A few weeks ago I read a UK report on ecosystem collapse.
In short, the UK government —thanks to a committee of its smartest security and intelligence people—reckons there’s a “realistic possibility” some ecosystems collapse by 2030.
That’s in four years, not “someday.” We’ve already crossed 6 of 9 planetary boundaries, or seven, depending on whom you ask, which is roughly like a doctor saying “well, most of your organs have failed but let’s stay positive, diet and exercise might help.”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jan/27/uk-government-report-ecosystem-collapse-foi-national-security
Apparently, they tried to hide it, as it would have shown how dire things are, and that they’re not doing enough about it. They also censored it; the starkest conclusions were omitted. They likely didn’t want to show how many people we’ll lose to these threats.
Although it touches the UK, a lot of it applies to Europe and the world at large.
I know because a few months ago I also went through this funk when I wrote what became “Software for a world on fire”
https://tooinconsistent.com/writings/software-next/
I deleted it and rewrote it several times so it wasn’t a depressive post about climate, and tried to exercise that “pessimism of the intelect, optimism of the will.”
It took a few drafts to get to something that felt hopeful and believable to me, to us, first and foremost.
When you “get all the horrors on one page” you end up in the same dark place, it seems. I went through the same feelings. No wonder those UK people deleted the worst out of that report.
https://eupolicy.social/@bert_hubert/115843543953453147
After the catharsis of that post, I kept wondering what else I could do.
I want to build a business that nourishes us, and the world. A business that doesn’t require us to be alienated and away from each other, and one that actively helps the world, inasmuch as we can still help it.
Up until now we simply tried to “do no harm.” Naive and not enough. Now we’re asking ourselves, how do we make a positive difference? Not just in our lives, but through the work.
That got us thinking: who are the people who need help? Not to save them or disrupt them. Who’s already fighting and needs better tools? Who needs what we can do? So we can replace hope with something specific.
I figured someone, somewhere, is trying to grow food that doesn’t murder the soil. Someone has terabytes of wildlife camera monitoring and drowning in footage. Someone has a brilliant idea and absolutely no software skills or budget.
Maybe we can help.
We’re just people who can code, but maybe “just people who can code” might be exactly what someone needs right now.
We’re already collaborating with some rewilding projects, and we’d like to do more of it and meet more people trying to do things that matter.
The few people we talked to, who are fighting the important fights, are using broken tools, or no tools at all.
Maybe we can be of use to people protecting and restoring ecosystems, innovating sustainable food systems, or those tracking what’s actually happening to the living world around us.
We don’t have all the answers. I don’t even have most of the questions most days, and I’m trying my best to learn. But we’re good at software, we can build things that work, and we’d rather build things that matter.
To end this thread, I’m casting a wide net but if you’re trying to save one specific part of the world and software is the thing standing between you and doing it better—please talk to us! We want to meet you.
#OpenScience #Conservation #RestorativeAgriculture #RegenerativeAgriculture #EcologyInAction #CitizenScienc #Biodiversity
#ForestRestoration #Agroecology #SoilScience
Andreea