I've come to think that climate change will be humanity's defining moment, and that we'll all be suffering greatly come mid-to-late-century. I want to do what I can to put my professional skills to use in helping. But I'm not sure where to even begin.
Most of the work in none-industrialised countries have really poor data tracking systems, so that is where we thought we could make the biggest impact. But some of our tools are even starting to see traction in Europe.
There is plenty to do in this field. Unfortunately there is an uphill struggle even educating people that they need to use data to drive decisions, but it is happening. Happy to answer questions.
That means that to seriously get things done soon is going to require government action, and that means politics.
Regardless of whether you lean to the left or the right, register as a Republican and participate in the Republican primaries or caucuses for your local, state, and national offices supporting those Republicans who acknowledge that climate change is a series problem and that the government needs to play an active role in slowing, stopping, or reversing it.
I say register as a Republican, even if you would normally be something more to the left, because right now the Democrats are much more likely to nominate candidates that acknowledge climate change and the need for strong government action. The Republicans do have some people who believe that, but they currently rarely get nominated.
What we need to see is general elections where it is both the Democrat and the Republican that are on the right side of climate change so that no matter which party wins the election we get a government that will do something about the problem.
[1] Generally what most places will see is that bad things that already happen there will very slowly happen a little more often, and get a little more bad. But in many places there will also be good things that start happening a little more often and get a little bit better. It will take a generation or two before these changes have become big enough and frequent enough in most places that it will really be noticeable to the people there that yup, their climate has changed.
If you want to focus reducing impact then for CO2 there are many sources for it in developing nations. The US EPA (quick, archive it before it goes away!) lists these for the US[1]; Electricity (35%), Transportation (32%), Industry (15%), Residential & Commercial (10%), and others at 7%. Any endeavor which is cutting into transportation or electricity generation specifically will be most impactful but there are places like better LED lighting for business (reduce commercial electricity consumption). Pretty well plowed but they can always use the help.
To act on reducing the existing gas levels perhaps the best place will be sequestration exercises. Generally it helps to have a Chemistry background here because many of the sequestration techniques consist of converting CO2 vapor into something that holds on to the Carbon. There are more mechanical solutions (pumping gas into mines) and there are biological solutions (growing plants rapidly and then burying them) as well. From a software perspective I would imagine the biggest use would be control systems software as these are essentially industrial processes that folks are trying to automate.
Finally if you're looking at living with it, then there things like modelling immersion maps for the coastal areas and helping cities plan to migrate to higher land. There are efforts to design more weather tolerant living structures to survive larger and more sustained weather events, and storage and recycling systems to maximize the use of local resources which may become scarce in a different climate.
[1] https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/overview-greenhouse-gases#c...
[1] https://www.wired.com/2015/04/using-smart-satellites-to-moni...
http://www.greensand.nl/content/user/1/files/rog20004.pdf
The idea is you crush and spread silicate rock dust, it produces cations and goes into the ocean, and then reacts with and absorbs carbon from the atmosphere to produce a carbonate mineral that fertilizes ocean life and de-acidifies the oceans.
Requires crushing hundreds of cubic km of rock per year, and spreading the product in damp jungle climates and coastlines.
I was curious about climate change. To start I cut out all the noise. I looked for things I could see, touch, and plug into. Put those tech skills to work! There are plenty of opportunities, where you have the most value is bringing your expertise to bear. Email me: tito@impossiblelabs.io
If you find this topic interesting, join the Google group Climate Change 2.0: A Call to Adventure https://groups.google.com/forum/?nomobile=true#!forum/climat...
This is just a list of (mostly) ill-informed questions rather than "Thought-Provoking Climate Change 2.0 Ideas", and certainly don't answer acabal's question, or the address title of the post.
I think that in reality we will not see people changing behaviors unless and until there are real observable climate changes that are affecting their lives. And even then I have my doubts.
However, our contemporary Republican part uses "anti-regulations" as code for "anti-government, anti-law enforcement", so I doubt carbon tax will get any play.
Given the external costs, big users are being subsidised by everyone else.
Good luck with that.
There's no reason we can't address climate change and have $5 cups of coffee at Starbucks (although I prefer $2 cups of coffee at Dunkin Donuts).
But yeah, you're right, highlighting the Starbucks is a bad plan here.
Highlighting all the ways in which being good for the environment is good for business is definitely a plus.
You may find that high impact solutions are in areas you may not be thinking about but that energize you, like the fact that educating girls beats out rooftop solar power (which is also a very high ranking solution).
Do you happen to know what this kind of work is called? I'd like to find more from other fields and distribute them at my local college.
Of course political activism is available, but the question then is where to push on that front. Enough people are working on awareness, probably not enough are working on amending the UN's Convention on Biological Diversity and London's Convention on Dumping of Wastes at Sea to allow and encourage geoengineering on an international scale in the first place. Something as simple as dumping lots of iron in the ocean ("iron fertilization") could be all we need to do in the short term, but there's a lot of resistance to it. If I were interested in this path I'd focus on removing that resistance politically and/or scientifically.
I'm in it right now. The best thing to do right now is to exert as much political pressure, because half the workplaces you're thinking of joining are in the current administration's crosshairs.
It's easy.
- Stop flying.
- Eat less meat.
- Buy less stuff.
- Use less energy.
Living "virtuously" only changes your own impact. We need to change impact globally.
We need to make jets that run on biofuels or synthetic fuels. We need to change our energy systems to be carbon neutral. We need to help the developing start using carbon neutral technologies directly, without going through a fossil fuel phase.
These are the things that will stop climate change. Changing one's own impact does very little.
What works is "force others to change".
We're not going to solve global warming without forcing everyone to change. It's not a personal problem, and in fact, you can have small-scale cases of large carbon footprint.
It's not a problem if Leonardo DiCaprio is flying a private jet. It's only a problem if a lot of people are flying private jets.
In the case of climate change, austerity living may actually be counterproductive towards convincing others.
The change we need in the world is both technology and attitude.
That's an issue of sustainability, not climate change. Those subjects are related but not interchangeable. I don't have the latest data, but I do recall various biofuels having a greater carbon impact than various fossil fuels a few years ago. If the situation has changed, great. But we need to remember that sustainable resources and climate friendly resources are not necessarily the same thing.
Using 160kwh/month from PG&E for my 600sqft apartment, driving 12 miles/weekday on a mix of compact hatchback and small-displacement motorcycle, and flying round-trip across the country roughly once a year, I apparently have a carbon footprint of 1.59 metric tons.
That's less than 8% the US average, and below the long-term worldwide target of 2 metric tons.
That single trip home for Christmas has more carbon impact (0.63 metric tons) than an entire year of motorcycle commuting (0.49 metric tons)!
I'm also making no deliberate sacrifices or trying at all to live a low-carbon-emissions lifestyle, it just kind of happens by default when you're living in the Bay Area (small dwellings, low HVAC requirements, short drives because the freeway is even worse than public transit for long distances, etc). So... put "live in or near a big city" on that list?
[0] http://calculator.carbonfootprint.com/calculator.aspx?tab=8