| This is a fantastic question, and have been asking myself for a while. It turns out that there a quite a few technology projects that are tackling exactly these problems, addressing these issues technologically is an active area of research, and there are a number of companies with jobs that focus directly on developing this sort of technology. One of my favorite projects is Rainforest Connection [1]: to help prevent illegal logging, they put recycled phones with solar panels in the tops of trees in rainforests, and then using some simple sound processing they listen for chainsaws and text the local villagers if they pick up on anything. The villagers then go out and stop the loggers. For some other examples, check out PartoPen [2], and Projecting Health [3]. Projects like these are the subject of the field of ICTD (Information and Communication Technologies for Development). Much of the research here focuses on health and education in developing regions, but many projects go outside of that. For a look at some of the recent research here, check out the latest ICTD conference [4]. There are ICTD graduate programs at maybe ten universities. Outside of academia, these sorts of projects are being tackled by Microsoft Research India [5], the teams in Google that used to be Google.org [6], IBM Watson [7], Palantir's philanthropy engineering [8], and various smaller companies like [9], [10], and [11]. EDIT: I'd also like to point out that climate modelling as chaosphere2112 mentioned is another way to work directly on global-level climate issues; most of the things I'm pointing to are local. [1] https://rfcx.org/ [2] http://www.partopen.com/ [3] http://blog.path.org/2014/09/projecting-health-video-india/ [4] http://ictd2015.org/papers-notes/ [5] http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/groups/tem/ [6] https://www.google.org/ [7] http://researcher.watson.ibm.com/researcher/view_group_pubs.... [8] https://www.palantir.com/philanthropy-engineering/ [9] http://www.dimagi.com/ [10] https://www.commcarehq.org/home/ [11] http://www.dekaresearch.com/water.shtml |