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Ask HN: Working in tech for climate?

298 points| oljvhnwo | 3 years ago

I have been getting very conscious of climate change and human impact on the earth and would like to more actively contribute. I am quite a good senior programmer working in finance. Im having enough of devoting my life to things that seems so meaningless in comparaison with the real problems of humanity. Yet i see little I can do. Any one of you made the switch? Where did you find the job. Was it remote? Is it really making an impact?

276 comments

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[+] ttiurani|3 years ago|reply
I know I'm going to get downvoted for this, but the answer to your question depends on your analysis of the problem.

If you're an ecomodernist, who believes we can stop and reverse the transgression of planetary boundaries (climate change, biodiversity loss, chemical pollution, ocean acidification, etc.) without any meaningful system changes, the sibling comment tips might help.

If you are, like me, unconvinced by the ecomodernist argument – and have a grasp on all of the different ways the environment is being destroyed (not just "climate"), know Jevons paradox and rebound effects, are up to speed with the empirical knowledge of decoupling rates of both energy and material flows compared to "safe" limits – then "working for climate" almost exclusively means working to bring about a big political change.

Unfortunately that limits quite a bit the income potential of the work, but for me that's what "working for climate" means.

[+] perlgeek|3 years ago|reply
I think you can do all these things:

* believe that significant systemic change is necessary

* believe that oneself isn't well-suited (or wouldn't be happy) in a role advocating for that systemic change

* realize that even with a big systemic change, we'll still need better technologies and infrastructures and work on them

[+] nanna|3 years ago|reply
>"working for climate" almost exclusively means working to bring about a big political change.

This. System change not climate change.

[+] bluena|3 years ago|reply
Let me know if you want to be put in contact with a partner working at one of the key consultancies advising EU countries' governments (+EU itself and some other countries) to help them evaluate their impact on climate and strategies to reduce them.
[+] polycaster|3 years ago|reply
> ...working to bring about a big political change

Can we start a quick brainstorming what promising organizations exist that support this goals and in turn joining/supporting them would be a viable option for individuals to have an actual impact towards political change?

I'll start with the usual suspect Greenpeace.

[+] automatic6131|3 years ago|reply
Amazing, really. You are facing a massive - nearly unpredictable problem - changing the climate. Faced with a problem of such magnitude, you decide the best solution is... A second, massive and even more unpredictable problem. Achieving widespread, totalizing political and economic change that not only has to succeed, has to be better than the system we have now also has to solve the first problem.

To say this is difficult is an understatement. I'd argue it's also impossible and the result would be widespread suffering and a failure to solve climate change due to the distraction. Luckily you're not going to succeed, because like I said, it's really difficult.

I'm familiar with the line of reasoning. It's common among particularly left wing people and comes directly from their thinkers and philosophers. I think it was Gramsci who first said that the 'good' society 'cannot even be imagined' under the current system. This is a cop out for all those who believe they could make the utopia, they don't know how but they're sure the first step is total political change, and step 2 will make itself known then. It shouldn't have to be explained why this is a stupid idea, and how dangerous and harmful it would be.

[+] dr_dshiv|3 years ago|reply
What does meaningful system change mean to you? 1. Trillions of dollars of investment in the transition to solar? 2. Carbon tax (and other taxes on externalities?) 3. Abandoning combustion engines and switching to electric? 4. Moral persuasion to convince people to that humans are a cancer upon the earth?

1,2,3 have huge potential for climate and economic value. 4 is a straw man that obviously does nothing. But what do you propose exactly?

[+] CalRobert|3 years ago|reply
I'm trying to make it easier to find homes where you can walk, bike, and take public transport to your daily needs (and have great broadband so you can work from home where taht suits).

Does that count as system change?

[+] PhantomBKB|3 years ago|reply
Correct. It is due to the politics and incessant greed of human nature that our ecological problems are difficult to reverse.

From the politics POV, they must impose a limit on how much factories should produce, because ultimately the climate problem has been caused due to our exploitation of resources and their eventual disposal as waste.

Less production = less waste = better ecology

But if you remember what happened with the toilet papers during covid, I don't have to remind you what's going to happen when production of most goods is unanimously reduced.

There will be those who panic buy, and those who intentionally hoard, and a basic shortage of everything which I'm sure humanity in general is not willing to cope with for the sake of our environment. Hence, reversing the damage cannot be possible.

However, those who want to try, I wish you all the best in your endeavours.

[+] Scarblac|3 years ago|reply
What is your opinion on the current post-truth politics backed by ubiquitous social media?

I am at a loss when figuring out how to even work towards meaningful change in an environment where that messages are viewed / liked / shared is the only important thing, and the relation of that message to physical reality is completely irrelevant.

And I have the feeling that in general, software is part of the problem, not the solution :-(

[+] shaburn|3 years ago|reply
..."almost exclusively means working to bring about a big political change"...!
[+] dogcomplex|3 years ago|reply
While I agree that political change is necessary for a host of reasons, and that the current global system (more specifically the late-stage-capitalist US-hegemony financial world order with almost no democratic controls left) is pretty ill-suited to the task of fixing climate change... I think it's probably all we've got for this one in the timespan necessary.

Either the pain will reach deep enough into the system to affect the pride of the few remaining people who still have levers of control which can amount to more than "money go up", or the very mechanisms of capital will be affected "money not going up anymore. guess we gotta fix the planet", or it will all fail spectacularly and those in power will use the new climate conditions as a perpetual planned obsolescence to profit off increased costs of living worldwide for however long that lasts before a war breaks out and ends it all.

Either way, these decisions are probably out of the hands of the vast majority of people, ourselves included (unless you have a staggeringly rich uncle).

The mechanisms I see we have available, in this obscure niche forum for engineers, are to reduce the pricetag of climate action to levels where it makes capital sense. At $100/ton it's a ceiling of $3 Trillion to suck up 100% of the world's CO2 each year. Adjust to more reasonable targets as needed. Now... comparing that to bailouts of the past and considering we can likely get that pricepoint much lower at scale (or even profitable, with e.g. a self-perpetuating kelp farm harvested for fuel/plastic) that really doesn't seem like that much. The mass manufacturing and/or geoengineering to actually implement such projects seems daunting and risky in new ways, but the financials aren't all that bad. Someone just has to pony up. And imo the current situation is simply a political/financial game of hot potato where every faction wants to push the problem down the line for someone else to handle until the absolute last minute - even as solar and tech improvements are making potential solutions that much more achievable (which again motivates the delays).

Even now, with just current solar panel technology, the sheer investment value in just buying some panels and having them pay for themselves in a couple years is going to motivate most of the change needed. Obviously there are still a lot of industries that cant use that immediately, and a lot who are motivated to protect their sunk cost investments (anyone with an oil portfolio - aka most of the decision makers) - but still, capital is gonna react to this all. Just likely too slowly...

The most likely scenario I see where climate change gets solved by the current system (of the shrinking set of scenarios where it's solved at all) is where governments (and their financial backers) consort to fund some mega projects for mass CO2 drawdown. This results in a lot of money somehow flowing to oil and gas people (buyouts to pay them not to interfere), and increased power concentration in the US hegemonic global state - though possibly with a new negotiated balance between its participants. They implement these projects using some wartime-style measures of mass manufacturing and pseudo-command-economies to start up the project (WWII production would be easily capable of this - govs can do quite a lot when they actually try, and print debt/money to fund it). Once it's mostly built and derisked, sucking down CO2 successfully, the project will probably be privatized to some megacorp which charges a perpetual fee to taxpayers and is owned by the backroom financiers/political authors of this project. It will become a hated entity in the future like Nestle or Facebook, but it will also at least mostly mitigate extreme climate problems - probably artificially keeping things at a soft boil perpetually to ensure it gets paid. The profits of such a corp will not flow to the people whatsoever though, naturally. It will cause new "unforseen" environmental and social problems probably, but these will be debated ad-nauseum on talk shows whether they're worse than climate change. The project's true cost and effectiveness will be heavily distorted by the sheer amount of greased hands in its overall construction and operation. Though its creators will at least have had the prescience to make sure it sucks down enough carbon to reduce global measurements by a reasonable amount each year - or they'll monopolize the measuring agencies.

[+] Aachen|3 years ago|reply
I don't understand like half of these words. Ecomodernist I new to me, decoupling rates, some paradox, rebound effect... is this a riddle? What here needed prefixing with an anti-downvote spell, the claim that we need systematic change to fix systematic problems?
[+] jakewins|3 years ago|reply
I wrote this summary of what emissions sources matter if you want to move the needle, and how reputable sources argue for resolving them: https://climate.davis-hansson.com/p/big-picture-2020/

I used that as a basis to look for roles that - I imagined - actually would help make a dent. In the end, I took a job in the smart electric grid space, writing code to help the EU grid take on more cheap renewable generators at Tibber.

There’s a lot of software in many of these spaces! Decarbonising the grid, electrifying transport, building heat and industry, reducing agricultural emissions and so on.

[+] idontwantthis|3 years ago|reply
Did that require any additional knowledge or training in electricity or physics?
[+] WillPostForFood|3 years ago|reply
If the plan is to "electrify everything" and reduce emissions by 50% by 2030, how can you not even mention nuclear power once?
[+] aitskovi|3 years ago|reply
This was a variant of the question that I had when I left Stripe in 2019. After hearing someone say “We are the first generation to feel the impact of climate change and the last generation that can do something about it.”, I became fixated on the question of what can I, with my software skillset, do to have a meaningful impact on climate?. The answer (in hindsight), is a ton.

My particular approach was to start a company (Watershed[0]), but today there are lots of great options as a software engineer. There are already plenty of great examples in the thread of places to look for companies (MyClimateJourney community, climate job boards, etc). I think the most important thing is not to feel like you need to learn a ton before jumping into the fray. Most engineers that joined us had zero climate experience beforehand. All you need is to be curious, be an effective engineer and you can learn what you need on the job.

My email is in my profile if you want to chat!

[0] We’re hiring (https://watershed.com/jobs) and engineering is absolutely our rate limiter in helping companies decarbonize. We’ve built a climate platform that’s powering the climate programs of some of the world’s leading companies (Block, Shopify, Doordash as a few examples). Our goal is to be responsible for reducing the world’s yearly carbon emissions by 500 megatonnes of carbon by 2030 (1% of global emissions).

[+] dougmwne|3 years ago|reply
Yes, I have.

Climate is political. The technology exists, but needs subsidies to hit the manufacturing volume that would make them price competitive. Government is the main driver of this. The main driver of the US government is special interest groups.

So if you want to maximize your impact, work for a special interest group with a focus on climate, energy and environment. There are 2 main categories you can work in, “the business,” and “the program”.

The business is the operational and fundraising arm of the org. It takes the mission, bottles it up and sells it to people who want a bit of hopium. There are normal tech roles here like IT, Web, apps, and customer databases. Pay is low, but you are contributing by keeping the lights on and the paychecks flowing to the people changing the world.

The program is whatever specific mission vertical the org works on. This will involve a lot of lobbyists, policy wonks and lawyers. Because, again, it makes no sense to spend your own orgs money when you can get a 100-1 lever by convincing the govt to do it for you. That climate bill is 370 billion and orgs that have an annual revenue of 10 million wrote the policy. There can be tech jobs around constituent management databases like VAN. Could see some technical jobs packaging up scientific data into easy to demo visuals for the lawmaker staff to consume. Rarely there could be some PHD spots for original research.

I worked in the field for about 10 years. If you want to know anything, just ask.

[+] kornish|3 years ago|reply
After most recently working in ads, I switched to working in climate - feels infinitely more meaningful on a daily basis.

We're working on carbon accounting and industrial decarbonization here at Gravity (https://gravityclimate.com). Your background could make for a strong fit.

Email in profile.

[+] moralestapia|3 years ago|reply
Hi Ted,

Not OP but would like to get in touch as well.

Check your personal email.

[+] ephbit|3 years ago|reply
I'm aware this is somewhat besides the point. But still ..

The way I see it, carefully choosing a job doesn't matter much (compared to other things you can do) for helping avoid the ecosphere catastrophe as an individual.

Most jobs are the end result of consumers (and also institutions like the state or other companies) demanding whatever products and services they deem necessary. Companies then implement processes to produce these things and then issue job offers accordingly and employ personnel.

If some job vacancy provides enough salary, it will very likely be filled. By you or someone else. By choosing to not do a certain job, you don't influence the demand side for it (which comes from consumers' demand) and if the demand is high, in principle the salary will generally just increase until someone else is willing to do the job.

If you want to gently yet effectively change and shape the whole supply chain and reduce emissions, you can choose to be very conscious of your individual demands that you feed into the worldwide production system.

If you simply buy less unnecessary stuff (right now the best thing you can do) or buy used stuff or buy sustainable stuff ... and if billions of people do the same, we will have a totally different landscape of companies within 20 years.

Living daily life as sustainably as possible, is - in our current western environment - a real challenge. Some people find meaning in trying to accomplish that.

IMO there's nothing wrong with working in a job that's not per se sustainable (say oil rig) and at the same time living your daily life in such a way that shapes your little individual slice of the world wide demand for production so that it's sustainable.

[+] ephbit|3 years ago|reply
You can even invert and distort the example in my last paragraph to the extreme and ask yourself which (A or B) will more likely lead to a better outcome for the ecosphere.

A) You work as a consultant for a company that advises other companies how to save energy in their processes. You make good money and use your ample holiday of 50 days a year travelling the world by flying here and there with your family.

B) You work on an oil rig and recently bought a small house in the outskirts of a small town. You're mostly vegetarian and in your holidays you're either working on renovating the house to be selfsufficient (top insulation, solar panels, electrolyzer, H2-tank, fuel-cell, rain water tank, ...) or you're doing bike trips with a tent.

[+] gersh|3 years ago|reply
There is a community at https://workonclimate.org/ focused on helping people find jobs related to climate. You can also look at https://climatevoice.org/, and look at how your employer is lobbying on climate. You can also look at climate bills/policy related to corporate disclosure at https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billAnalysisClient.... and https://www.sec.gov/comments/s7-10-22/s71022.htm to see which corporations are lobbying for or against strong climate policy, and try to work for those companies most supportive of strong climate policy.
[+] pkdpic|3 years ago|reply
Im sure this is mentioned in this thread but just to be sure make sure you check this out.

https://techjobsforgood.com/

Only thing I ever applied to on there was a python job at a carbon capture startup in New Zealand. I got a call back. Didnt end up working out but 100% is a pretty good call back rate so far. Looking forward to getting back on there in a couple months.

Also if you haven't heard of / checked out Recurse Center it might be a good place to make your career transition. It's kind of why they exist.

https://recurse.com/

PS Right on! Im thinking about the exact same career pivot myself. Very inspiring to see this :)

[+] bun_at_work|3 years ago|reply
I joined a company that isn't focused on solving climate change, but we are working to make freight shipping via train more feasible in the US, which could potentially offset shipping emissions by a non-trivial amount.

I personally care a lot about climate change, so this work is quite a bit more satisfying than optimizing ad spend or A/B testing UI to improve "impression" metrics or similar.

There are places to find work where your time and energy help mitigate climate change (or other big problems), without the work directly focusing on that problem.

[+] Steav|3 years ago|reply
We are working in europe on pushing the renewable energy transition to bring „infinite power to all of us“. There are fully remote software jobs, if you are located near CET. https://neoom.com/en/career
[+] peer2pay|3 years ago|reply
I had a look at your job postings being located in the DACH region myself but I must admit I’m surprised you find anybody willing to work for the salaries listed.

I get that you’re not competing with FAANG salaries and kudos for mentioning them upfront but sub 50k gross would not even convince newly grads, let alone senior engineers where I live. We pay almost twice this and are having serious trouble hiring remote or local.

[+] kiliantics|3 years ago|reply
This organisation runs a slack community where climate jobs are discussed and new postings for lots of companies get shared there:

https://workonclimate.org/

That said, while I feel similarly to you OP, I am also highly skeptical of the tech industry as an avenue for bringing about the necessary change. We don't need new tech, the problem is almost entirely one of societal organisation and changing the economic incentives. One particularly egregious example of a tech failure is the case of the carbon offset company that actually succeeded in starting wildfires and destroying a lot of forest instead, and there are plenty more you can find.

I think, while it might not feel meaningful in the same way, your effort is better spent financially supporting and contributing to climate activism that can change the perspective and politics in your community.

[+] dr_dshiv|3 years ago|reply
In the past decade, a warming anomaly caused a plague that killed off 99% of the Sunflower Sea Stars, a top predator of sea urchins. The runaway sea urchin population resulted in the rapid and sustained loss of >100,000 square km of Kelp forests off the coast of California. Kelp does an amazing job of sequestering carbon to the deep sea. For instance, estimates show that the lost Kelp forests provide close to $1.5B per year in carbon sequestration services (at $5/ton). I’m trying to help my friend raise money for her organization that is trying to bring the kelp forests back through the repopulation of the giant sea stars. Any ideas?

https://www.sunflowerstarlab.org/

Personally, I want to develop a viable vision around “AI for ecological wellbeing.”

[+] geewee|3 years ago|reply
Having worked in the climate sector myself for some years, there's quite a few openings. Fundamentally I don't think climate change is something that is software-solvable, but software can play a supporting part.

Currently I work at Climatiq making carbon estimation API's (we're hiring!), but previously I worked with wind turbines for several years, which are massive beasts and generate crazy amount of data, requiring large teams of software developers to efficiently manage. Perhaps solar management is similar.

[+] corradio|3 years ago|reply
Hi there,

I had the same thoughts, which led me to build Electricity Maps (https://app.electricitymaps.com) a few years back, mainly to understand the current state of how electricity grids cause CO2 emissions. Luckily (and with a lot of hard work) it turned into a successful company. I also worked on some other climate tech products which weren’t as fortunate. I’ve written about past experiences here: https://oliviercorradi.com/blog/lessons-learned-climate-tech...

Hopefully this can help you a bit on your journey.

We’re also hiring (although jobs are based in Copenhagen). Furthermore, a lot of our work is open source (https://github.com/electricitymap/electricitymap-contrib) - feel free to take a peek!

In any case, do not hesitate to get in touch if you think I can help

[+] alechewitt|3 years ago|reply
My team at Amazon is currently hiring for software engineers, scientists and machine learning engineers to help us control and optimize Amazon's growing fleet of wind and solar farms. We are a new team with a lot of scope ahead of us. You can see some more info below:

- https://www.amazon.jobs/en/jobs/2165937/software-development...

- https://www.amazon.jobs/en/jobs/2159478/renewable-research-s...

- https://www.amazon.jobs/en/jobs/2079935/sr-applied-scientist...

[+] enviclash|3 years ago|reply
Climate economist here. Game-changing impacts from knowledge provision are like academic impacts, very difficult to achieve. Nevertheless, you seem to have the right background, and I endorse another comment on insurance. Providing the right information should make it difficult to invest/borrow/insure carbon intensive activities. I would focus on finding how to provide this information. Happy to chat, I might have more ideas that could be valuable to you, not sure. Email in profile.