[XCSme]

> maybe more of us can apply our engineering mindsets to actual climate change problems

Any suggestions on how can you do that as an individual? You can easily create a generic software product alone, but to helping the climate change is really hard. OP asked exactly this, what can we do. So, what can we do instead of the 50th analytics platform?

[saltcured]

I don't know if this was the intent, but I think an "engineering mindset" can mean analysis and heuristics for balancing costs and benefits to choose practical solutions. It does not have to be conflated with "product design" or other market-scale strategies.

In other words, you can use some engineering methodology to review and change your own behaviours as an individual and reduce your impact on climate. Perhaps after that, you can try to influence a few people around you. You should not let yourself get trapped in a mindset that any idea has to produce some viral sensation with however many million monthly users or else be discarded.

I think that techie/engineer types can sometimes develop a rather large blindspot to the many things in their daily lives that come from culture and habit. We can modeswitch from highly analytical and perhaps even obsessive optimizers on a work problem, then go repeat some inefficient or counter-productive activity in our personal lives for the umpteenth time without ever recognizing that these are also things which can be analyzed and challenged...