Decarbonize as soon as you can. If you own a house, add rooftop solar. It can be financed pretty easily these days. If you have extra spending power, give money to Climeworks or Carbon Engineering. Tradewater might be even better bang for your buck.
Consider changing your career path to work on climate issues.
Invest in moonshot ideas like sustainable fuel, small-scale nuclear, fusion, etc.
Get involved locally. Set a good example, and help others follow your lead.
All those are good examples, especially for HN readers who can leverage their work experience and investment portfolio. I’ve done that with the mindset that if those investment don’t work, I wouldn’t have a world where to retire so those are sound either way.
I'll add, at a personal level:
* promote remote work: commutes are an astounding part of the carbon footprint, and unlike a warm home and diverse food, often not that enjoyable; this is the one where you can influence your colleagues the most: if you are at home, why would _they_ go to the office have a meeting with you?
* set-up a heat pump, preferably a ground-based one, if you have a heating bill; isolate your house better either way, have horizontal shades to block Summer but not Winter sun;
* eating less red meat and dairy — once a week, once a month; I’m no vegan and I’ll gladly share a Porterhouse with you for either of our birthday, but in the Wednesday bolognese, plant-based substitute are fine;
* travel less far, by train if you can.
There’s more you could do, like recycling, but if you check, the impact of those is minor for now or at least, your ability to encourage those as a consumer isn’t great. Running a personalised carbon estimation is a good exercise to see what’s your most impactful effort.
> If you own a house, add rooftop solar. It can be financed pretty easily these days.
Before you do that, check where and how your power is generated. You might never break even (carbon-wise) on your solar roof.
If your energy is already clean, gas heating and electric cars are the way to go. EVs are getting better and better, especially if you have two cars, check if one of them isn't only used to make small sub 100 miles trips.
I think there's a case to be made for rooftop solar even when your local power generation is green. The reason is that the grid is a distribution network. By lowering demand on local generators, you're lowering the relative price of green energy across the grid.
Consider changing your career path to work on climate issues.
Invest in moonshot ideas like sustainable fuel, small-scale nuclear, fusion, etc.
Get involved locally. Set a good example, and help others follow your lead.
Call your senators.