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Comment by cableshaft | Hacker News Reader

A bit of an aside, but if we were to want to work on these things as software engineers, what's a good way to do it?

I started looking for a new job recently and I'm considering jobs that work on these problems (not completely certain I want to, seems like a drop in pay and benefits), and so far the best I've been able to find are a couple of jobs in the energy and power industry that aren't really about working on climate change issues directly, it just might give me some domain knowledge for future work.

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The problem is political and cultural, not technical. As long as powerful people want to maintain their power, they're going to exploit the earth for temporary gain.

I understand the greater problem is cultural, but I wouldn't make it very far having a go at politics or being a significant influencer or public opinion. So that leaves the technical.

I'm under no illusion that we are going to make it through the next century (or even the next couple of decades) without some terrible horrible consequences of our collective inaction over the past 50+ years (and continuing today).

I'm just wondering if there's something worth pursuing for my day job that uses my skills and might reduce the damage a tiny bit beyond just my own personal reduction of waste and emissions.

Arguably, the best you can do is be a good and well-paid technical person, and donate money to the people who work professionally to fix the problem.

There are a lot of routes you can take on that. You can give money to political candidates, and political groups, who want to do something about climate change.

You can also donate to organizations working on it. You'll have to research ones taking an approach you prefer, but here are some starting points:

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/12/2/20976180/climat... https://climatestore.com/take-action/get-involved/non-profit... https://donorbox.org/nonprofit-blog/20-global-nonprofits-env...

If you want to give time rather than money, most of these organizations also want volunteers, including technical ones. They've all got systems to maintain.

We are mapping out the carbon emissions of all consumer food products - https://codecheck-app.com/ratings/climatescore/

There is a lot of progress coming also from http://hestia.earth and https://brightway.dev when it comes to calculating the climate impact of individual consumer actions with life-cycle-assessments. Great software technology!

More directly I also really like the work of my colleagues from https://climeworks.com - if you are interested in more actual engineering challenges.

- Make software more efficient, e.g. make GCC output faster binaries, make Linux faster

- Provide updates for old devices to reduce obsolescence

- Become politically active

- Use your money to fund people who are politically active.

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