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Comment by neuroticfish | Hacker News Reader

Climate change should be anyone's first answer.

This is a big one, but it’s almost too big. Perhaps better broken down into smaller (though still big) chunks: innovate in renewable energies, spur higher participation rates in local elections, research ways to deplete gases harmful to the ozone, etc

We can't make real progress on a lot of other problems unless that is addressed. There's always calls for more housing in the cities, but it's going to be real hard for the cities to support growing populations if transportation infrastructure becomes harder to maintain, if coastal land is encroached by the sea, if water supplies can't be secured. If large-scale agriculture isn't sustainable, cities won't be sustainable.

Maybe we can reduce our reliance on cities. The main thing we need is ways for average joe to make a living outside of the city. Remote working would help. Maybe those dying shopping malls become shared office spaces, and you pick your office and your company separately. You get the social side with people working for other people in the same room!

Sure that is part of the solution. But when everyone is shouting for more housing in already densely-built cities, it's hard to tell everyone, move to somewhere where there's still more space (though that is happening to some degree, just by basic economic force).

If you're a software developer, how would you go about doing this if you have no skills related to any of the areas that can have some impact on climate change? I've been a developer for a few years and have no hard science background. Should I go back to school to try and learn this sort of thing? Go into politics in some capacity? Keep working where I am and spend my free time and cash on climate change initiatives? Something else?

Software developers have tremendous potential for leverage at their disposal.

Some time ago I talked to a software developer who was both impressed by non-profit efforts by NGOs to combat Ebola in Sierra Leone and depressed at the same time because he thought that as a software developer (and not a medical professional, for instance) he couldn't contribute anything to such efforts.

I told him that a huge part of that specific effort in Sierra Leone was a piece of EMR software that allowed physicians and nurses to efficiently capture and retrieve patient data without being able to depend on a reliable local network infrastructure.

I'm certain similar opportunities exist with climate change, too.

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