Ask HN: What are you doing about climate change? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What are you doing about climate change?

15 pointsmanx44 comments

I use some of my limited free time to work on different scalable collective intelligence approaches: - https://felix.unote.io/collective-intelligence - https://github.com/canonical-debate-lab/paper - https://www.societylibrary.org/ - https://felix.unote.io/hacker-news-scores

We need radical changes right now. But every potential solution seems so far away in the future, that it's difficult to believe in them.

I'd like to get inspired and see what you're doing about the situation.

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This is difficult to put across politely and constructively to people who are making an effort but unless you are influencing corporate, national and international policy, you aren't doing anything significant to help.

I know there is the whole "be the change you want to see" but there is also a culture of overestimating your own impact. The largest effect of your efforts is to make you feel good about yourself and your own life.

I'm not wasteful at all and have a small carbon footprint but I don't think that any of those choices are because of climate change. I'm also alarmed when I see people use climate change to justify big life decisions. Deciding to not have children is a completely valid life choice. But I think that there is a serious problem with your personal priorities and perception of the world if you want children and don't have them because of climate change.

"be the change you want to see"

Be the change by taking political action. I also like to donate to projects every month.

Fun fact, BP created the term "carbon footprint" as a way to distance people's perceptions of the true polluters of the earth, counties and corporations, away from them and onto individuals.

https://mashable.com/feature/carbon-footprint-pr-campaign-sh...

You can't tell Oil companies to stop producing oil, if as a consumer you still drive a gasoline car that uses tons of oil. Both the supply and the demand need to be tackled. As long as we keep importing cheap plastic crap from China, factories will keep producing them.

- I don't own a car. I take public transport or a bike

- My house is very very well insulated.

- I don't use gas. I cook on induction and I heat my house with rest heat from industry.

- When I fly, I compensate my CO2 (through the airline... if that REALLY compensates the CO2, I doubt. But it's a start).

- I don't have kids.

- I try to eat less meat. I love meat, but I found meat replacements to be pretty decent too in many cases.

- I also try to reduce food waste. I cook a lot with HelloFresh which gives you precisely what you need.

- I try to minimize plastic usage and bring my own bags.

- I vote for parties that try to implement a more aggressive green energy transition.

- All appliances in my house are A (or higher) energy label.

I don't know what else to do. I feel like I do the maximum I can and I'm not being a big burden on the planet.

I switched my heating to electric, which I find costs me less than heating with oil since I can lower the heat in individual rooms. My state was powered by nuclear energy and is now powered by hydroelectric. If there were $5000 EV's available in the USA I'd buy one immediately. 60 mile range and 25mph max speed would handle 95% of my vehicle needs. I don't use propane for cooking or heating water any more either, switched both of those to electric (and I always hated having a huge gas bomb sitting next to the house). Eventually I'd like to switch most of the house to solar power, probably not for heat, but air conditioners can be run on solar. I've been playing with a few hundred watts of solar to see what it can do, may soon convert a room to run completely on solar. I've made some efforts to divest my 401k from oil based energy and encourage renewables. All my new yard care tools are electric/battery based. Electric is the future so start moving everything to it now.

You probably already know it, but electric heating is very inefficient. You could probably save lots on heating by installing downhole heat exchangers. Insulation can also reduce the energy required for heating. Where I live they are adding insulation to newly renovated apartments.

Judging by the fact it's costing me less I'd say it is more efficient than my old oil heating system where I did not have individual room control. The conversion of electricity to heat is extremely efficient, close to 100%. If there were small heat pumps I could install per room I might consider that to increase efficiency, but all the ones I see for sale are big and high capacity and a pain to install myself (having to charge them with a gas). It would be great if there were smaller room scale units that just required a simple hole drilled to the outside and came pressurized with a simple snapfit connection to connect the two pressurized halves. Or maybe charging such a system with gas could be made simpler using a built in pressure regulator and reservoir. I looked into downhole heat exchangers and I can't afford to install one and even if I could it wouldn't pay itself off within my remaining lifetime. My house is already fairly well insulated.

I think there are large room diy heat pumps. "diy mini split heat" found me this [0] for example.

Also, depending on your hackerness, you could adapt window air conditioners.

From what I've seen, solar PV for heat only really makes sense if you're using a heat pump. But solar thermal for heat can be good, though. http://builditsolar.com has a number of DIY heating projects for X,000 USD in materials.

[0]: https://hvacdirect.com/perfect-aire-12-000-btu-22-seer-quick...

Veganism. Bicycling, no car, no airplane travel. Joining protests. Help block coalmines. Going to prison for lorry surfing a fracking lorry. Watch Youtube videos in the worst quality. But we're f*cked.

I don't buy anything new if I can absolutely help it. No more new clothes, pants, shirts, socks, hats, jackets. No more new charging cables. No more new phones, computers, suitcases, carts, notebooks, pens, pencils, jewelry. No more new food if I can get adequate sustenance from fregan fridges, food banks, dumpsters. No more new plates, cups, silverware.

Now that I have seen with my mind's eye how much mind-bogglingly nauseating, horrible activity goes into each of these minute objects, I just don't have the stomach for it anymore.

If you are not afraid of a life-changing realization, I invite you to choose one of these objects which you purchased new and trace its journey before it became yours.

For example, a phone case plus its immediately discarded labeling. It's typically made of some kinds of multiple-component plastic. So, oil is mined, with all the dirt which comes with that. (By dirt I mean hazardous byproducts dumped into the atmosphere and water, biosphere shaved down to make space for all this, water used for running the factory, and all the exponential supporting dirt for the people who are working at the factories, like driving to work, coffee machines at the office, etc.) Then it is transported (diesel) to the refinery, where it is refined, with all the dirt which is involved. Then the components are transported (diesel) to the plastics factory, where it is made into plastic (dirt). Then it is transported (diesel) to the phone case factory, where it is made into phone case (dirt.) The packaging takes a similar, but separate route (lots of diesel and dirt). Then it is combined together and packaged up and transported (more diesel), first to the reseller, then to the seller, then to you, 3 different diesel routes. All along the way, people are performing menial labor for shit pay in hazardous conditions. Finally, it arrives at your doorstep, you tear the packaging off and toss it away, for it to be diesel-transported to the landfille. You probably use the phone case for a year tops and then discard it (diesel, landfill).

Stopped eating beef and fish. Beef because the water usage required is extreme with beef in particular. It takes 12,000 calories of plants to make 1000 calories of beef. Fish because ocean acidification means my grandkids will likely never be able to find non-farmed fish and the fisheries need all the help they can get.

Energy audit at home. Better insulation, buying more efficient appliances, and thermal solar are often WAY better returns on investment than electric solar.

Work from home. Commuting to another building both makes me unhappier, is more expensive, and dumps tons of CO2 into the atmosphere for no reason.

We stopped buying anything new (except non-avoidable stuff like car parts, house parts, etc). All clothes, tools, electronics, house parts which can be used (doors, etc), silverware, dishes, books, sheets, etc is all bought on the local marketplace from people in our city. I visit the scrapyard weekly to pick out things which I use for my workshop or for whatever else that is available there. Could still improve on food, we like meat.

Not eating meat.

Not using crypto currencies.

Not contributing to increase the population of humans.

Nothing really. For a long time, my hunch has been that emissions removal rather than reduction will be key. I think trying to force people around the world to reduce emissions is a losing strategy in the time frame we have. Developing emissions removal technology is needed imo.

Also, I must say that I'm glad the more fanatical vegetarians haven't succeeded in their campaign against meat eaters. I suffer from gastrointestinal issues, and when I'm flaring I temporarily have a very meat-heavy diet because it's easy to digest and nutritious whereas veggies go right through me and worsen symptoms.

You are right. The world was closed for business in 2020 and emissions were down only 7 %. We need to lower emissions by more than 7 % every year but you can only close everything once. Quite baffling that even on HN of all places, where people propose technical solutions for everything, behavioral change is seen as the only way to combat climate change.

No. Climate change is an engineering problem and technology is the solution.

Adaption seems more realistic from an engineering, political, and game theory perspective.

I'm not the only one who agrees - Elon Musk is offering 100M in prizes for carbon removal solutions: https://www.xprize.org/prizes/elonmusk

I don't think there is a lot of people who think behavioral change is the only way to combat climate change. I think it is the "minimal way" to combat it, it is necessary but unfortunately not enough. If we do not change this "always more, don't care for the externalities" mentality, even if we find a solution for global warming, we will hit other planetary limits soon enough.

I'm guessing within the next 10 years the non-sponsored "evil scientist" style geoengineering experiments are going to start. When someone builds the first balloon-floated tube to put particles in the upper atmosphere the world is going to freak out and it's going to be so cool to see what happens.

Nothing.

I've tried to learn about it but I don't know where to start. All the information I find is superficial, aka useless.

The only thing I know with a certain degree of certainty is that I should reduce my meat consumption and I'm trying to apply it. Other than that, there's nothing I can take to the bank. The whole recycling thing seems at first sight like a fraud, but I'm not sure because I don't know how to learn more, so maybe it's not a fraud. Who knows? Only the experts. Who do we trust as experts? I don't know.

Reading a lot about it, which is harrowing on the one hand. On the other, it feels like a necessary first step.

Recent interesting book: Less is More by Jason Hickel https://www.jasonhickel.org/less-is-more - all technological measures etc. will not help if we don‘t also find a way to get rid of the obsession with permanent economic growth.

I don’t own a car. I don’t buy clothes I don’t need (I only have two shorts, two shirts, one pair of flip flops). I buy fresh vegetables and fruits and dried legumes, so avoid most food packaging. I don’t do any online shopping or shipping. I only buy new electronics when mine break (still using MacBook from 2014).

Ideally, once I get the money and family visas figured out, I’d like to live off grid.

Planning to spend the $14K of stimulus/child tax credit from the US gov't on solar for the house. Good opportunity to directly apply gov't money to something beneficial for my kids since we're probably on track for saddling their generation with some significant debt.

Not buying food from supermarkets Eating organic veg and fruits from local suppliers Raw diet No driving car Not buying many new clothes Not buying cosmetics tested on animals

Good on you, but I don't understand how not using cosmetics that are tested on animals has anything much to do with climate change.

Well it doesn't really, but most of these cosmetics tested on animals.like colgate toothpastes or hair shampoos come in plastic and contain loads of chemicals, it's all not natural so i am pretty sure it has it's negative mpact on our environment. All of them go to supermarkets too. Buy cosmetics made of natural ingredients

China causes most of the world's pollution all by itself, so I just never buy Chinease products if I can help it.

Such a lie. Western people (mostly the US, but Europeans also) pollute by FAR the most per person. Whatever China pollutes is mostly _also_ for western people, because they produce most of our crap.

Working remotely instead of commuting. I think that's best contribution most software devs can make.

Calling out the biggest offenders like China is a starting step.

Big in absolute numbers, but the US is way worse per capita.

I’m not just talking CO2. The biggest polluters of plastics in the ocean is S.Asia.

I’d be willing to bet every other metric goes to China and it’s neighbors, to include chemical dumping into waterways etc.

Never going to improve things if we become blindly focused on one single thing, especially as things like dumping trash to the ocean is a lower hanging fruit

Thoughts and prayers.

Shopping less, not having children, eating less meat.

Not much.

I live a fairly simple life and try not to waste things. These things might be beneficial to the climate, but my main reason is that I'm cheap.

I can carry everything I own.

I don't mine crypto!

Currently Nothing.

Holding my farts in.

Not a damn thing!

Some of us are a lot more concerned about economic and opportunity inequality among people who have already been born then about problems created by climate change for those who can afford to create the next generation.

For many of these folks whose debt is keeping them from starting families, they have accumulated medical debt from having to accept higher deductibles on health insurance plans that they can afford to buy, educational debt to earn an over-priced degree at a university that still supports way too many do-nothing administrators, and huge mortgages from being forced to purchase overpriced homes near where they work thanks to the snob-zoning which has been passed in many of these same real-estate markets by the folks who already own homes and have started families, which they often turn around and try to justify in the name of "protecting the environment."

I understand that viewpoint to an extent, but climate change is already causing problems today. It's not a nebulous future thing.

It's also something that looks like it's going to hit some of the poorest parts of the world the hardest in terms of increasing storm severity, flooding, drought, damage to crop yields etc. If you want to tackle economic and opportunity inequality you need to take that into account.

Nothing, and my apartment uses more power than a 5 person household as a single person.

Contributing to it, by driving a semi truck that delivers all the crap and all the essentials that you and I buy, and thereby incentivizing all the climate destroying activities that produce all those products and their raw materials. All the clothes, bikes, cars, car parts, trucks, truck parts, diapers, food, beer, soda, spring water, medicine, books, computers, paper and plastic packaging (recyclable and not, recycled and not) et effing cetera.

Or, reducing it, by using many fewer gallons per freight-pound using one efficient and relatively pollution controlled diesel engine to haul up to 45,000 pounds of freight (and 35,000 pounds of truck plus empty trailer) rather than many smaller vehicles in many more trips.

Or both.

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