
Ask HN: What can I do about climate change? - andreev_io
In my day-to-day lifestyle, what are the most cost-effective changes I can implement to reduce my environmental impact? As a software engineer, how can I use my professional skills to help others fight the crisis?
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Lorenz-Kraft
I personally think that selling your car is the most cost and also climate
effective thing you can do.

Without a car, use a bike to get around (I'm doing this for +20 years now,
despite everybody says its not possible. IF you urgently need a car, for
example you have to move something big and heavy: just rent a
car/van/whatever. Done)

The second most effective thing: Probably let go of all your plans about
flying via plane.

Beside that, in your household, using HOT WATER accounts for 10 up to 30% of
your annual energy bill.

I "found" out, that using about 36 to 38 degree Celsius warm showering water
is most ideal for your skin (and no, it does not feel cold! It feels warm, not
hot, not Luke warm, just warm as in very comforting). So if you use just warm
water for showering, you might decrease your overall boiler temperature, which
mostly is set above 60 C.

Beside ALL this: Spread the word and show everybody that changing is not hard
at all and it even is promising a longer life (due to more biking, less
products to "repair" your dried out skin due to too hot water etc.)

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bobsoap
Vote with your wallet.

E.g. when grocery shopping: Bring your own reuseable bags. Stop putting
vegetable/fruit in a plastic bag each. You're gonna wash them anyway. Avoid
buying veggies, fruit, sweets, whatever that's first wrapped in single/small
units of plastic packets, then put on a plastic tray, and finally wrapped
again in a bigger plastic bag.

Pro tip: for seasonal produce and stuff that grows locally, buy at your local
farmer's market if you have one, supporting your local small
businesses/farmers while you do it. Win/win because you'll also reduce the
environmental cost of shipping produce across the contintent to you.

When shopping for clothes, don't buy five $5 t-shirts that fall apart after 2
months. Buy one $25 t-shirt and wear it a little longer. If more people did
that, producing millions of ultra-low-cost clothing items in Bangladesh for
cheap and shipping them halfway around the world to you on a huge container
ship - arguably one of the biggest and worst causes of pollution in the world
- would stop being so profitable.

When shopping for cars, go electric, but only if your power company offers a
plan for electricity from renewable resources. Research if it's really
produced that way or if the power company is only buying CO2 certificates for
the money while still giving you good old coal power.

If you only need to go a few blocks away, don't take the car. Get a bike, a
scooter, a skateboard, or just walk. Win/win for your health and fitness, too.

If you have a garden, don't mow the lawn each week. Let it grow a little wild
if you can. At least allow some wild flowers or whatever to grow. You'll give
bees and other insects a home, and you'll help offset at least some of the
damage we've been causing in that area. A neatly trimmed lawn bears very
little life.

I don't have time for more right now, but this is basically what comes to mind
whenever people ask me what they can do, or why they should do something.
Every little bit helps, will inspire others, will stack, will multiply, will
grow. Lead by example and more will follow. Vote with your wallet and as more
and more people do it, the profit margins will shift.

The defeatist attitude of "how can it even matter what I do when I'm only a
millionth of a percentile of the cause" is idiotic. Do you expect others to do
it if you won't even _try?_

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just-juan-post
I think the first logical step is to quit your job as a software engineer. The
carbon footprint created by all the compute time you use over your lifetime
won't help your cause.

I would suggest becoming Amish.

~~~
jolmg
I think they're looking for the _most_ cost-effective, not the _least_ cost-
effective.

