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Every month I go into The Who Is Hiring thread and Ctrl-F for “climate,” “energy,” and “carbon” and almost never turn anything up. I’ve been part of this commu
by mbgerring 6y ago
Every month I go into The Who Is Hiring thread and Ctrl-F for “climate,” “energy,” and “carbon” and almost never turn anything up.
I’ve been part of this community for something like ten years and I know many people on here to be extremely shrewd and intelligent, and yet, over and over again, I see people who don’t understand the scale of climate change at all, nor the scale of the opportunity involved in transitioning the world’s energy and infrastructure away from burning carbon.
Is Peter Kalmus a little eccentric? Sure. But who’s crazier — him, or the vast majority of the Hacker News community who just completely shrug off climate change and the opportunity represented by the transition, even now that there are several clean energy billionaires?
- arkitaip 6y agoWhy do you give so much valuable headspace to HN? In the scheme of things, it's mostly irrelevant and impotent. There are more fruitful grounds if you seek allies in your climate change work.
- mbgerring 6y agoDon’t worry about me, I’m already doing that work (and making good money doing it!) I’m just trying to understand why so few people here see what to me is very obvious.
- twoslide 6y agoI don't know if it is a question of intelligence or understanding, but rather evidence that there is currently very little demand for climate solutions (because everyone can externalize these costs for free). The lack of jobs on HN in this area is really a symptom of the problem. But also true that their are jobs in this area (solar) they just don't overlap with the typical HN skillset.
- mbgerring 6y agoThere is a large and growing demand for both clean energy and climate solutions. Because climate change is an unavoidable physical fact, that demand is likely to grow. It is already not free to externalize the cost of carbon, and a great deal of money and engineering talent will be needed for adaptation in the coming decades. It’s also not likely to remain cost-free to externalize the cost of carbon either. And even in the event of a breakthrough technology like nuclear fusion, there’s still the task of decarbonizing infrastructure and electrifying everything. All of this will need software. All of this will require a staggeringly large deployment of capital. And you would think that with so many smart people here, more of them would want a piece of that!
- timlod 6y agoAs for your search: there's climate.careers - a site with jobs based around climate change.
- mbgerring 6y agoYes! They’re called climatebase now, and I landed at my current job through them. Very smart folks running that organization, highly recommended!
- TheCapeGreek 6y agoI know HN skews mostly from the USA, but after being subscribed to that site for a while I found very few remote jobs (and usually requiring the ability to work in the US).
- clydethefrog 6y agoMonitor the comments in this thread and you have your answer.
- hyko 6y agoClimate change is too big an issue to be solved by entrepreneurs. We have to create a business environment where climate solutions can be unambiguous economic winners, which is the job of government.
- blub 6y agoIt seems that this attitude bordering on delusion of being able to change the world for the better is a defining feature of entrepreneurs. I'd say it's the entrepreneurs which are crazier, even if some of them at least succeed at changing the world and only a tiny subset for the better.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]