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Ask HN: Who is at the forefront of fighting climate change?

by musha68k·3y ago·10 comments·view on hn ↗
The urgency of climate change cannot be overstated. The rate of change is much higher than previously thought, and urgent action is required.

While technological solutions are essential, they alone are not enough: carbon budgets are shrinking, and the top 10% of earners are responsible for half of the world's carbon emissions. The wealthiest 1% emit 30 times more carbon than the poorest 50%. We need to transform our behaviours and how we live together in order to become accountable to our children and the planet as a whole.

Which initiatives / organizations / companies – teams / groups of people / individuals are actually working towards impactful climate change solutions? Whether it is through social or technological innovations (or ideally both)?

Let's share our insights. I'll start by listing two groups I know of based here in Montreal, Canada:

GHGSat (https://www.ghgsat.com) is a company that monitors greenhouse gas emissions from industrial sites using satellite technology. They have a team of scientists pushing the boundaries of emissions detection technology and have launched several satellites. They also offer an emissions intelligence platform called SPECTRA and have recently launched a free version that includes an upgraded version of their methane map.

Age of Union (https://ageofunion.com/) is an environmental initiative launched in 2021 by Dax Dasilva, founder of tech company Lightspeed Commerce. The team of changemakers support and actively work on high-impact projects, addressing urgent conservation challenges worldwide. In just the last year, they have helped fund 10 projects ($40 million). Protecting threatened species and ecosystems in Canada, Peru, Trinidad, Indonesia, Haiti, D.R. Congo and globally through Sea Shepherd.

"The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today."

– Franklin D. Roosevelt

10 comments
“Which initiatives / organizations / companies – teams / groups of people / individuals are actually working towards impactful climate change solutions?”

Personal changes work to a point. Take for instance solar power in Aus.

“The sudden rise in solar PV installations in Australia since 2018 dramatically propelled the country from being considered a relative laggard to a strong leader by mid-2019. Australia has the highest per capita solar capacity, now at more than 1kW per capita.” €

€ <https://iea-pvps.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/PViA-Report-...>

That’s not enough. For humanity on Earth to survive, the Petrol/Oil/Gas Industry cartels must be destroyed and dismantled.

How? by working out who & what are exploiting the energy Industry:

“How regular taxpayers are subsidizing the ultra-wealthy's use of climate-polluting private jets” ¥

¥ <https://heated.world/p/they-pollute-you-pay-literally>

After a long time of tracking climate/environmental science I'm totally disillusioned with any effort by anyone in the face of modern politics, corporate dominace and the short sighted or apathetic attitudes in society.

I've found the best thing is to do what you can on your own patch and your own life, where you have the actual power to change and improve things ... and ignore the fact that it's a drop in the ocean and that you are surrounded by people who are bemused or even actively hostile that your lifestyle is actually philosophically opposed to their comforting illusions.

We have a farm. We plant trees and grow food. We do what we can to limit our consumption. We vote for the parties that pledge to do something (and thus never win seats).

That's all you can really do.

I hear you, it's exhausting to fight the system in the most literal sense. You are doing the right things though, and for that I want to applaud you.

I personally still don't know how to get through to most boomers, but I'm sure younger generations could scale up on many of these vectors and quickly.

In the end we must.

Engineers alone, without a new kind of global solidarity, conceivably will just run out of time.

https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=wT6NCbFrb7c&t=852

https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/chapter/spm/

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35231012

https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/syr/

Edit: What might feel like small contributions – in the end every action matters – and our collective efforts can create a ripple effect of positive change. You might end up encouraging others to adopt similar practices.

I personally find your story very inspiring actually.

And let me ask you this: What positive experiences or benefits have you enjoyed in adopting a more sustainable lifestyle personally?

> I personally still don't know how to get through to most boomers ...

You can't. Key to solving climate and environmental problems is over-population and over-consumption. Boomers have been taught that they are entitled to big families and big cars and the latest toys. Tell them they can't have any of that, and see how popular you are.

> And let me ask you this: What positive experiences or benefits have you enjoyed in adopting a more sustainable lifestyle personally?

We eat like kings (my work colleagues complain about how amazing my leftovers smell when I heat them up at lunch); we have a lovely, comfortable house; and we have much reduced pressure of bills. We feel good we've preserved a little bit of untouched forest/bush, and increased the habit for the animals. We don't have children, which is good because if we did we'd be terrified for their future.

But ... I still commute 4 days a week (in a small car; there's no public transport) because of other financial requirements, and a lot of our life still falls short of an ideal because the required changes to truely live sustainably lack the required institutional and government regulations (like, there's still a ridiculous amount of unnecessary plastic for everything; you can't buy an apple without a little plastic label on it).

The biggest trick of the corporations was for them to move the responsibility onto us, and to have our consciences appeased by "recycling" and "buying green".

One technological solution could be a "Package ID":

Imagine if every can, bottle, box, bag, utensil,.. contained a clearly legible identifier, that was machine readable (QR code?), that linked back to the manufacturer.

Then all these wasteful packages could be scanned and sorted using vision systems, and sent back to the originating manufacturer for disposal.

By making the producers responsible for cleanup it will surely change their balance sheet, and they will be forced to change. Or go bankrupt. Because their current business model is not viable when the costs of their environmental impact are considered.

Some more on this here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_producer_responsibili...

Is already done in a kind of way.

The recycling Initiative is named holy grail 2.0 and the identifier is digimarc barcode

Atm, holy grail 2.0 is thought as follows: Scan Code, read DB, sort the materials in buckets as they'r defined in DB.

TIL, thanks for sharing!
As long as we exist, our growing anthroposphere will turn this planet increasingly hostile towards us and our children, from whom we're borrowing the living conditions and nature's gifts as some would say. The most accountable thing is to not have children. To stop carrying firewood into a burning house and cease all procreation. Human life is a sexually transmitted disease as we continue to aptly demonstrate the longer we are around, populating the environment at the cost of other living things including ourselves as if it never had any other purpose. Though I am not too worried about the planet itself; it has been around so much longer than us and will continue to be long after we have stopped stinking it up and gone extinct. And it will be slightly better off for it.
If North America were to confront its past more honestly and earnestly, it could uncover some time-tested and "homebrew" methods for achieving equilibrium – providing valuable insights and fostering ripple effects for other (affluent) countries.

It would take a full system change, but it could be done.

“nigada gusdi didadadvhni” – we are all related

“nigada dedadanilvgi” – respect all things

(Worth noting that prior to colonization, many indigenous societies, including Cherokee, were predominantly matriarchal..)