Ask HN: What Can I Do a Software Developer to Help Curb Climate Change

by TSiege on 10/22/2018, 6:23 PM with 16 comments

I'm wondering what I can do as a back end developer to help fight climate change. Are there any projects, companies, or niche industries I could work with? I'd like to work on something that has a direct impact, not like helping a campaign but a project that has direct, tangible benefits for the environment. I've been reading about 3DFS, and I'm wondering if there's more companies or open source projects like this that I just haven't been aware of.

  • by piocho on 10/25/2018, 3:08 PM

    I ask myself the same question so many times.

    As a dev it's very difficult to make anything to help curb the climate change. You are ("we" actually) working in a particular sector with computers, datacenter, IoT devices, and many more. (and every sectors relied on that). Each device uses a lot of electricity, runs 24/7 (most of them), is made of rare-earth metals, and so on. We are working on projects to always be ahead of our competitors, so we need faster servers, and so on.

    I do not see anything we can do as dev ...

    However, in the daily life, you can do a lot of things :

    - buy food from local producers - don't buy sh*t products from China coming on container ships - change the way you are moving to go to work -> bike, public transport ? - thing twice before buying something (especially electronics one) : do I really need a second tv to put in my kitchen ? and a second ipad ? - ...

  • by amorphous on 10/23/2018, 4:30 PM

    I'm very interested in this question as well. How can a developer use ones skills to make a positive change?

    If you search on HN you'll find a few related postings. There's also a very good writeup on worrydream.

    But so far I have not found anything concrete about what the current technical problems are that can be solved.

    I started to reach out to a few companies in the cleantech space. My first impression is that it seems it's a rather secretive group not very open to (clueless) outsiders.

    I'm pondering the idea to create a website where devs and companies fighting climate change could come together. I'm not aware of anything similar.

    Obviously, you could try to get a job in that space and learn the industry from inside.

  • by collyw on 10/23/2018, 10:45 AM
  • by cm2012 on 10/23/2018, 5:24 AM

    I know you said you don't want to work for a campaign, but the problems with fixing climate change really are more political than technical. You can donate your time through a company like Tech For Campaigns to help the democratic party of the US win elections.

  • by x220 on 10/22/2018, 8:39 PM

    Don't use Bitcoin

  • by eeeelso on 10/24/2018, 12:13 PM

    Waste lots of paper and don't recycle it. This puts carbon in the landfill and takes it out of the system. Then new trees grow up and suck more carbon out of the air.

  • by matt_the_bass on 10/23/2018, 2:27 PM

    I wonder what the impact of SV tech is? What would happen if everyone got rid of their smart phones and stopped buying new electronic gadgets?

  • by tmaly on 10/22/2018, 8:25 PM

    If you can create html, You should help raise awareness of companies using banned CFCs that burn holes in the ozone.

  • by swah on 10/23/2018, 12:56 PM

    Only do manual memory allocation.

  • by anoncoward111 on 10/22/2018, 6:26 PM

    Port all unity projects to quake

    Port all windows 10 features to lubuntu

    Port all electron projects to html, js, php (lol)

  • by grizzles on 10/24/2018, 8:27 AM

    plant trees