I don’t think there’s as much we can do as we are made to believe constantly by this media propaganda that portrays the common citizen as a villain simply because they use electric kettles. All the while completely (and I’d bet intentionally) ignoring all the factories using tech from the 80s who still pump crazy amounts of CO2 in the air and tons of chemical pollutants in our water. But somehow we’re the enemy for not buying the most expensive electrical car?
As for the IT industry, I personally strive to buy tech that uses less electricity – that’s all I can really do. But it’s not always easy especially for a programmer: we need some pretty strong tech in order to be successful sometimes and it usually isn’t sipping the least possible amounts of power. Additionally, the whole chip-making industry is hugely eco-unfriendly.
But, stuff like AMD’s embedded series (3000 / 4000) where you can literally replace any normal big-ish office computer that gobbles 200-300W with a mini-box that’s stronger and cooler and consumes about 40W are tech replacement cycles that many businesses should strive to adopt.