Years back I took a (big) pay cut to work with a non-profit. We brought affordable internet to low income and refugee status apartment buildings, developed tools to help those that are homeless or at risk of becoming, wrote at-cost software for the non-profit and community health sector. I was there for 7 years as their head of platform engineering and automation. A very rewarding experience.
Others, with the little time they have left, want to work towards not working for someone. That should be what’s encouraged. Because that is more likely to produce jobs, give freedom to those that profit, and has a higher chance of something good happening (versus working for a corporation until retirement - which is perfectly fine, but a path none the less)
I also have a gripe with individual citizens being responsible and taking the burden of climate change. Why should the working class, whose taxes have gone up, wages stagnated, be continually punished with higher costs due to proposed carbon taxes, or initiatives that drive the price of staples up purely due to climate change. That just foments resentment and contributes to the opposite of such activists goals.
Policies are too one sided. We should be pushing for reasonable policies, that acknowledge the enormous progress oil and gas has given the world, and understand changing it rapidly will cause more harm to people than good, and in all likelihood will delay projects. We should look at proven solutions, like nuclear technology. Invest in renewables, in research fusion research and the likes.
But the vast majority of social platforms represents a very very small percentage of people, and those that actually tweet/post/etc represent an even smaller percentage.
The hard truth is when things like gas and food increases, Americans notice that pain far more than what may happen 30 years from now. They care about how their family will do in the next week, month, and few years.
Punishing them to try and understand the problems via monetary taxes, or guilting them to participate in activists activities, or pushing education material that puts shame to what real education should stand for, won’t work. It will backfire.
What's this supposed to mean? Gas has been useful for the world, and gas companies have already gotten tremendous profit as a result.
Who are you expecting to pay for climate change anyways, if it's neither the working class in the form of taxes with rebates, nor the owning class in the form of oil and gas companies. Who's left?
You can build something that is good for the planet, but if nobody wants it, can it make an impact?
But there are pathologies for these abstract ideals you mention too. Namely that they are hard to measure and therefore attract bullshit artists. They make it easy to fool yourself and others.
The best thing is to solve a real problem others have, thereby doing good, and to do so in a self-sustaining way, which is also called profit.
Or something that significantly reduces people’s living costs?
Or something to increase equality and equity?
There is far too much priority placed on making profits in tech and not nearly enough doing what’s actually good for people.