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Comment by spodek | Hacker News Reader

What will you do about your contribution to this effect?

Everyone seems to want to wait for government regulation or something to change other people's behavior. Governments will follow what voters do.

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TL;DR: I don't know what to do and think most people don't, too.

I mean, private emissions, I heard, are insignificant compared to industrial. But then, industry exists because, in the end, we consume stuff. Right?

I'm sincerely hoping for someone who I can trust to explain to me how I'm making the world a worse place by purchasing, let's say, a car, and that as if I'm a 5-year-old. Not because I'm easily bored, but because (I accept,) I'm still ignorant and I need to start from the beginning.

A meteorologist (I just googled "scientist who studies weather", not a native speaker here) telling me "hey, the temperatures will increase by X degrees and the sea level will increase by X meters so... we are doomed" makes me want to do something but I can't even begin to predict the effects.

Also there are these false data generated by (IMHO, crazy) deniers but while easy to catch on its own, they have this side effect of creating many false positives while trying to identify fake data in this ocean called the internet.

What can a technologist do about climate change? (2015)

http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/

TL;DR: better energy production/transportation methods, data-driven tools for finding bottle necks in production systems, information distribution for infrastructure and coordination and energy demand, making better tools to collect, analyze, present, and change minds.

Basically the same talent and sweat we put into getting 1% more click through rate to put on the slide deck for the next VC funding pitch, except, you know, put towards not having our grandkids die. You know, that kind of stuff.

"If any 'founders' out there want to 'disrupt' our 401 ppm atmospheric CO2, or 'moonshot' ocean acidification, that would be cool"

"minimum viable planet"

OK, I started reading this and came back shortly to say it's amazing. I will probably read it more than once and keep it as a reference. OTOH, maybe it doesn't say too much about the impact of the mentioned actions, I'll just have to read, I guess.

Private emissions are definitely significant, and it's important that people know this. Food, heating/cooling and transportation are the big household ones. And they're straightforward to make improvements in.

Let me be more clear: What would be the impact of 1 million people switching to using bikes from cars to go to work for a year, in terms of, hmm, well-being of polar bears (animals for which I care deeply, like other animals)?

Everyone is telling me to do this and that, and that it's important. No one seems to be talking about the impact.

Being a software-developer, I know there is a limit to how much you can dumb-down the things. I probably wouldn't be able to explain two's complement to a five-year-old. But, I see the importance of the issue and we need to begin somewhere.

Transportation is the big one, and the one most people are least willing to cut down on.

Unfortunately the biggest impacts you can have are to stop flying, and stop driving a car, the suggestion of which many people don't react well to.

> and the one most people are least willing to cut down on.

Getting people to eat less meat or meat from less worse emitters or upgrading existing buildings to low emissions for heating does not seem that much easier.

Anyway, you can't fix the problem with a single change.

People are set in their ways, but there's a continuous rollover of generations. Current young adults are much less into cars, air travel and meat. (Older people do make these changes too, but it's slower).

But how much? For example, what would be the impact of a 20% reduction in traffic congestion, made possible say by workplaces moving to a 20% remote workforce (or every employee works from home one day per week on average). What if we were to reduce our flights by 10% or 20%? These are things that people can actually envision doing. How much is needed in order to actually help? Maybe only a 5% reduction is needed (one day home in 20)?

I'm sincerely hoping for someone who I can trust to explain to me how I'm making the world a worse place by purchasing, let's say, a car, and that as if I'm a 5-year-old.

I don't follow global warming goes, but I believe the argument goes: the more CO2 there is in the atmosphere, the more people will die, and the more we consume, the more CO2 will be in the atmosphere...

https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=global%20warming...

Numbers are a bit all over the place.

That's fair.

One person on their own can only do so much, so on a personal level "buy as little as you can while staying happy" (or "save as much as you can and retire early") are good things. These are good for individuals even if we are wrong about climate change.

Cars, for example: When you buy a car, the car maker realises there is demand for cars and makes more cars. If you buy cars less often, they makes less of them, putting less CO2 into the air.

Your English is good, by the way. While "meteorologist" is a scientist who studies weather, and "climatologist" is a scientist who studies the climate, even many native speakers get "weather" and "climate" mixed up.

Changing my own behavior won't do anything noticeable. Several billion people need to change their behavior. That's why people want governments to get involved.

When I went vegan in 1991 you couldn't buy soya milk in a supermarket. Now every supermarket has its own brand.

Political agitation moves the Overton Window [1], if you sit back and wait, nothing will happen.

That said, you will need a plan on how a billion Indians can have a fridge and an indoor cooker without impact.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window

Looking at the makeup of CO2 emissions [1] (ignoring methane and other factors) it seems that it makes the most sense to avoid unneccessary heating and electricity consumption (which most people will already do because it's good for your wallet) and cut back on driving (which most people don't). For agriculture and industry, the two big other factors, you're probably right: There's not much a single person can do.

[1]: https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2016-05/global_em...

Agriculture and industry are just producers to your consumption. They produce the meat/dairy and electricity you use. So there is definitely a lot consumers can do by personal choices. But of course regulation is needed too.

There's a lot consumers can do. There's little a consumer can do. Therein lies the difficulty.

> noticeable

Of course you can't save the planet alone. However, researchers did the math and found every ton of CO2 eliminates 3m² of Arctic sea ice. Multiply this with average sea ice thickness (>1m) and start to take care of your personal block of sea ice.

DOI: 10.1126/science.aag2345

What do I have to change in order to save a ton? How much driving is that?

It's how far your car goes on 102 gallons of gasoline.

Edit: 102 US gallons, which are different from UK gallons.

My point is that this is the message that needs to be said. If everyone would try to drive 2000 fewer miles this year, we can make a real difference. Or can we? Or maybe it's only 200 miles per person?

> real difference

Saving the climate should become a sport.

Maximising my MPG rating was a sport for me, until partner crashed the car. I managed 75 MPG (UK gallons) reliably. I sold the replacement car as soon as I could once she moved to California, went back to just cycling (I live in the UK).

You can take responsibility for your actions and how they affect others. No one else can. What you do when others don't know is integrity.

Generations of people saying what you said got us here. Don't you wish they had thought and acted differently?

Wishing doesn't help. Changing my thoughts and actions doesn't change other people's thoughts and actions. Sure, it's bad if everyone thinks this way, but I can't fix that.

This is a standard collective action problem. Haranguing people who point that out doesn't solve the problem.

Well, yes and no. This issue suffers from the tragedy of the commons. If I reduce my emissions significantly it will have zero impact if I'm the only one doing it. The only thing it does is help me feel better about myself and lowers my standard of living. The only way to realistically solve this is collective action and that's what the government is for. I actually think that we also have been to gentle about this topic on general. I'm in favor of sanctions against countries who refuse to lower emissions.

I went and found a job working for a renewable energy company and put solar panels on our roof!

Next up (in whatever order makes more financial sense, probably): electric vehicle, heat pump.

More difficult to change: less flights, less meat for our family.

What about you? :)

> What about you?

Glad you asked:

I am in the middle of a year (to start) without flying. Most people when I ask the last time they went 365 without flying say decades. That was the case for me. I'm learning that flying and happiness have zero correlation.

Haven't eaten meat since 1999, and maybe a few pounds of animal products in the past decade.

Haven't owned a car since 1988.

I live in Manhattan and take maybe 2 or 3 taxi rides a year. I'm even taking the subway and bus less in favor of walking.

Avoid food with packaging, mostly buying from farmers markets and a CSA, to where I empty my landfill garbage 3 or 4 times per year.

Write about these things, mostly on my blog (for example: http://joshuaspodek.com/avoiding-food-packaging or http://joshuaspodek.com/cheetah-extinction-earths-carrying and related links within), and starting to in my Inc. column (for example: http://www.inc.com/joshua-spodek/leonardo-dicaprio-martin-sc...)

Generally avoiding accumulating less stuff.

Developing relations with people at Columbia's earth science departments to see about developing leadership courses there to help the people most knowledgeable about the science to become more influential.

"What can a technologist do about climate-change":

http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/

Personally, I've accepted our apocalyptic doom, and decided to increase my carbon footprint as much as possible. Some people just want to watch the world burn. Literally.

Some things we could reconsider contributing:

- rendering too much on client devices

- embedding too many other websites in websites

- slow manual updates that could be automatic background tasks

- keeping devices awake by phoning home excessively

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