While it seems impossible (and most likely it is), there is only one way to find out - try.

I don't know about you, or anyone else here, but I bet there are thousands, if not millions of people here who don't give a ff about having the newest phone in their pocket, newest social app, etc. but would give all the time and money they have to create a better world if not for themselves - at least for their children.

"How do you propose doing that?" most people will ask - a very good question with a very simple answer - I don't know, but I'm sure that it's not something that few like minded people could figure out. We would possibly fail, but so what? Either way, it seems like we're doomed, so we have nothing to lose.

            Very Easy/Cheap
                 ^
                 |
                 |
    Not          |       Highly
    <------------+--------------->
    Effective    |       Effective
                 |
                 |
                 v
             Very Hard/Expensive

> [...] changing that light bulb in your closet to LED and saving a couple kW while the home stands, versus a small fraction of an industry that consumes gigawatts of power.

Yes and now. By changing light bulb bazillion times, we were able to save gigawatts of power. It did require just a little bit of work and investment from everyone, but it was more attainable than building new ecologically sound power plants. If just 1mln bulbs were replaced, and each saved 50W /day - we were able to save 50GW of power each and every day. How much more work/money/politics would be required to save as much by building cleaner power plants?

> right now your dollars are a lot more effective at the Against Malaria Foundation.

That might be right, but we have enough resources, to tackle all of the important projects, however due to the way our society is structured we waste these resource on stupid, pointless stuff.

The problem is, this work adds up superlinearly. The thing about humans is that coordination is hard.

In order to change enough lightbulbs to have an impact on global energy use, you'd have to convince many millions of people to act against their personal, short-term, economic best interest (if it was already in their perceived interest, they'd change the bulbs by themselves). This is a kind of problem you can't really take on directly. An indirect approach would be to e.g. significantly reduce the cost and increase distribution of the better bulbs, leveraging technology and market economy to your advantage. This way the bulbs will start making economic sense, and people will switch by themselves. It's a difficult approach, but much less difficult than persuading people directly.

But then again, you may discover that optimizing power usage in data centres can save as much power, but requires less work and less convincing than the lightbulbs scenario. It would be better to start from that.

This is the kind of solutions we need to prioritize - low effort, high impact.

And I fully agree, but we have a lot of "technical debt" in our society. We have to keep supporting our existing "software", and fix all critical bugs, but we should also dedicate some time to refactor the society, even if it requires building version 2.0 from scratch, adding only these libraries that make sense.

As far as optimizing power usage in data centers - armies of engineers are already working on it, and there is really not much more we can gain there, but changes in software, to be more efficient, simpler and less bloated is something that would have a large impact. This however, as in the case with the light bulb, requires coordination of many different people/companies/technologies. This will simply be impossible not because it's hard, but because our society spends too much effort on making stuff look great, and making sure that we can be tracked by advertisers so they can sell us stuff we don't know we need or want.

Non-profit non-government education programs. I'm designing one currently.

The main idea is to create a learning platform for 9-13yo kids, with high quality apps to learn English, basic coding, and (!!) life skills like personal finance, critical thinking, even using Google efficiently. Then you can just download and deploy it on RaspberryPi/OrangePi or old PCs in your country and distribute it to disadvantaged kids.

Don't write your billion-user apps in Python, use a more efficient language like Rust or Go. Don't make 10MB webpages where 100kb would also suffice.

But I think useful change can only be made using political means. Write your representatives and tell them how you feel. Vote for politicians who want to change things.

I like technical solutions because they're undemocratic - they can step around conflicting short-term agendas and force change by exploiting market / people's preferences. In the day and age when climate is at best a very distant concern for most people, political solutions seem like a hard work for little and uncertain effect.

I wish I could be proven wrong on that though. Are there any low-hanging, high-impact fruits one could focus on? Maybe one should refocus on local politics? It seems much less messy and corrupt than national-scale politics.

(Also, voting is really a low-hanging fruit, so the best response here would probably be "why not both?".)

My worries about engaging directly in politics - becoming a politician - is that I see it as a very inefficient process, in which you'll have to give away most of your morality (and possibly interest in the original problem) before you get in a position to effect big changes.

Animal agriculture is comparable to all transit, while heating/cooling/electricity is heavily at the top.

If I were profiling I'd optimize the highest bottleneck first.

Edit: I was thinking about lights, I don't know far away sensors maybe? Not helpful if the lights are always being used (lots of cars).

Liquid salt thorium reactor haha

- proximity detector is another potential point of failure; including it raises both installation and maintenance costs

- when you're walking at night, you'd like to see further than the distance between two lampposts; this would require the proximity sensor to trigger several lamp posts arond you (totally doable, I guess, but again extra installation and maintenance costs for having the lamps wired together in the right way)

- in the past, streetlights were using sodium-vapor lamps, which have a significant warmup time

- now lamps are switching to LEDs so warmup time is not a concern, but I wonder how constantly turning them on/off impacts their longevity

Wearing my optimist hat, I think city planners are comparing costs of the issues above with potential savings. But pessimist in me tells me that it's mostly because electricity is cheap and incentives to optimize streetlights aren't strong.

It is pretty crazy how we just expect electricity to work, one day when everything is destroyed and we're back to the stone ages how long would it take to get back to where we are now I wonder haha. An offline version of wikipedia on how to turn ore into a generator. Oh well I guess we'll figure it out hopefully.

A long time. Technology level isn't just about know-how. You'd also need a global supply chain ensuring access to all the raw materials, subcomponents, sub-subcomponemts, etc. You need a civilized society and the rule of law so that people can specialize and still put food on the table.

> An offline version of wikipedia on how to turn ore into a generator.

That's the easy part. Some people are already working on it.

If you want to apply your skills come up with ways to help people change their habits. Better mass transit (ride-sharing etc.), new low-impact comsuption choices (e.g. digital goods/experiences), apps to help eat or live greener, better food production...

I thought I read/heard that we became smart because our brains grew a lot due to eating meat. I realize this sort of change probably took hundreds/thousands of years not over the course of someone's life. Also can't argue the salt/red meat stuff either. I'm just curious if it made our brains grow/possibly lead us to today. Moderation I suppose. I don't want to stroke out at 55.

I don't know, it's odd to do the "is it right?" thing regarding killing other animals for food when that is how nature operates. Still with the way technology is progressing, I suppose one day you could just build "meat" directly without an "animal". (not a new idea) I don't know I heard some interesting stuff regarding that.

Crazy to think so many people before me were able to conceive so I'm alive today haha. It's my turn, helloooo ladiesss....

God help us...

From the comments below I've stared thinking of some things I can do by putting my dev skillset to use:

* contact Ethan Brown of Beyond Meat to see if there's anything he could do with my volunteer hours

* Investigate whether there is an issue with finding locations for windfarms and if that is a real limiting factor in having more. Seems like a simple enough problem to solve

While I applaud your meat buying preferences, it would be an environmental disaster for every meat eater on earth to attempt to do the same.

I might not get the point, but why would it be a bigger environmental disaster?

maybe that's just wishful thinking though.

If the cost of meat were a driving factor in reducing consumption, consider that it's maybe 4x less expensive (a guesstimate based on my own experience) to eat whole plant based proteins than meat.

It is inherently more efficient and sustainable to eat the plant proteins we grow than to feed them to animals. 1kg of meat also requires 100x the amount of water per kg of protein [1].

[1] http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/78/3/660S.full

I'm asking for things a skilled individual can do that would have larger marginal impact that changing one's own dietary habits.

The more realistic approach is to change ones own behavior where possible - get an electric car, demand your electricity company switch to clean tech, switch to getting electric from non-fossil fueled power, fly less miles, use a bike, and so on - and try to convince others to do so too. If noone does anything, it's pretty certain nothing will change either.

The common individual waits for some authoritative direction, without taking any immediate action or responsibility of their own.

The individual somehow believes they won't have an impact, failing to realize they're part of the same system as everyone else and, it's the sum of all our behaviour that has got us to this crisis point.

If the old way isn't working, why not try something new?

Don't forget the power of influence. It's monkey see, money do with us humans!

> Don't forget the power of influence. It's monkey see, money do with us humans!

Sure, marketing / propaganda / public outreach is a very good example of things I'm looking for! However, I assume most people here are better at building than talking, so that's why I asked for examples in which one can apply engineering skills.

Take divesting your savings from banks that fund non-renewablecenergy projects, for example. Actually doing it is effort, it's something you can do, and it will have a positive impact on climate change, even if it's small, it's a start; However, here's the kicker, actually doing it is the key. You will see how others respond to this action, it's different to just making a suggestion. It's leadership.

Honestly, making changes on an individual level (sometimes this can mean some sacrifices) is probably a much stronger catalyst for change in others than you might think.

This quote from Ghandi is great, it's just not always easy, I hope you enjoy :)

Be the change that you wish to see in the world

I'm not denying that individual efforts and "leading by example" is worthless. It's powerful when in aggregate, and for that very reason it's worth doing.

My question is generally - after one does the individual-level changes, what else can one do that could help with the skills that one has?

So that's not gonna work. I mean, do it if it makes you feel good -- personally I don't own a car, am a vegetarian, etc. -- but don't kid yourself that that's how the world gets saved. It isn't. The problems need to be fixed on an institutional/structural level.

Here's how I'm personally doing that:

- Worked on a new urban transport technology (http://www.ultraglobalprt.com/) that is significantly more attractive than the car in many respects, is all-electric, requires 70% less net energy, and uses 95% less land.

- Although I failed at getting the above technology implemented at urban scales, I discovered a more fundamental problem that needed to be cracked: cities have difficulty innovating (and integrating) because all the various planning/engineering/policymaking disciplines are heavily siloed. So I started a software company (https://www.podaris.com/) that has now created a collaboration platform for transport planners, urban planners, architects, policymakers etc. If it helps us to create better cities, it may actually help to save the world.

If I could clone myself and work on other things, they would be:

- Bio-engineered vat-grown meat and yeast-derived dairy. I have no intrinsic problem with small-scale, local, traditional meat production, but the mainstream industry, based on feedlots and Brazilian Soya, needs to die.

- Sea farming: seaweed and oysters. Sustainable, and also highly freaking yummy.

- Vertical / urban farming tech. (Still not 100% sold on this, but where it makes sense, it should be done!)

- Create software tools for tracking, comprehending, and shaping designs and resource flows in the circular economy.

- Get involved in public policy: reform campaign-finance laws that allow entrenched industries to capture and distort the regulatory landscape; implement a carbon tax; abolish farm subsidies.

- Electric aviation. Somewhere in the next 10 years this will be crossing into the realm of viability. Would be exciting to get in on the ground floor.

- Electric storage systems. A decarbonised electrical systm needs better way of buffering electricity, whether that's in batteries, potential energy, air pressure, or whatever. Much innovation needed here.

- Electric shipping. Hey, why isn't this a thing already?

- Sustainable building materials. Concrete is one of my favourite materials, but it has one hell of a carbon footprint. Figure out better ways to make concrete, or innovate with other materials entirely. (I suspect that bamboo still has a hell of a lot of untapped potential, and could even be a viable carbon sink.)

- Better automation in the production and installation of solar and wind. The more that robots do the work, the faster it can get done. (Elon Musk is very much on this track, with his whole "factories that make factories" thing). You should be extremely pessimistic every time you hear people extol how many jobs will be created by the Green Economy: the flipside of the jobs-creation scenario is that it'll take a very long time and an unsustainable fuckload of money. Want it to be done quickly and economically sustainably? It'll have to be done with robots. Go build 'em.

- Do research on / campaign for a Universal Basic Income. Wait, what does this have to do with ocean acidification? Simple: 1. We're not getting out of this mess without software/robots eating the world. The decarbonisation process is going to destroy millions of jobs in old, polluting industry -- and won't replace them with an equivalent number of new jobs. Heck, even my urban planning collaboration software is going to eventually displace a lot of middlemen. So the entire wage-labor economy, with one's salary being the cornerstone of the social contract, is going the way of the Dodo. 2. When people are economically insecure, they have a difficult giving a damn about any of the above. They just want their coal-mining jobs (or whatever) back. And thus we end up with the politics of our age. 3. This problem is worse in emerging economies, BTW. 4. So until more people can achieve economic security, all of the above will be a very uphill battle. But the world has more than enough money to solve this problem, so let's bloody well solve it so we can get on to the harder problems.

There's your list, for a start. It'll be tough work, but somebody's gotta do it. Might as well be you.

Of course none of those points are something a single individual can tackle, but what I'm thinking about is to:

- identify broad areas in which changes / development could meaningfully help with the problem (like you started doing with this list)

- rank them on impact potential

- subdivide them into smaller areas

- use that as a reference for what to work on, and encourage people to work on that

- track progress in these areas (this alone is a good list item; I haven't really seen anything yet that does a good job of tracking how solutions for big problems are progressing)

EDIT:

Regarding Podaris, how is the project turning out in the real world? Do urban planners use it?

Thanks for asking about Podaris! Yes, there are a handful of planners using it. We soft-launched a little over a year ago, and since then have been working with a small group of planners from my personal network. They've done some good things with it, and it's gratifying to seen them now spending several hours every day in the software, so we're clearly addressing some kind of need. However up until now it hasn't been ready to be pushed out to the wider industry, so we don't really have a compelling traction story to tell. That push will start later this month, however -- so hopefully that will happen soon!

It's a slow-moving industry, so I'm not expecting Snapchat-like growth curves, but am still quite optimistic.

Re: making a list -- there are some serious attempts to do that, for example McKinsey's work on carbon abatement cost curves: https://everythingischanging.wordpress.com/tag/abatement-cos...

However, such an endeavour can be problematic in that it's much easier to capture incremental innovation as opposed to disruptive innovation, and component innovation rather than systems innovation.

If you look at the cost curve they came up with in 2009, for example, you'll see that "hybrid vehicles" are on the list but "all-electric vehicles" aren't. This is because all-electric vehicles were thought to be a pipe dream, unrealistic without some kind of radical change in the cost and capabilities of batteries.

That change is actually happening, however. Considered in isolation, radically cheaper and better batteries have no environmental impact per se, but their knock-on effects are fantastically impactful. This is how disruptive innovation generally works -- modest low-level innovation which enables the development of radically new capabilities. Capacitive touchscreens enable smartphones; elevators enable skyscrapers, etc. Those low-level innovations are really important, but hard to value in isolation.

Systems innovation is another area that's hard to compartmentalise. You can see "better insulation in houses" on that McKinsey list, but you don't see "build dense multifamily housing in city centres where people can walk to work and shopping", even though the latter is comprehensively more impactful, more than just about any item on their list. There are ways to value the latter, but it requires evaluating a complex scenario that includes not just housing efficiency, but also transportation, public policy, etc. This can only ever be indicative: it will never be as deterministic as saying that "replacing X insulation with Y insulation will save Z amount of energy". Doesn't mean that it's not worth doing, however!

So what I'm saying is: be careful in subdividing things: it's possible to lose track of a lot of value in the process. But better ways of monitoring and evaluation would of course be a good thing! What you really need is a way of doing M&E for complex systems innovations...

...oh, wait, I started another company (https://www.futurescaper.com/) which does that, among other things. Forgot to put that on the list, since it was a bit meta, but yes, could be valuable. Hasn't changed the world yet, but we're working on it!

RE list, thanks for the link, I didn't know about this work. I'll try to dig through it after work today.

Thanks for pointing out the issues with subdividing systems innovations and knock-on effects. I guess I've assumed that building a comprehensive list would be easier than it is. Still, something is better than nothing, and even by just looking at the HN discussions, I can see that there are many people with skills who would like to quit doing bullshit jobs, but don't know where to look for impactful work matching their skillsets or interests. This is an area I believe needs improving.

In this subthread I asked for ideas to start a rough list. If such a list was to be turned into a kind of reference for people, it would need to be continuously maintained. As you pointed out, you often can't predict which innovations will turn out impactful or not. The landscape constantly changes. But if we can't predict things well in advance, the least we can do is to try and track them and keep revising best guesses about their evolution.

I'm trying to understand what your other company does. From what I can tell from the website, you're selling some kind of framework for collecting and collaboratively sorting/annotating documents, and for on-line surveys? Is there any less business-speak overview available somewhere?

Futurescaper is a tool for collaboratively creating and analysing crowd-sourced systems maps. The purpose of doing this is to better understand the dynamics of a complex problem domain, where many different perspectives are required to get a complete picture. It's not really about annotating documents; more about getting people to tell stories in ways that can be converted into causal graphs, which then can be combined with each other to produce a detailed map of the possibility space, which can then be inform strategic planning. If that makes any sense!

Our biggest customer is the United Nations, which uses it for projects like this one: http://www.la.one.un.org/media-center/publications/252-un-su...

The advantage of doing in this way is that it explicitly encourages the people who interact with it to take more of a systems approach to their thinking, helping to surface hidden root causes and predict unintended consequences or emergent knock-on effects.

It's a bit of an odd company, but happened kind of accidentally: just a weekend coding project (to assist a friend's dissertation on crowdsourced scenario planning) which spun badly out of control.

http://www.la.one.un.org/images/publications/Analysis_UN_sur...

It looks very interesting indeed. Is it potentially suitable for NGOs, and if so, are there any plans of making some of it available for such nonprofits? I ask partly because I'd love to get my hands on this (and do run an NGO I could use as an excuse ;)).