These two things can both be true. As you say, assigning blame primarily to citizens is just incorrect - corporations/governments have the most direct effect on the problem. At the same time, suggesting that the actions of citizens are meaningless until corporations/governments act is demoralizing and obscures people's power and agency. Given that most of us are ordinary citizens, shouldn't we use the levers available to us, and encourage others to do the same? For example, voting, advocacy, reducing consumption, etc.
A lot of what needs to happen, IMO, is culture change. Doing all of the things you mentioned is only a drop in the bucket, but one person putting in that effort normalizes it. That makes other people feel more comfortable and motivated to do the same. It might not feel like much, but it's definitely better than nothing.
Also, if you're in tech and you have the luxury of changing jobs, there are companies doing good work on climate change. Electric vehicles, solar power, making production and supply chains more efficient, etc. We can make it easy/cheaper/more pleasant for people/corporations/governments to make the right choices.
Hi! I'm a backend engineer with 6 years of experience. I'm looking specifically for companies working on climate change or sustainability (renewable energy, conservation agriculture, environmental projects, etc). These are the problems that I'm most passionate about, and I want to spend my day job working on them.
I'm a generalist and love learning new things! My recent experience is in building cloud-based, highly scalable platforms and frameworks. I've built distributed systems for image processing and analysis, worked on a petabyte-scale storage system for n-dimensional datasets, and created tools and protocols for running algorithms over terabytes of data. I'm zealous about clean, maintainable code and solid tests.
My ideal team is collaborative, supportive, curious, and passionate. I try to foster those qualities in myself and in my company culture. If you're looking for someone like me, let's talk!
Location: San Francisco
Remote: Remote or onsite is fine (I'm experienced in remote work across time zones)
I was just going to ask this question! I'm currently unemployed and starting to look for a job. I was looking forward to being picky about it - I'm particularly set on finding a company that's working on climate change. Now I'm wondering if I should lower my expectations. Maybe I should snatch up whatever job I can before companies restrict or halt hiring. I'll need some employment before all of this blows over.
It's scary to watch the chaos grow without the security of a paycheck (and all the other perks and protections that come with a full-time job).
One could instead think of social programs, such as UBI, as insurance. People gladly pay >1% of income for insurance. I believe that nearly everyone has the potential to end up in the financial dumps (no one is above drug addiction, serious health problems, mental disorders, lawsuits etc). If a worker ends up there, they'll be glad to have the "insurance coverage" of UBI.
If that is so, why don’t you form an ubi society, whose members pay an ubi for everyone that wants to join (and net pay).
According to you it won’t be difficult to find people that are glad to join.
To the downvoters of my initial comment: I don’t want people to die on the street. But I doubt ubi is an adequate cure either.
Slack standups were great for us, for a while. When there were ~10 people posting just a few lines, it was easy enough for everyone to skim through it daily. I didn't notice a lack of productive conversation - people made good use of threaded conversation and @-mentions. When the channel started to grow, unfortunately the system broke down. It's onerous for everyone to skim that much material first thing in the morning.
The earth absolutely goes through periods of warming and cooling, and has for billions of years. The issue we're encountering now is the speed of the change. Existing ecosystems can't adapt and move, like they typically do. Human societies also struggle to adapt. We unfortunately deeply depend on stability of climate - our national borders and economies and agricultural systems have a high inertia to change.
I suspect that you don't believe that current CO2 levels actually change the climate noticeably. I'd encourage you, and anyone agreeing with your comments, to spend a bit of time looking at scientific papers that may contradict that view. No politics, no bias, just the data. It doesn't hurt to read opposing views every now and then. I find it rather satisfying.
