Meet Andrew Himes
Advocate for social justice, co-founder of Microsoft Developer Network, Director of Collective Impact at Carbon Leadership Forum. To tackle climate change, he wants us to dream big and embrace Goethe's words: "Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it."
With his passion for addressing climate change and demand for social responsibility, Andrew asserts that where we are now is one of the most dangerous and promising moments in all of human history. Andrew says that many of us may feel that the issue of climate change is massive and global, and we may feel there’s nothing we can do to make a difference.
But our built environment -- the largest overall contributor to greenhouse gas emissions -- can be either an existential threat or the source of transformative solutions to climate change. We can radically reduce carbon pollution and even store large amounts of carbon in buildings and infrastructure -- permanently. But it will take millions of people demanding and creating solutions, working together in communities, simultaneously, toward one goal. We already have the innovative solutions we need. What happens next, he believes, is up to us.
Driven by his involvement in the civil rights and anti-war movements of the 1960s and 70s, Andrew believes the number one social justice issue in the world is the climate, because the people most harmed by climate change will be those most marginalized and most deeply disempowered.
After an accomplished career in tech (Himes was the founding editor of leading Apple technology journal MacTech and co-founder of the Microsoft Developer Network) Andrew was founding director for Charter for Compassion International, then created Carbon Innovations LLC, a social impact consultancy focused on business-based solutions to climate change. In 2018, he was coordinator of Carbon Smart Building Day, a conference affiliated with the Global Climate Action Summit focused on transforming the global building industry to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. His current role with the Carbon Leadership Forum at the University of Washington involves leading industry-wide initiatives to reduce embodied carbon emissions in built environments.
Andrew believes that the stated original intention of fundamentalism — to discover the essence of Christianity — missed the core teachings of Jesus to love God and to love one’s neighbor as one’s self, and work for a compassionate and just community.