What can I do as a Software Developer to help with the climate crisis? | Hacker News Reader

What can I do as a Software Developer to help with the climate crisis?

blog.scottlogic.com

As a software developer, extremely little. The most impactful things you can do most likely have nothing to do with software development.

While I agree that the most impactful things might be nothing to do with software, that's not always true. A friend of mine works on AI-based solutions for decarbonising industry, for example. Perhaps that's a bit contrived, but it does point to one obvious thing: use your talents to help solve the problem.

If you want to work in an industry that's not directly related to the climate emergency, there's still plenty you can do. TFA points to several, such as shifting your company to a B-Corp (or similar) if you can. It also directs readers to https://learn.greensoftware.foundation/

But all that makes close to zero difference in the vast majority of cases. This is feel-good stuff or green-washing.

Maybe cut the number of children you were planning to have, move to actual low carbon electricity (i.e. no offsets), etc. stuff like that. Orders of magnitude more impact than anything you can do using your "talents" in the overwhelming majority of cases.

That's because the issue is not about talents to help, it's about the human species demand for resources, which is the product of numbers and consumption.

> A friend of mine works on AI-based solutions for decarbonising industry

He certainly wins at buzzwords bingo ;)

Well like I said, I don't disagree that there are other more significant things we can do.

> He certainly wins at buzzwords bingo ;)

She :D

I'd urge you to read the actual post. This isn't greenwashing this is try to pragmatically say what can I do in my day job that will move the needle in someway. Particularly if you work for a large corporate (large corporates have a massive impact) in the knowledge economy sector (where IT accounts for 36-45% of emissions). Don't assume the 2-4% of IT emissions applies to all - its very unevenly distributed.

There's a 'Work on Climate' Slack group

There is also a climateaction.tech slack group which is very good.

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