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Ask HN: What can I do to actively fight climate change?

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Re: Ask HN: What can I do to actively fight climate change?

#81

Post by throw63738 »

kiliantics wrote: post #65
throw63738 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As consumer you have an impact, at least it sets an example and gives credibility. This reminds me of "climate activists" who fly around the world in private jets to preach!

Your biggest impact is as a worker. Most of us produce more than we consume (where the excess usually becomes investor profits). We really need to produce less or our consumption won't make a difference. In the past, workers formed unions and collectively bargained with governments and employers to reduce working hours down to the standard work week we know today. We could reduce this further to a 4- or a 3-day work…

My work laptop uses like 50 watts. My personal consumption just from breathing is way higher.

Unions are bad for environment. They block progress and force subsidies on old, inefficient and dirty technologies. Soviet Union had horrible environmental record.

Re: Ask HN: What can I do to actively fight climate change?

#82

Post by rsd79 »

throw63738 wrote: post #81
kiliantics wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your biggest impact is as a worker. Most of us produce more than we consume (where the excess usually becomes investor profits). We really need to produce less or our consumption won't make a difference. In the past, workers formed unions and collectively bargained with governments and employers to reduce working hours down to the standard work week we know today. We could reduce this further to a 4- or a 3-day work…

My work laptop uses like 50 watts. My personal consumption just from breathing is way higher. Unions are bad for environment. They block progress and force subsidies on old, inefficient and dirty technologies. Soviet Union had horrible environmental record.

You are confusing soviet propaganda with soviet reality. There were no worker unions in Soviet Union.

Re: Ask HN: What can I do to actively fight climate change?

#83

Post by rsd79 »

Work remotely and advocate for it. I can't understand how moving around a third of population of the planet every day, sometimes with 1-2h commute, is acceptable in terms of wasted resources and time.

We've done it due to Covid and it mostly worked OK. Now it has to be improved and expanded.

Re: Ask HN: What can I do to actively fight climate change?

#84

Post by jacknews »

pl-94 wrote: post #80

I know you'll hate what I say, but us, engineers, we are basically useless for the climate change. Maybe just harmful. We are trained to build a carbon intensive world. Our tools, our philosophy and our expectation require ssomehow more clusters hidden on a fancy new cloud architecture. Our optimization will be not compensated by the rebound effect. Personally, I am totally a part of it. My neural networks require 64…

The highest leverage in that case might be to buy the farm and let it revert to nature. IMHO, the future of food is fermentation.

Re: Ask HN: What can I do to actively fight climate change?

#85

Post by invalidname »

worstestes wrote: post #11
andrewljohnson wrote: post #9

Ignore the crunchy comments saying don't eat meat, don't have kids, and don't drive. You have no impact as a consumer or influencer. What you can do is: * a) find someone working on climate change, and help write software for them part-time as a volunteer * b) brainstorm an idea for a site/app, and build it yourself (and of course post it to HN) * c) quit your job, join an organization focused on climate change, and…

Yeah, all of this but also — stop eating meat

Yes. Parent commenter effectively says votes don't matter. Sure they don't individually, but they signal. If enough people reduce their meat, dairy and egg consumption this will change the market. Fewer industrialized farms, greater scale in vegan alternatives which brings to price reductions which further increases the popularity of vegan alternatives.

Individual action matters a lot. Yes corporations are those that need to carry out the ultimate change. So the thing where corporations "blame" individuals for climate/pollution is bogus. But as consumers and as employees we have a strong impact on the environment and should advocate for that.

Re: Ask HN: What can I do to actively fight climate change?

#86

Post by invalidname »

snarkypixel wrote: post #44

Biggest problem about climate change is political correctness. We're too afraid to talk about the real problems and solutions because of "votes". Instead, we focus on small wins without any real impacts because it's "safe" and make people happy, like recycling. Real problem and solutions: - energy -> Need hydro or nuclear. Everything else is just marketing bullshit. Windmills aren't reliable, you still need a way to…

This isn't accurate. Wind is very consistent in deeper seas and high altitude. It's also consistent when it's spread out. This means smart large scale grids can deliver a lot of electricity and ideally sell surplus to neighboring states/countries (another important option). There are plenty of storage options, batteries are some of them but moving water around is another important storage option which helps later on for generating with hydro.

Furthermore, mixing solar, wind, hydro, geo thermal etc provides an additional level of reliability and scale. These are all very reliable when combined together and need fewer storage options.

And yes, some storage makes sense. Not a lot, but the value here is the fast response time for peaks/lows in consumption.

Notice I'm not against nuclear which is a valid option. But right now the financials don't back nuclear as much as it did 5 years ago. Building a nuclear plant is expensive and slow. The costs didn't drop since you need a completely different level of security/reliability. The cost of renewables dropped like a stone. You can build them almost instantly since objections are low by comparison. So you'd end up solving things much faster with renewables than you would with nuclear, no PC involved.

Re: Ask HN: What can I do to actively fight climate change?

#87

Post by pl-94 »

DantesKite wrote: post #5

Probably coding a website to make it easy to lobby for nuclear reactors in the US. Ironically enough, even though Chinese is the biggest contributor of greenhouse gases right now, they're likely going to be the least in a few decades, considering how much engineering they're putting into nuclear reactor research and experimentation.

Let's not forget that electricity represents only a third of total electricity consumption. China, by with its energy intensive industry (steel, cement), will remain de facto one of the largest greenhouse vases contributor

Re: Ask HN: What can I do to actively fight climate change?

#90

Post by birksherty »

bluedevil2k wrote: post #26
wsc981 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not having kids would help a lot in reducing future emissions and pollution though. Would reduce consumption. Bill Burr put it quite succinctly: “that’s not a family photo; it’s an environmental disaster and you’ve framed it!” [0] --- [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wq_edHqpdA

Ending your own life would be even more helpful, I’m surprised no one has suggested that yet /s

It creates huge suffering to kill, not having own kid does not. You can just adopt instead and be a parent. Simple.
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