Ask HN: Who Here Is Working to Fix the Environment?
So yesterday I posted this (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20339865) and it seems that a lot of people are very pessimistic about the future state of the environment. And today I've learned that insects are dying at an alarming rate (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20352002). It seems like every day there is a new piece of bad news.
Well...
Are there any people who are actively working on fixing the environment? It seems like if we don't do anything then in ten or twenty years (my lifetime!) there will be a "crunch" where something truly horrific may happen. In one sense, fixing the environment is the only issue we have because if we don't fix it then nothing else will matter in the face of how horrible the consequences will be.
How are you fixing it? What technologies are you using? How did you get into this? I'd like to know everything and anything people on HN are doing that's geeky to solve this thing.
198 comments
[ 4.8 ms ] story [ 227 ms ] threadBut soon we may not have that privilege
i hadn't, until today, realized that it was a Neoliberal thing.
thanks for your comment.
https://mises.org/library/meaning-market-democracy
My background is growth/marketing, having worked at startups, Uber and Google. I'm quitting Google end of summer to work on climate change full-time, but right now I'm helping out 2 tech communities [1][2] and one startup working with open-source projects, calculating people's CO2 emissions in a privacy-by-design manner[3].
After the summer, I hope to join that startup full-time (if they want me ;-) ) and help also in politics with the Citizen's Climate Lobby[4] and their effort to pass a Carbon Fee and Dividend legislation globally.
Even if you don't work full-time on it, there are plenty of ways you can help.
[1]https://climateaction.tech/
[2]https://techimpactmakers.com/
[3]https://www.tmrow.com
[4]https://citizensclimatelobby.org/
The only thing you as an individual can do is try to pressure your leaders for large scale government activity.
https://rebellion.earth/
https://www.sunrisemovement.org/
To answer your question "Are there any people who are actively working on fixing the environment?"
Basically, to a rounding error, the answer is "No". You can see for yourself here: https://climateactiontracker.org/ National responses range from "critically insufficient" to merely "insufficient".
https://unop.uk/get-involved-in-democracy/
Of course. That doesn't mean technology (this forum's expertise) can't be used as part of a solution though.
> The only way we stand a chance is by making sweeping, society-wide changes.
Sounds like something that we could attempt to throw various technologies at; for instance, I'm sure many users of this site are experts in technology for helping spread awareness (i.e. ad/marketing tech), enabling/improving collaboration (e.g. consensus building for legislators), coordination (e.g. for activists), etc.
> The only thing you as an individual can do is try to pressure your leaders for large scale government activity
If OP was asking what they, as some random Internet user, could do, then perhaps your pessimism would be right. I don't think that's too relevant for what OP is actually asking though, which is what's being done by HN users (a large number of technical experts, wielding disproportionately more power than the average citizen due to expertise in, and stewardship of, technologies with large amplifying effects, like the Web, social media, etc.)
Based on my personal experience on this forum, the primary thing HN users are doing about the climate crisis is speculating about how scifi technologies might save us, and using that as an excuse to avoid getting involved in the messy business of mass politics.
There's a strong libertarian and techno-utopian streak here that doesn't take kindly to being told that they're not going to save the world with a webapp, and we need major government intervention.
(And now I've been rate-limited so I won't be able to reply any more)
Does anyone have any suggestions?
* Those which directly aim to reduce or sequester emissions
* Those which could deploy technologies to lower their emissions and save money
You can find examples of these in literally every sector. This is a blessing because it means there is a ton of demand. It's also a curse since it can be hard to pick a niche if you don't happen to have some kind of specialization (e.g. transportation or agriculture).
I'm actively looking for clients that fit both of those categories. I'd be happy to chat about collaborating or any of this if you reach out via email (see profile).
Unfortunately he has been struggling to find work other than research and so I stepped in to try and help. I would be very interested to hear from anybody who has found gainful employment working to save the environment, especially if they are working in the IT/Geospatial sector.
Personally, shopping only as needed basis and no gas cars in the household.
Future to perfect greenhouse farming, designing and retro fitting houses which are as efficient as humanely comfortable.
On one hand, having children will contribute to the overall higher consumption, meaning the environment eventually will suffer from the increase in population.
On the other hand, having children and raising them as good as you can, can offset the impact (or even have a better impact on climate change as a whole, even though the increase of consumption) other people have on the environment, if you "train" your child(s) to care for the environment.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaya_identity
We need fundamental cultural and policy change. The question is how to achieve it. Despite popular believe I don't think voting matters. Think about any significant societal change in the last century or so. Women suffrage, civil rights movement, anti-war movement, gay rights. None of these were initiated by the parliament. They all started as a popular rebellion and direct action.
So what are we to do.
- Change your lifestyle. Less flying, driving, meat.
- Divest fossil
- Get out of the techno bubble and get your hands dirty with direct action and civil disobedience. e.g. [1]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
[1] https://rebellion.earth/
I dunno, it's like life's main directive to reproduce, and not having children means than in 30 years we have a mostly aging population and no youngsters. And besides, there are people that already have kids and to those I say: cut back on mean and dairy.
Sure, but that's a very black-and-white take.
Firstly, those things aren't in opposition; it's trivial to advocate both.
Secondly, "telling someone that wants to have a kid that they shouldn't" is picking a losing battle. In many (most? all?) societies having children is effectively the default: choosing not to have kids is an explicit opt-out, that many people might not even consider. Lots of activities can help tip the scales a little, in a much more effective way, such as:
- Challenging everyday assumptions that everyone wants kids (e.g. if asked "when are you planning to have kids", pointing out that the "when" is presumptuous; or if asked "do you want a boy or a girl", what about "neither"; etc.)
- Sticking up for those who don't have/want kids, if getting pressured e.g. by their family (I get this a lot)
- Normalising childlessness in media by having more characters who just-so-happen to not want kids (often it's only ever mentioned in order to set up those characters to later either have kids, or express regret at not doing so; e.g. the Wilsons in the US Dennis the Menace come to mind)
- Promoting adoption and fostering, including possible changes to the rules. I've had many conversations where adoption is dismissed due to the difficulty of the process, which I can imagine is pushed more by the risk of (hopefully) rare abuses than by the reality of (unfortunately) common day-to-day struggles.
- Rebalancing the economics, to financially disincentivise having children (and certainly to avoid children being an income stream for prospective parents). Possibly have more existing support going directly to the children, e.g. via school-provided facilities, rather than as cash to parents.
- Increasing availability of contraception, and removal of associated myths/taboos (Thailand seems to be a good example here https://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/88/6/10-010610/en ). Ideally reproduction would be opt-in (as with IUDs, for example): creating a human life is too important to happen "accidentally". Research and development of a male equivalent to the contraceptive pill would also be very important.
- Removing taboos around vasectomies and sterilisation. I've heard many stories of doctors refusing to carry out these procedures, or making patients jump through extraneous hoops to get it done (e.g. it's brought up a lot on https://www.reddit.com/r/childfree ). Here's another Thai example https://www.upi.com/Archives/1983/12/06/Thailand-gives-free-...
- Encouraging closer-knit communities. Whilst technology like social media has made it easier to find and communicate with like-minded individuals, it also makes it easier to avoid human contact with those around us. For many, child-rearing instincts might be satisfied by helping to raise children who don't happen to share their genes. Perhaps technology could help with this, e.g. for organisation at a local level.
These are things off the top of my head. "Telling someone that wants to have a kid that they shouldn't" is a woefully simplistic dismissal.
However, I think that giving up meat is a lot easier for people than not having children (reproducing is a pretty strong biological imperative). It also has the possibility to amplify your impact by encouraging those around you to make the same switch - that way you can impact many many lives.
Interesting that you find it taboo - talking about "population control" is definitely taboo in my opinion because it sounds like eugenics or forced sterilisation etc etc, but I've never heard people respond badly to personal choices to not have children.
Just watch them delete this post and ban me.
In the long term it means that you don't pass your set of values onto the latter generations.
> consciousness about the environment does not transmit through genes
Intelligence, conscientiousness and empathy are all heritable to a degree. More importantly, your kids will likely inherit most of the socioeconomic factors that made you become environmentally-conscious in the first place. And I'm assuming you want the next generations to be as eco-friendly as possible.
I'm also incredibly skeptical of the environmental impact of antinatalism among hardcore environmentalist first-worlders vs the exploding birth rates across the globe. It just seems performative and hairshirty.
Education, activism, involvement in the community, publishing research, etc. are all effective ways to pass on values to future generations. Nudging the overton window of society is arguably a much more effective way to pass on values.
> Intelligence, conscientiousness and empathy are all heritable to a degree.
Nowhere near enough to keep up with technological and societal change.
> More importantly, your kids will likely inherit most of the socioeconomic factors that made you become environmentally-conscious in the first place. And I'm assuming you want the next generations to be as eco-friendly as possible.
Those kids would need to have a net-positive contribution to the environment for this argument to make any sense. It also seems mostly irrelevant to the argument about whether to have kids or not: any virtue you ascribe to those potential kids can also be ascribed to anyone else: if those kids could be a net-positive to the environment, why not the friends and neighbours that are already here? If influencing others in similar socioeconomic situations is beneficial, we can find plenty of those people around already. And so on.
> exploding birth rates across the globe
Do you have a source for this? All the evidence I've seen says the exact opposite (e.g. the UN's data and projections for this century show birth rates declining across every continent https://population.un.org/wpp/DataQuery )
Edit: I have 2 children (we went through 8 rounds of IVF for those 2 buggers), would probably have more if we could but funds are tight now. Though, we might adopt. Luckily insurance paid most of it back when I wasn't freelancing. So, I say this even though I don't have a huge family of 6+ kids, but if you're up to the challenge I salute you!
Adoption is also admirable and while you're not passing genes, you can pass on values and your ethical systems to a new generation so if you want to help the environment by not having kids but also change things generationally --think about fostering and adoption. We used to be foster parents and it'll change your entire viewpoint on life, it's hard though when the kids are reunified with the family even though mom and dad are still doing drugs... lots of heartbreak there, but it's worth it for the difference it makes.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
If by "we" you're referring to those like the parent comment (no pun intended) who aren't having children, it's presumably to help save the environment for those children that will grow up in the world that we leave behind.
If by "we" you're referring to a hypothetical scenario where the entire human species stops reproducing and hence ceases to exist, then I think you're in the wrong place because (as far as I'm aware) this is a discussion about actual people taking individual actions in the real world.
Why?
> I can't believe it's even entertained.
Why?
> I meant it in both ways.
As I implied above, the second situation is utter lunacy. This seems to be nothing more than concern trolling about the perils of underpopulation.
Who says? We can be anything we want to (within the laws of physics).
> We have an innate biological drive to reproduce and a core part of the human/animal experience.
True, but the existence of contraception, sterilisation, celibacy, etc. are all examples that such "innate biological drives" are pretty trivial to avoid.
> Its like asking people not to breathe or not to eat.
Breathing not so much, since it's automatic (with a manual override). Eating is comparable, and is also a drive that many people successfully override for rational reasons (AKA "a healthy diet", rather than the "innate biological drive" to eat as much fat and sugar as possible). It's also something that public health efforts are trying to help us cut down on.
You don't have kids because of the physical act. That's the how not the why.
"Industrial farming is tapping underground aquifers faster than they can be replenished, threatening global water supplies. Nitrates from fertilizers contaminate drinking water. Agricultural runoff rich in nitrogen and phosphorus has created hundreds of dead zones in coastal waters around the world. And then there's the toll taken on the Earth from the sheer number of human beings we can now feed." https://phys.org/news/2014-06-humans-derailed-nitrogen-track...
"He concluded that 40 percent of the global population in 2000 were dependent on food production from synthetic fertilizers." https://ourworldindata.org/how-many-people-does-synthetic-fe...
I don't think telling the poor to have less children is very appropriate since the rich are the ones who pollute the most, even when they are environmentally-conscious. However, we should be aware that it is technology that is sustaining population growth, and that technology is emitting entropy into the systems life on earth depends on. It should be scaled back.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Interesting take. Does menstruation strike you as not fundamentally different from murder? Do you consider ejaculation to be fundamentally the same as genocide of hundreds of millions of living people?
> for whom are you even saving the environment, exactly? Obviously not your children, if you don't have any.
Presumably the billions of people who live, and will live, all over the Earth?
I honestly can't tell if this is sarcasm, trolling, or a genuine disregard for the lives of every who doesn't share 50% of your genes.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Where I agree with you is that we need cultural change first, and THEN technological change should follow. A key change, for example, would be reconstructing American foreign policy so it does not depend on controlling Middle East oil supplies to maintain our economic dominance. This holds in place our use of fossil fuels. We need to replace fossil fuel technology with something else, but before that we need to replace our political dependence on controlling fossil fuels with something else.
Thnx, this is a useful clarification. I didn't mean to come across as an anti-technologist.
1. Knowledge. Making sure the intellectual richness of humanity is accessible to everyone. The technology is already there but the rent-seekers keep subverting progress through technology, law, and (pseudo-)morality. To address the issue of morality, we should promote the distinction between property and possession, and make sure property is seen as something that is subjected to the interest of society. Hence, why we need limits on intellectual property and other forms of property.
2. Commoditization. This goes back to knowledge from the previous point, but also to complexity in general. The idea is that certain products get turned into commodities (products with uniform standard characteristics that don't require much consumer choice) while others get turned away from being commodities. The process is currently too driven by ignorance/incompetence and greed, and I don't think it is easy to say where one ends and the other starts. So people end up needing three different computers (laptop, TV, cellphone) instead of one that can be adapted to different situations. Or they end up having to buy the entire computer instead of fixing one replacing one part of it. Technology sometimes does not integrate well. The need for choice ends up being created where it should not be. Capital ends up rewarding the unproductive, and the producers find ways to escape the effects of competition. Advertisement very much cultivates the element of ignorance that is behind this process. All the fake choices of food in the supermarket made out of different combinations of the same low quality commoditized ingredients. Meanwhile crops are becoming all the same (3/4 loss of diversity according to the FAO), at the expense of nutrition and adaptability. Life is becoming uniform in order to adapt to the machine. It's a long subject, if anyone knows of a good author that treats it I'd be interested in reading her.
3. Debt. The debt based economy introduces a paradox, by which too little scarcity is dangerous, because it means that products cannot be converted into enough money to pay the banks. This is clearly a big obstacle to progress. In practice it makes us act as if employment and economic growth are more important that health and soil. We need to come up with ways that allow people exchange the fruits of their work without relying on debt or on so-called liquidity. The availability of goods and service should be enough to allow their exchange not some abstract concept of "health" of the financial system. I think digital currencies can move us in this direction.
In summary let us make the economy work by taking into account the ecosystem, rewarding work and creativity above capital ownership. In the last two points, I see a lot of opportunity for promoting closer human and ecologic relations at the local level.
Any hints on divesting from fossil fuels with index funds? It seems that the choice is between underweighing high carbon emitters (e.g. MSCI World low carbon leaders) or removing companies with fossil reserves (e.g. MSCI World ex-fossil fuels). The first will still keep you invested in all companies, even Exxon-Mobil, and the second ignores CO2 emissions. I'm looking for better options.
The program I work for is OOI, where the goal is to have long term consistent readings of the ocean. We are funded by the NSF and deploy and recover over 20 moorings with sensors on the surface, along the riser column and at the anchor.
Before this job I made video games.. this is far more gratifying. I am redesigning and upgrading the electronics in the buoys one section at a time and already there has been a large improvement in uptime. Oceanography is a fairly new science and there are a lot of opportunities to make collecting and analyzing data easier and more accessible.
I bike to work along the ocean for 7 miles, take a small boat for 25 minutes, then another 3 miles along the ocean.
We always need engineers.. https://careers.whoi.edu/
My best advice to live with a lighter footprint? try to be more vegan, take the bus, bike more, vote.
* Understand the science behind the causes and effects that make up the broad problem of "climate change" * Learn as much as I can about current policies, technologies, strategies, etc * Read well-regarded books on the above topics (e.g. I just finished Koomey's [Cold Cash, Cool Climate][0]) * Observe/follow leaders in the space * Meet people who know and care about protecting our environment * Find solutions where I can contribute my software expertise to the greatest effect
I'm just scratching the surface but there is light at the end of the tunnel. There is a tremendous amount of work being done across major sectors like energy, transportation, building, manufacturing, etc. that is both fulfilling and well-funded.
I'd be delighted to connect with any other HN'ers who want to collaborate or chat. Email in my profile
[0]: https://www.amazon.com/Cold-Cash-Cool-Climate-Science-Based/...
Started https://techimpactmakers.com/ to bring together tech workers to communicate and collaborate around the climate issue.
Launched https://climatechoice.co/ a website which educates you about how you can help prevent earth’s climate breaking down today.
Announced The Climate Fixathon. The world's first online hackathon for makers to help fix the climate. Full launch next week - https://fixathon.io
My long-term goal is to figure out how to do this full-time.
It would be good to know if you come across any advice for this (e.g. specialised job boards, etc.)
So far I've managed to avoid jobs I consider to be less ethical (e.g. developing proprietary software, high frequency trading, etc.)
Now I'm wondering how I can do something that's a net positive, rather than just keeping the cogs turning in some indifferent corporate machine...
I might take issue with some of what they consider high-impact (e.g. imagining how many friendly AGIs can dance in a pin-sized server) but it's a place to start at least.
The most obvious way is to think of an idea that helps fight climate change but also makes money (easier said than done).
Also been considering if there is the potential to gain suppose on Patreon or similar from the community for working on climate action projects like some open-source developers do.
You could try to contribute to that or get hired to work on that project or something similar.
We've also bought some land that had been tropical forest, but was recently cleared for plantation purposes, and we've bio-chared it with waste charcoal scraps from the prevalent nearby charcoal kilns (about 3 tons of carbon sequestered, for the 0.3ha), and replanted it with a sort-of permaculture mix of various flowering fruit trees (we'll add some beehives in a couple of years), and longer-term restorative hardwoods.
We also bought another 5ha, waiting the same treatment, and we've encouraged others to do the same. 2 takers so far, for another 3ha. Biochar is recommended as 1-5kg/m2 so 1ha means sequestering 10tons of carbon
Assuming the science works (and it seems from online sources that it does - we'll see), I think this kind of biochar carbon sequestration could be quite a big help, and it's a very low-tech solution, which also improves yields, so doubly effective for forest.
Of course this is perhaps less-good than if the forest had just been left intact, but what to do?
The idea is to show that this can be a source of income or simple deliciousness for local people, dependent on the health and diversity of the local flora.
We'll see if that makes sense when it comes to it in a couple of years.
I'll consider it, if it encourages others, though I'm no expert.
Next 10 years will be a huge battle between little ppl and corporations. Because single person actions do not matter more than 1%
Energy company execs obviously don't want to go bust but are probably happy building solar farms rather than oil wells if that's what pays best.
I really wish I could get one of these people to liten to me. I'm not a CS type, I'm not an ivy league degree holder (or a degree holder at all), I didn't sell my first company for eleventy-seven mibillion dollars, so I'm not welcome at the table.
I wish I could get one of these individuals, or several of them, or even a company, to spin off a non-profit to start hardcore investigating what is going on, what the immediate issues are, what the projected issues are 10-20 years out, and what we need to start doing. if OpenAI can get 1 billion dollars in pledges to build not-so-mean sky net, can we get 10 million, 100 million, pledged to you know... saving the flippin' planet?!
Seriously. Sama, throw me at this.
Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Dustin Moskovitz, Jan Koum, Travis Kalanick, Jack Dorsey, Google, Laurene Powell Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Steve Ballmer, Reid Hoffman, Facebook, Google, Uber, Airbnb, Stripe, Dropbox, Coinbase, Palantir, WeWork... do you want to keep your customers, your gardeners, your drivers, your personal chefs, your dog walker, do you want to see your bloodline continue with grandchildren or great grandchildren? Then wake up, we've got to do something, we're listing to port and if we don't act fast it'll be 'all hands, abandon ship!'
Let's get out there and talk to farmers, climatologists, scientists, researchers, grad students, material scientists, oil/solar/wind/geothermal engineers, agricultural science people. I'll go spend a year, two years, going from university to university-company to company-skype call to skype call, talking to as many of these people as possible so we can come up with a solid look at the issue and then start working on a battle plan.
>It seems like if we don't do anything then in ten or twenty years (my lifetime!) there will be a "crunch" where something truly horrific may happen.
Personally I feel that if we aren't at least countering the greenhouse gasses we are emitting annually 100%, then we will be up the creek without a paddle and will need to immediately start to focus our efforts on creating 'blueprints' for rebuilding civilization from scratch as a backup (maybe gold plated titanium etched sheets on how to build basic machines and general engineering/physics/etc information in caches around the world) and throw everything we've got into long-term energy and indoor growing technology. I don't think humanity will go extinct but I think if we haven't at least ceased adding more greenhouses gasses 5-10 years from now then we probably will not be able to gain control of it before it spirals (thawing marshes/permafrost releasing methane pockets etc) and we will then need to just focus on ensuring that over the coming decades, or even century, that some record exists for our children or even great grand children to rebuild in the event we collectively lose the know-how to do a lot that we've accomplished because we were too busy trying to survive radical changes to weather and massive food shortages.
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Even if a company made viable/affordable cold fusion TODAY it would take decades to replace all of the current power plants assuming zero increase in demand as there are over 60,000 power plants in the world and just since the year 2000 the world has more than DOUBLED the power generation from coal plants (China alone is building some 300 coal plants around the world as investments and receives something along the liens of 70% of their power from coal). The concrete alo...
https://www.homerenergy.com/
Suddenly people mention how environmentally friendly in being, so I guess I am.... really I just want to make mead and like honey
Bee keeping is fairly easy, but will cost an initial investment of maybe $500. Technology includes wood you build a box out of, some wax guidance for the combs, and some aluminum flashing for the roof. Oh, and bees, which they can ship anywhere in the US via USPS
The hope is of course that this results in better yields with less damage, but the Jevons paradox has already been mentioned and it's hard to say what the effect will be in the long run.
Personally I've just decreased material and meat consumption very significantly, and I try to be careful with flying (but need to do so occasionally for my work).
I'm not too hopeful, the main economic systems are fully based on constantly increasing production (which mostly has a physical basis) and effective action would require significant international collaboration (the world does not seem to be getting more united). We will see - maybe once things really start going wrong and we get into crisis mode effective action suddenly becomes possible.
We are based in Bavaria, Germany, and focus on sustainable frontend technologies for websites and webapps as well as on green cloud computing.
Right now we are working on a web application that's analysing websites focused on performance and hosting topics. This web app generates a sustainability scoring based on several factors and will be deployed this month.
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