Bret Victor, trained electrical engineer, ex-Apple designer, and king of dynamic interface design, recently published an article on how technologists (and designers, I may add) can make a impact on climate change.

Perhaps the biggest takeaway from his article is that there are thousands of ways, many of which are rarely discussed, that technologists can fight climate change. As Bret puts it, “Look at the stuff around the things.”

My point here is that there are many ways of contributing toward innovation in the production of clean energy without going off and building a fusion reactor. Look at the stuff around the things.

He provides loads of examples of this “stuff.” Little things—not fusion reactors. The algorithm used to determine where windmills should go, for example. Or the sensors put on dumpsters to provide trash collectors with optimal, efficient collection routes. Or even the tools/software required to develop and evaluate this stuff. A large part of his focus in the article is on developing these sorts of new tools. (FYI that’s sorta Bret’s thing).

I feel that technical tools are of overwhelming importance, and completely under the radar of most people working to address climate change.

It’s inspiring to think that with enough tiny, crazy ideas and breakthroughs to this “stuff” we could actually solve climate change. Hell, the tiny stuff isn’t even that tiny:

Protocols for moving data around were the big thing for a few decades. Then it was moving money around. The next big thing will be moving energy around.

The article also focuses a great deal on the need for new kinds of media to explain and understand the current climate situation. What does that mean? The article is full of bits and pieces of interactivity—sliders, graphs, etc. and it’s these sorts of features that more need to replicate. This way, readers can examine and critique the models, rather than just read them. (Again, sorta Bret’s thing).

Modeling leads naturally from the particular to the general. Instead of seeing an individual proposal as “right or wrong”, “bad or good”, people can see it as one point in a large space of possibilities. By exploring the model, they come to understand the landscape of that space, and are in a position to invent better ideas for all the proposals to come. Model-driven material can serve as a kind of enhanced imagination.

A lot of people tend to ignore the effects of climate change, or at least, assume they can’t do anything to help. I think this article will sway a lot of technologists and designers not to think that way. Because, well, it swayed me.

There are opportunities everywhere. Let’s get to work.