once things really start going wrong and we get into crisis mode effective action suddenly becomes possible.
• surfgreen_dev 7y ago
  We started a web development agency two months ago that focusses on sustainable and green web development. It's called surfgreen.dev - https://www.surfgreen.dev/en https://www.surfgreen.dev/en We are based in Bavaria, Germany, and focus on sustainable frontend technologies for websites and webapps as well as on green cloud computing. Right now we are working on a web application that's analysing websites focused on performance and hosting topics. This web app generates a sustainability scoring based on several factors and will be deployed this month. So if anyone is interested to learn more about sustainable websites, green web development, etc. feel free to contact us via our homepage. We are also happy to help customers to make their websites sustainable and green.
• nwnomad 7y ago
  I work with food and beverage companies to reduce GHG emissions from food production in their supply chains through modeling/data analysis of farming systems and software development. Related to this, I'm working on research to understand soil variability that can drastically impact the measurement of soil carbon sequestration. Also considering starting up a local grains and storage vegetable farm to reduce food miles (while acknowledging that it isn't always more efficient). On a personal note, I've switched back to being a vegetarian (with occasional fish), and am trying to switch to carting my young daughter around town on an ebike instead of a heavy car. I haven't done much politically but think it's probably far past time to dive in since much of the changes will need to be made by legislation.
• nickserv 7y ago
  I gave up my car for over a year now (although a job change is msybe putting this in jeopardy). We barely buy any meat, keep it for special occasions mainly. We buy as many local fruits and vegetables as possible. I participate in organized tree plantings and have planted some on my own. I won't have more than two kids (got sterilized), although not just for the environment. ... and it's not nearly enough. I would want to work in something truly helpful for our species rather than making more money for the capitalists but it's tough with a family to support.
• paulgrimes1 7y ago
  CTO of Yume Food here (https://yumefood.com.au https://yumefood.com.au), a startup in Melbourne, Australia working to divert perfectly good surplus food from going to landfill. Our team identifies at-risk stock (packaging issues / overproduction / close to code) and uses an ML-based engine to match the produce with suitable buyers, and offers up to 80% discounts; stock is saved, buyers get discounts, no ecological issues, everyone wins. About to hit 1MM kilos of saved surplus stock, gaining some good buy-in from big name food producers, which is really promising.
  • ryanmercer 7y ago
    >About to hit 1MM kilos of saved surplus stock, That's impressive! You've got a good market there given the basically decades-long drought too, I imagine the impact is far greater there than it would be in many other countries.
    • paulgrimes1 7y ago
      Thanks! We’re only scratching the surface so far, and are regularly frustrated by things outside of our control (logistics, politics, the food industry at large being very behind in grasping new tech), but the team at Yume are doing a stellar job of getting their mission in front of as many eyes as possible to highlight and solve the problem.
• CalRobert 7y ago
  In San Diego, went to my local planning board's meetings to push for allowing more density and adding cycle infra. Failed, of course; I was the lone weirdo (and nobody else under 65 could make it to their weekday meetings for some crazy reason). Moved to Europe (combination of things like wanting more vacation time but also generally lower carbon footprint, and taxes aren't supporting quite as much pillaging) Cycled or walked to work full time until I got a remote job. Eat little meat, primarily chicken. Bought cottage on 3.5 acres of grazing land and have let most of it run wild. 15 minute bike ride from train station. Renewably sourced electricity Made tool to help others find homes near public transport and bike routes in my country (Ireland) (why do real estate sites assume everyone drives???) - www.gaffologist.com . This came after people kept saying how lucky I was to cycle to work - it wasn't luck any more than having an extra bedroom is luck. I filtered for it. (I am lucky to be able to afford it, though) Before I left Dublin, participated in actions involving protecting bicycle lanes with your body (https://twitter.com/IBIKEDublin https://twitter.com/IBIKEDublin) Spend money on subscriptions to things like Dark Mountain, The Times (which is pro-cycling), etc.. Support the green party financially (and by voting of course) Though my footprint is still not great because I fly too much. I have 2 kids. Of course, replacement rate should be OK, but that's only if we're already where we need to be. I'd like to find a way to make my _work_ contribute to finding a fix, and not just my lifestyle, but as with everyone else I've got bills to pay (getting a roof rethatched isn't cheap). I spent a few years after college trying to work for environmental orgs getting rebuffed and gave up to just get a regular job after that. And that's the real problem, isn't it? We push everyone by design into a life where they have some sort of massive financial burden, whether it's student debt or housing debt or lack of prospects, and then they're forced to optimize for cash and not for what they think really matters.
• Gnarl 7y ago
  Hi! great question. Thanks for asking. I'm actively working to fix the environment by getting people to reduce their use of wireless tech. and lobbying Government to drastically lower the permitted microwave radiation exposure guidelines. How so, you may ask - since creating an "app" and using tech is the default way to "disrupt" or "fix" something cultural/societal today. No offence meant to app creators. I'm a software guy myself. The tech is exiting and developing is fun, but that invisible, odor-free "something" the wireless tech is constantly emitting to facilitate connectivity, is an environmental toxin. Yes, I'm taking about the RF radiation which is a slow acting poison. It negatively impacts cells, insects, plants, animals & humans. This isn't an opinion any longer. The science on this is robust. It would be wise to heed the warnings of a veteran MD and internal medicine professor who gave a crash-course in biological effects of RF radiation to a Michigan committee: https://youtu.be/1Qt5B39LB7c https://youtu.be/1Qt5B39LB7c If you watch the 5 min. clip, keep in mind that its not just one single professor's statement - its a compression of decades of peer-reviewed and published research that's being presented. Physicists and engineers tend to disagree on a basis of simple energy absorbtion/heating mechanics, but that is irrelevant to the possibility of harmful biological effects given how science now clearly shows biological damage at exposure levels far below heating threshold. The "thermal-only" paradigm with non-ionizing radiofrequency radiation is dead, although Big Wireless' entire business hinges on it being valid still. It isn't. Sound advice is to begin divesting in RF wireless industry and offshoots because its going down. Not tomorrow, but soon enough. Even the risk-ready insurance industry jumped ship years ago. Look up "exclusion 32 electromagnetic fields". They've seen the future and they don't want to pay out for the "next asbestos". Big Wireless' is on its own when the lawsuits are won. As natural background radiation, the frequency bands usurped by wireless telecoms were virtually silent during evolution. Now the man-made background levels are extreme in comparison and the effects are showing broadly as mostly neurological problems in human populations, decline in insect biomass, wild animals avoiding areas with transmitters, tree/foliage damage near transmitters etc. As an interesting development, recently in Denmark, a Lawyer concluded, based on existing science & reports, that 5G rollout will most likely damage the natural environment and contravene a number of European natural protection conventions. See more here: https://helbredssikker-telekommunikation.dk/nyheder/LegalOpinion5G https://helbredssikker-telekommunikation.dk/nyheder/LegalOpi... We need another kind of wireless. Not RF/microwave based. Its possible, I'm sure. Thank you for your attention.
• deleted 7y ago
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• patcon 7y ago
  Excuse this hot-take, but PSA for all: If you values environmental sustainability, work on getting WOMEN INTO MORE LEADERSHIP POSITIONS. If you're still with me after the capslock... :) We've known since the Hofstede leadership study (commissioned by IBM) that countries that skew toward feminine side of the masculity--femininity axes, are more likely to have general populations that values environmental sustainability, whereas countries that embody masculine leadership qualities value economic growth much more highly. Just google "Hofstede environmental sustainability femininity". It's been replicated in many studies. Some examples: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/327419590_The_Effects_of_Hofstede's_Cultural_Dimensions_on_Pro-Environmental_Behaviour_How_Culture_Influences_Environmentally_Conscious_Behaviour https://www.researchgate.net/publication/327419590_The_Effec... https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/csr.1329 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/csr.1329 This is reproduced over and over. The key to environmental sustainability is not an invention or a product, it's a reorienting of leadership away from the risk-taking, growth-oriented masculine styles of leadership. That's not to say men can't contribute to that work (the leadership style is not only accessible to women) but that there's less teaching/re-education to do if we accept the best approach to be GETTING WOMEN IN POWER. Nothing else you build or work on will contribute to reorienting ourselves away from this growth-mode death sentence (nor will it do it in such a sustainable way) than SUPPORTING FEMALE LEADERSHIP in corporate and government institutions. That's where the sustainable recalibration will take place. I'm grateful for any consideration you might give this.
  • patientplatypus 7y ago
    Personally, I think this is gross. So I should be excluded from a leadership position because I have a penis? Yuck.
    • krapp 7y ago
      Why did you apparently read "getting women into more leadership positions" and interpret it as "getting women into all leadership positions?" For that matter, why did you read an argument predicated on masculine versus feminine leadership styles as they relate to environmentalism and social empathy (which can be reasonably argued against) and reduce it to mere exclusionism based on genitalia?
• tossAfterUsing 7y ago
  In my personal life, i was vegetarian for more than a decade, i recycle/garden/ride a bike/never buy new cars/prefer previously owned equivalents to new purchases for all products/turn off lights, computers, monitors, speakers, amps, etc.../avoid using air-con/never buy leather/capture and release houseflies & spiders/advocate among my associates to live as sustainably as they can. My first engineering job was for SolarCity... it was so great! Until i realized it was just scheme for tranching solar incentives from the gov't into financial devices for JPMC & CO to buy, supporting the credit cycle for the growing business... then i quit, and moved out of SF. Next was software for a mmj operation... turning raw flower into dabs/wax/etc. If anybody ever asks you, Dabs are drugs... m'kay. Then I worked to build a product that captures browsing information to creates shadow-profiles of sovereign wealth fund managers, to target them for investment advisories. Today, I'm working to make off-shore oil&gas field development-planning a more efficient process (it's incredibly old-school, currently). That means meetings with the biggest "climate destroying" companies on the planet, and chatting seriously about how to frack better. All in all, and really ironically, it feels like this current role is the most environmentally (earthship environment, social/cultural environment) responsible job I've ever had.
• Flip-per 7y ago
  I'm working as software developer at the energy/climate department of a research institute[1]. It's a think-tank that also consults policy makers. The scientists here do lots of modeling, trying to predict possible outcomes in order to create awareness and provide information about effects and alternatives. [1] http://www.iiasa.ac.at/ http://www.iiasa.ac.at/
• mrfusion 7y ago
  I’m letting my back lawn grow wild. I still mow a few times a year but it’s mostly now wild flowers and strange looking plants. (Kind I’d like Pandora) I’m seeing tons of bees and butterflies and my fruit trees seem extra healthy and fertile.
• gamerDude 7y ago
  I'm currently building a prototype house that runs on renewable energy, grows its own food, and at small scales should pay their own mortgage. All in all the house is sustainable, but it also needs to provide something that makes it a must have over a normal house. In the end I think we need to work on both ends for sustainable technology. One end of educating people that we need to be better. And on the other making things that use sustainable technology, but are also better than competing products on more than just being sustainable. Note: The house design wasn't conceived for sustainability, but as a basic income achieved through tech instead of taxation. Sustainability was an important aspect to make that possible.
• corradio 7y ago
  I'm the founder of Tomorrow (https://www.tmrow.com https://www.tmrow.com), where we 3 years ago built https://www.electricitymap.org https://www.electricitymap.org (it's open source). We're seeking to build scalable digital solutions to climate change. Our mission is to organise the world's carbon information, and make it universally accessible. Therefore, we're now working on an app that automatically calculates your personal carbon footprint, and gives you the means to act on it. A lot of our work is open source: see https://github.com/tmrowco https://github.com/tmrowco I also wrote a pragmatic guide to climate change here: https://www.tmrow.com/climatechange https://www.tmrow.com/climatechange Hope this can guide or even inspire some other folks out there.
• MrsPeaches 7y ago
  I believe that the next big innovation in energy will come out of Africa. There are over 600 million people without electricity in sub-Saharan Africa and bringing them online is one of the biggest challenges facing the world (c.f. SDG 7). At the same time there are some amazing innovations coming out of Africa with regards to decentralised electricity. My mission is to get more people involved in innovation in the energy space in Africa. You can see more here: https://localelectricity.org/ https://localelectricity.org/ We are also running a crowdfunding campaign which you can see here: https://startsomegood.com/localelectricity/ https://startsomegood.com/localelectricity/
  • tim333 7y ago
    In the short term I'm sure they will install a lot of Chinese solar panels. But longer term it would be cool to build one or more massive solar plants in the Sahara to supply Europe and nearby countries via high voltage cables. You might also be able to re green the land in the shade under them. Just covering half of Niger with panels could potentially power the world.
• kodz4 7y ago
  > every day there is a new piece of bad news The better question is who has training to deal with problems they don't know how to solve being thrown at them everyday?
• fillskills 7y ago
  We are making a pass to access lush private backyard gardens for therapy, yoga, meditation etc. Some of our most interesting customers are VAs, elderly folks, stressed out engineers etc. The underlying goal is to help gardeners earn money that they put into building more lush gardens thus storing carbon into top soil.
• elil17 7y ago
  I work on making a specific piece of HVAC equipment/industrial cooling equipment more energy efficient by creating a new control algorithm. Overall, HVAC systems represent about 4% of US power consumption and their share is rising, but most are controlled in highly inefficient ways. My guess (genuinely just a guess from the limited slice of HVAC data I’ve seen) is that you could improve the efficiency of these systems by 25% without changing any of the hardware. I think we need more people working on small, boring fixes to reduce the amount of resources we use as a society.
  • ryanmercer 7y ago
    > HVAC systems represent about 4% of US power consumption and their share is rising, And here is a real issue. We use a lot of electricity for air conditioning. Temperatures are rising which means more air conditioning. More air conditioning means more power, which means more fossil fuels. More fossil fuels means more warming. sigh. We could save a fortune just by being smarter about new construction, but alas, cookie-cutter home builders and apartment companies just want the cheapest thing they can sell/rent. My bedroom closet at my apartment isn't even insulated, in the winter it gets as low as about 40F and Tuesday with it 92F outside my closet was 86F so opening it twice a day dumps a bunch of heat/cold into my room. The on-suite bathroom on the same wall is somewhat insulated but not as much as the other rooms, they skimped on 2-3 widths of insulation to save 20-30$ per corner of each building because, you know, they don't pay the electric bill.
    • elil17 7y ago
      >Temperatures are rising which means more air conditioning. More air conditioning means more power, which means more fossil fuels. There’s three opportunities to disrupt the problem. Reduce AC use. Reduce how much power AC uses. Reduce how much fossil fuel power generation uses.
  • elil17 7y ago
    Also, the reason I even have my job is that there are increasingly stringent energy efficiency regulations and they need to be met. I couldn’t be doing the work that I’m doing with out the people who protested, took direct action, and lobbied their local governments to change building codes.
• monocasa 7y ago
  It's increasingly likely that near term societal collapse is inevitable. https://jembendell.com/2018/07/26/the-study-on-collapse-they-thought-you-should-not-read-yet/ https://jembendell.com/2018/07/26/the-study-on-collapse-they... So meet your neighbors, build local relationships, and decentralize before you're forced to while you can still specify the terms of that decentralization. Check out the urban agriculture movement. That came out of rust belt cities shutting down services and distribution. How people in cities like Detroit survived that provides a bit of a blueprint.
• TYPE_FASTER 7y ago
  Lots of companies here are working on solving problems related to the environment: https://www.greentownlabs.com https://www.greentownlabs.com. I sat there for about six months while working at a startup, it was great to see how many people were really committed to working on hard problems in the environmental/green tech space.
• sjmulder 7y ago
  I've been involved with Extinction Rebellion, helping to organise some small (legal!) demonstrations. Some people I was once friendly with now consider me an ecoterrorist. I have been tailed by secret police. I've been unofficially cautioned by an employer who now seem to be taking steps to fire me. Our future can go find itself another champion.
• stevespang 7y ago
  Founder here of a novel, recyclable, repurposeable, biodegradeable "virtually instant rubber on demand". Non provisional patent already filed. Research ongoing, but current versions are practical already. Intend to start introducing in 2020.
• dserban 7y ago
  I have great admiration for Boyan's Ocean Cleanup project. I think more people should be aware of it. It's about cleaning up the plastic soup in our oceans' garbage patches. https://theoceancleanup.com/ https://theoceancleanup.com/ I volunteered my help to the project, but they don't have a need for software engineers.
  • pietjepuk88 7y ago
    I have posted this before, but please do not think this will ever work. The thing will fall apart (again) as soon as it is exposed to anything but a calm sea. It definitely brought attention to the issue, but that's about all the good it did. I don't blame anyone for having the idea of making something like this, but I do Boyan and his team for seeing it through to implementation when all preliminary and scale model tests showed clearly that they would fail. Talk about a waste of money and bright minds...
• tim333 7y ago
  I'm trying to think of ways to use web tech to improve externality pricing. Not got very far yet but anyway...
• tchaffee 7y ago
  Nothing geeky. Just the basics. First, educate yourself. For example, food waste is a huge contributor to carbon output. So I don't ever throw out food anymore. Anything remotely close to going off goes in the freezer for soup. Since I buy groceries almost every day, I don't have much to keep track of in the first place. I work remote. I walk and ride my bike everywhere and rarely use a car. I avoid disposable plastic whenever possible. I'm intentionally not a very "good" consumer. For example, I have about ten t-shirts and two dress shirts. They last me years. That's my entire wardrobe for shirts. Cutting down on air miles has been hard because I love travel, but I have done it. It also doesn't hurt that I already live in a country that is over 80% renewable when it comes to electricity. I also try to encourage others to take personal responsibility. IMO, this isn't a technology problem. It's a cultural problem. We already have everything we need to fix this. It's a matter of public will.
• oli-hall 7y ago
  I quit my tech job at the end of last year, and have been working since then to find the most impactful ways that I can combat climate change. I'm currently looking into energy storage, particularly batteries, and how to effectively create grid-scale storage to improve the electrical grid and facilitate the uptake of renewable energy. In the mean time, I started https://www.forgethefuture.com/ https://www.forgethefuture.com/ to compile resources for others, and I run a newsletter off the back of that to keep people up to date with policy, activism and technical changes in the space (https://forgethefuture.substack.com/ https://forgethefuture.substack.com/ if you want to sample it :)). I want to make it easier for people to understand where the biggest problem areas are and how they can be tackled. I'm also a part of https://techimpactmakers.com/ https://techimpactmakers.com/ - a community which brings together technologists concerned about the environment. As others have said, we have almost all of the technological tools to fix this problem, but government policy moves to slowly to rely on. We need a combination of physical solutions (think the Tesla of energy/agriculture/etc - make a solution that's better than the competition _and_ greener) and activism - showing governments that we care.
• celicaraptor 7y ago
  As a first year CS student,i created https://recyclair.eu.org/ https://recyclair.eu.org/ It's a website to find the nearest garbage or recycling bin so you never have the excuse to throw it on the ground.It's completely open source https://github.com/recyclerapp/recyclair https://github.com/recyclerapp/recyclair . It currently relies on community contribution so any help is appreciated.
• floki999 7y ago
  I’ve been involved in the trading of weather and catastrophe risk (I.e. trading instruments such as bonds or derivatives where the payout is linked to weather parameters, or insurance losses caused by natural hazards such as hurricanes/earthquakes). In my experience, it has become clear that there is a lot of muddled thinking about climate predictions, scenarios and the significance of single extreme events. Also, while there is a lot of public weather and climate data out there, there are a lot of data quality or provenance issues which make it hard for professionals, let alone the general public, to confidently make use of it and trust what it says. Also, the general lack of public understanding allows non-experts to take data and generate erroneous conclusions. I try as much as possible to educate and communicate around these issues and help clients have more confidence in data. Another are where there is a lot of muddled thinking is with respect to the ESG factors which are increasingly used by investors to assess Environmental, Social and Governance issues. There are a lot of ESG data vendors who essentially peddle meaningless metrics which add to the confusion.
• drummyfish 7y ago
  I recently went vegetarian. I also strictly reject capitalism, even to the point of not being able to make a living.
  • Gnarl 7y ago
    I wouldn't say you need to reject capitalism, just the form of catastrophy captalism that has become so popular.
    • drummyfish 7y ago
      I am an anarchist, so I do oppose any form of capitalism. Why? This beautiful text gives all the answers :) http://anarchism.pageabode.com/afaq/index.html http://anarchism.pageabode.com/afaq/index.html
• cloudwalking 7y ago
  Check out what Sam Rosen is doing with drinking water and trying to reduce single-use plastics. https://www.google.com/amp/s/techcrunch.com/2018/10/26/tap-a-new-startup-from-sam-rosen-wants-to-be-the-google-of-drinking-water/amp/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/techcrunch.com/2018/10/26/tap-a...
  • majewsky 7y ago
    AMP-free link: https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/26/tap-a-new-startup-from-sam-rosen-wants-to-be-the-google-of-drinking-water/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/26/tap-a-new-startup-from-sam...
• justsomeguy3591 7y ago
  Not nearly enough. Short story: helped found a startup in the political/finance space. Got burnt out, tired, and depressed building software to help make bigger banks bigger while they seem like they are only benefiting from running the environment into the ground. So I've put in my notice. Re-enrolled in school to buy myself time, a network, and a more supportive environment for putting resources into bigger and more pressing problems. What that looks like- I'm not sure yet. There have been some interesting projects and groups posted here which I've been looking through. Long term plan is to end up back on the west coast within commuting distance to SF. If anyone has any ideas - do share! (email in profile) Experienced in Python backend development, data scraping, parsing. Interested in simulations and models, IoT, mathematics, physics, and still have a bit of a mechatronics background from school. Love figuring things out and learning, especially tough, real problems. I just want to be able to look back and say, at least I tried.
• algui91 7y ago
  My Wife and I are trying to follow the recommendation mentioned in https://www.ourplanet.com/en/ https://www.ourplanet.com/en/ and http://wwf.panda.org/our_work/projects/our_planet_netflix_wwf_nature_documentary/what_can_i_do/ http://wwf.panda.org/our_work/projects/our_planet_netflix_ww... Also, we would love to get involved in a more direct way, for example with our work (Both of us are Data Scientist and Software Developers).
• marak830 7y ago
  As I am a teacher, I try to form a project course (3 month course with 12 month rotation) around showing students about carbon footprint for food transport, and effective means of learning about locally grown and produced foods that can be used. Best I have been able to figure from my job point atm.
• Ivory76 7y ago
  Donating to Cool Earth: https://www.coolearth.org/ https://www.coolearth.org/ So far, 2,800 trees saved, equivalent to taking 595 cars off the road for a year.
• throwaway34583 7y ago
  The environment is what it is, you cannot fix it.
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• emckay 7y ago
  I quit my job last month to work full time on (what I think is) an under-explored area of climate change: how institutional investors block shareholder proposals calling for firms to adopt more climate-friendly policies. I have just published the first bit of research with data on how 500+ funds from the big 3 fund managers voted on climate change-related proposals in 2018: https://voting.greengovernance.org https://voting.greengovernance.org . Later this year, I'm planning to launch a "governance-first" ETF that gives investors the same exposure as other funds but is much more aggressive in fighting climate change. I'd love any feedback! Feel free to email me at <hn-username>@greengovernance.org
• lcall 7y ago
  I am in that I try to (within reason) minimize waste, pollution, energy consumption, meat use, etc: all for the Golden Rule and a clear conscience. And I am all for reducing pollution via laws as it makes the best sense using an open process and honesty. And I am active in an organization that goes to great lengths to try to help people in need, whether due to climate change or otherwise. But having said that, I don't think climate change is a problem humanity is currently competent to solve, nor our biggest problem. I wrote more, here (a lightweight, hopefully skimmable, no-JS/no-ads site): http://lukecall.net/e-9223372036854581820.html http://lukecall.net/e-9223372036854581820.html
• torte 7y ago
  I am a Software Engineer at Wattcost (https://www.wattcost.com/ https://www.wattcost.com/), which creates a device and platform to read your energy consumption (even with older meters) and act on it. Eventually the platform is supposed to help you save energy in your home, which indirectly helps "fighting" climate change. That being said, I do not believe that any single person or single company has the power to change things drastically into any direction. It has to be a joint effort of anyone or any organization on that planet. I am not seeing this actually happening (and often even see the opposite), so personally my outlook is rather grim as well.
• bilifuduo 7y ago
  IMO the highest leverage thing to do right now to fix the environment is connecting the most talented people with careers at organizations directly tackling parts of the environmental crisis. Individual efforts can help, but all major advancements in human history have come through a coordinated group of people advancing a common cause. In our day and age, these are the corporations and nonprofits. Similarly, the effectiveness of volunteering is also limited because of how hard it is to do work for free for a long period of time. The moment something becomes hard is the moment an effort starts getting valuable, and also the moment when volunteers start dropping. Given all this, I'm currently working on Dolphin (https://www.splashwithdolphin.com/ https://www.splashwithdolphin.com/), which connects people with careers at high-impact companies tackling problems they care about. Climate change is #1 on the list of pressing issues. Happy to chat more about this at george@splashwithdolphin.com.
• titojankowski 7y ago
  Direct air capture to make consumer carbon products.
• abulaatikko 7y ago
  I'm trying to promote "zero carbon life" and educate people that co2 taxes and especially negative taxes (aka allowances) are our solution to neutralize the bad effects of living (not just co2 but other harmful things too). Then free market and technological progress will fix things automatically. Negative tax creates incentive for companies to clean environment. We just need to get people to understand this to vote politicians who will implement the taxes and not waste time to talk about different life styles and what is socially ok (pets are) and what is not (plastic straws are not). I've written a longer essay about the idea: https://palsta.pulu.org/en/73-zero-carbon-life https://palsta.pulu.org/en/73-zero-carbon-life
• oleiade 7y ago
  Progress, technology and capitalism brought us here, you'd have to be dillusional to believe it will save us. Solutions are political, diplomatic and moral.
  • thinkingemote 7y ago
    Technology takes civilisation backwards? It's certainly a widely held idea, also held by extremists like Green Anarchists for example (and the Unabomber). If you look at it from a small enough lense there is truth there but if you widen your view you can see that someone's delusions also have truths. The reality is more messy than we like to think about.
• xk3 7y ago
  I'm working on this issue but from an entirely different angle. You can read about my work here: https://kotobago.substack.com/p/developing-a-sense https://kotobago.substack.com/p/developing-a-sense
• jvatic 7y ago
  I'd really like to find paid work fixing the environment. So far all I've done is reduce the harm I'm doing by adopting a vegan and [mostly] zero-waste lifestyle, and minimizing the amount of other polluting activities I engage in.