Climate change is here, so when thinking about generating ideas, my mind returns to a question: as me, what can I do to help fight climate change?
A quick google shows that so many others have thought about the same question. So in this post, I’ll summarise some of the answers.
As someone who can interface with computers and analyse data from our increasingly data-driven world, two big ideas hold sway in combating climate change.
One is that we will need to improve the current climate models and create new models to simulate a changing planet, especially on areas that will affect the most number of people.
Two is that we should help companies adopt ESG guidelines to operate their business. Since almost all business operations are now dependent on computers, any meaningful changes in how they do business will have to be done via their IT systems.
Throw terms like “environmental programmer”, “sustainability engineer”, or a mix of those, and you’ll get exciting job roles from companies who want to pre-empt the guidelines and help set the narrative forward once the guidelines are codified into regulations.
I am not convinced that installing measurement units in our homes or cutting lines of code to then reduce the size of data needed to run the internet is going to help solve the big picture. In the book How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, Bill Gates talks about the need of focusing on solutions that will get us net zero and avoid other solutions that are just there to reduce carbons. He argues that we are running out of resources, and it’s best to solve things like green concrete (and to lower the cost of it) rather than doing something like avoiding plastic straws.
This post is not going to be the last one on climate change, so to be continued.