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Comment by ngoilapites | Hacker News Reader

I am 10+ years in the Climate arena and it surprises me that most innovations ignore human behaviour: I see a gap.

I see two folk types here: the Climate scientist and the carbon life cycle Analyst.

How come social sciences (I am in particular hinting at behavioral research) have not been found yet a source of value?

My goal is to make it painfully easy to live in communities where you can walk, bike, or take public transport to all of your daily needs, which is a completely low tech problem with a huge social science component.

The first step, I think, is making it obvious when purchasing a home whether you will be able to do this yourself.

Want to collaborate? I have a pilot project going for Ireland and am unsure where to take it - www.gaffologist.com (it's buggy AF but it got me my own home!)

This could be an idea: to expand this work and map neighbourhoods according to their "affordances" aka opportunities for a sustainable or climate friendly living. I'd love to engage myself on something like this, I will drop an email after hols, keep it strong!

Thanks! Would love to do same but no contact info in your bio.

what is "painfully easy"?

You know, that's a good point. I suppose I mean "painfully obvious". Like, so easy/obvious to figure out where to live that it's the easiest choice, not something you have to spend ages trying to tease out from existing tools.

I had the same thought. I’m in energy infra design so I care mainly about tech that helps me implement renewables easier.

For consumers, simple tools to help them make green decisions would be useful (LCA as you mentioned). Im interested, what kind of behavioural research applications do you mean?

I imagine being able to create new behavioural trends linked to emerging business value.

I read serious PR literature and see parallels with the emerging literature on social tipping dynamics.

How could this social dynamics be materialised? How to steer them while creating value?

For consumer purchases of disposable goods you can use a browser plugin like choosefinch.com/ (disclaimer - I work here).

Thanks for the suggestion! Out of interest, do you know if there are any plans to make the impact predictions user-specific? E.g I live in a very isolated city, so transport considerations dictate for some products.

We're very, very early and this is valuable feedback, thanks!

We do indeed have some plans for personalization.

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