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What You Can Do About Climate Change

nytimes.com

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Re: What You Can Do About Climate Change

#21

Post by blurbleblurble »

ThomPete wrote: post #20
blurbleblurble wrote: post #13

Reading this article makes me feel very angry, especially as I look at the authors' background. There are so many things we can do, and these people are telling us that "the winner" is driving brand new fuel efficient cars, hot off the assembly line? What about biking? Walking? What about changing our habits so as not to rely as much on cars in the first place. How about not driving ? There are people who don't drive…

Not driving is not an option in many cases. Starting to bike doesn't solve climate change problems. Not sure how you would plant a raspberry tree in a New York apartment. There is very little the normal person can do about climate change without radically changing the way they live their lives and thats just not an option for most people.

Well the person in New York has the luxury of decent public transportation.

And the person who needs to drive, presumably they live in a suburb or a place with a yard, and they could plant 10 raspberry bushes.

Come on! Enough with the excuses! It's getting me down!

I'm not saying that people should go and sabotage themselves. I'm saying that there are lots of different things that different people can do to upset this situation.

A big one for me is not buying new if at all possible. That goes for computers, cell phones, cars, clothes, etc.

Re: What You Can Do About Climate Change

#22

Post by maxerickson »

verg wrote: post #15

Since many people on HN live in California. The single greatest thing you can do if you live in be an advocate for building more housing in California, especially in locations with public transportation. California has low heating and cooling costs, and existing public transportation networks that can be extended. Look at the difference in per capita carbon emissions between California and say, Texas, a place where m…

I wonder how much the difference in residential heating/cooling really matters.

For example, I looked at natural gas consumption, in Texas industrial use is off the charts, residential is reasonably in line with California (on a per capita basis).

https://www.eia.gov/state/seds/data.php?incfile=/state/seds/...

Of course that is only enough to say that it is necessary to take a closer look, by the time everything is added up it could well be that living in California is substantially better.

Re: What You Can Do About Climate Change

#23

Post by dagss »

awjr wrote: post #19

1) If you have to buy an electric vehicle. 2) Go vegetarian. (Avoid beef if you can't and eat meat less). 3) Stop buying stuff. 4) Repair not replace. 5) Move to an urban environment. 6) Consider going car free. (Walk, Bike, Public Transport, Car clubs). 7) Stop flying. 8) Avoid plastic packaging, or at least any product in packaging that cannot be locally recycled. (Here in the UK I have no idea why we allow food to…

0) Vote for politicians who care about climate change.

Re: What You Can Do About Climate Change

#24

Post by maxerickson »

blurbleblurble wrote: post #13

Reading this article makes me feel very angry, especially as I look at the authors' background. There are so many things we can do, and these people are telling us that "the winner" is driving brand new fuel efficient cars, hot off the assembly line? What about biking? Walking? What about changing our habits so as not to rely as much on cars in the first place. How about not driving ? There are people who don't drive…

Devoting new land to forest is the important bit. Trees have been planting trees for a while now.

I wouldn't be terribly surprised if all the driving around people do on Arbor Day makes the direct effect negative.

Re: What You Can Do About Climate Change

#26

Post by diafygi »

Howdy! I work in cleantech, and I guess it's that time again for a what-are-we-going-to-do-about-it post :)

To start, here's my favorite climate change joke: "They say we won't act until it's too late... Luckily, it's too late!"

==So what can you do about it?==

The biggest thing this article doesn't say that is most relevant to the HN audience is that you can work at a new energy technology company! Our industries are out of the R&D stage and are currently focused on scale and growth[1], and we need as many smart people as we can get. There are lots of companies hiring software engineers.

==How do I find a job fighting climate change?==

I'd recommend browsing the exhibitor and speaker lists from the most recent conference in each sector (linked below). Check out the companies that interest you and see if they are hiring.

    * Energy Storage[2][3]
    * Solar[4][5]
    * Wind[6]
    * Nuclear[7]
    * Electric Utilities[8][9]
    * Electric vehicles[10]
Also, if you're in the SF bay area, I'd recommend subscribing to my Bay Area Energy Events Calendar[11]. Just start showing up to events and you'll probably find a job really quickly.

[1]: https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/22/energy-is-the-new-new-inte...

[2]: http://www.esnaexpo.com/

[3]: https://www.greentechmedia.com/events/live/u.s.-energy-stora...

[4]: https://www.intersolar.us/

[5]: http://www.solarpowerinternational.com/

[6]: http://www.windpowerexpo.org/

[7]: https://www.nei.org/Conferences

[8]: http://www.distributech.com/index.html

[9]: https://www.greentechmedia.com/events/live/grid-edge-world-f...

[10]: http://tec.ieee.org/

[11]: https://bayareaenergyevents.com/

Re: What You Can Do About Climate Change

#27

Post by ThomPete »

blurbleblurble wrote: post #21
ThomPete wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not driving is not an option in many cases. Starting to bike doesn't solve climate change problems. Not sure how you would plant a raspberry tree in a New York apartment. There is very little the normal person can do about climate change without radically changing the way they live their lives and thats just not an option for most people.

Well the person in New York has the luxury of decent public transportation. And the person who needs to drive, presumably they live in a suburb or a place with a yard, and they could plant 10 raspberry bushes. Come on! Enough with the excuses! It's getting me down! I'm not saying that people should go and sabotage themselves. I'm saying that there are lots of different things that different people can do to upset thi…

There are many other reasons why people need to drive than them working in the suburbs and globally even more reasons why biking in a city is far from enough (Just look at some Chinese cities)

The thing is that if you really were to change your life for it to have an effect we wouldn't do it. Just the threat to reliable food supply is enough to make most people accept things as they are.

There are two things you can do which are the only rational things to do.

1) Invent non-polluting, technical solutions that either produce, at scale, enough energy to replace existing solutions and which are easy to implement

2) Prepare for the consequence of climate change and find solutions to help that.

Thats what you can do. Shouting on FB, Twitter or HN doesn't help anyone.

Re: What You Can Do About Climate Change

#28

Post by nkurz »

While not insignificant, I think it's worth asking what effect a 10% reduction in US passenger vehicle emissions would have in the long term. To put it in perspective, there's (what appears to be) an excellent new paper in Science that proposes a roadmap for reducing global emissions to a level that is estimated to have a 2/3 chance of keeping warming below 2C until 2100.

The paper is "A roadmap for rapid decarbonization" by Rockström1, Gaffney, Rogelj, Meinshausen, Nakicenovic, and Schellnhuber. While a valuable and probably required step, doubling US passenger vehicle efficiency is just one of many things that would need to be done, and done quickly. I think it's worth reading the paper closely to understand the steps that would be required according to our current understanding of the science: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/355/6331/1269

The full article is unfortunately behind a paywall, but since I think a reasonable argument can be made that breaking the logjam on the global warming debate is more urgent than following the nuances of US copyright law, I'll mention that plugging DOI:10.1126/science.aah3443 into sci-hub.bz will let you read the full paper.

Re: What You Can Do About Climate Change

#30

Post by toomuchtodo »

dagss wrote: post #23
awjr wrote: post #19

1) If you have to buy an electric vehicle. 2) Go vegetarian. (Avoid beef if you can't and eat meat less). 3) Stop buying stuff. 4) Repair not replace. 5) Move to an urban environment. 6) Consider going car free. (Walk, Bike, Public Transport, Car clubs). 7) Stop flying. 8) Avoid plastic packaging, or at least any product in packaging that cannot be locally recycled. (Here in the UK I have no idea why we allow food to…

0) Vote for politicians who care about climate change.

Reminder: 2018 US congress midterms are approaching
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