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Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

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Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#21

Post by Areading314 »

simonebrunozzi wrote: post #14

It's a small step in the grand scheme of things... But it's a huge step (and commitment) coming from a single company. I can honestly say that no company the size of Stripe has even come close to being this "cool" (in a good way, not in a superficial sense) on so many things: company culture, remote-ok, perks, and now environment. At least from my point of view. Kudos. Lots of kudos. Keep the good work, guys. As a si…

The big polluters, like airlines, energy, transportation, and chemical companies are the ones that will have to take these steps to see any effect. Every bit helps, of course, but the cost of implementing something like this is doable for some, while for many would mean extinction, or fundamental changes to their business model.

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#22

Post by alkibiades »

brunoTbear wrote: post #19
alkibiades wrote: post #11

why should they waste investor money so they can feel good about themselves and feel “noble”. the most recent investors are suckers

You got downvotes, I hope because your tone isn't super productive, not because HN doesn't like the realist viewpoint you're taking.

i think it’s the second. IMO if the people who run the company want to donate to charity, they can use their own money.

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#24

Post by esotericn »

brunoTbear wrote: post #18
esotericn wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The highest ClimeWorks plan, if it's trustworthy (can't personally vouch for it) is approx 1 USD per kg CO2 captured, or $1k per ton. That's pretty expensive. But at $100 it starts to look a lot more favourable when compared with a personal footprint - 30 tons emitted would be $3K, perfectly achievable for someone who's talking about flying to go skiing.

Terrapass seems to say my CO2 emissions from flying so far this year are going to come in around 13 metric tons. At $1000 per ton this isn't feasible. At $100 I'd think about it. At $10 it's not a question that I'd buy it. At $1000 per ton I'd change my air spending habits. At $100 per ton built into the price per flight I would probably take the same trips. tl;dr: get this price down an order of magnitude and I'm in…

Mmm.

I'd like to think that at $100/ton, or probably before that, we just price it in to flights.

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#25

Post by henryfjordan »

Areading314 wrote: post #21
simonebrunozzi wrote: post #14

It's a small step in the grand scheme of things... But it's a huge step (and commitment) coming from a single company. I can honestly say that no company the size of Stripe has even come close to being this "cool" (in a good way, not in a superficial sense) on so many things: company culture, remote-ok, perks, and now environment. At least from my point of view. Kudos. Lots of kudos. Keep the good work, guys. As a si…

The big polluters, like airlines, energy, transportation, and chemical companies are the ones that will have to take these steps to see any effect. Every bit helps, of course, but the cost of implementing something like this is doable for some, while for many would mean extinction, or fundamental changes to their business model.

I get where you are coming from, but should we really tolerate fundamental changes to our planet over fundamental changes to a business model?

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#26

Post by davidw »

esotericn wrote: post #15
doctorpangloss wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could just buy oil and not burn it. Far simpler than CCS.

Eh? That assumes oil production is static. We have effectively infinite resources of fossil fuels still yet to be extracted. That's like saying you can reduce car miles driven by buying a car and not driving it. Another one will just be made.

And you've increased the demand, ever so slightly.

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#27

Post by taurath »

Areading314 wrote: post #21
simonebrunozzi wrote: post #14

It's a small step in the grand scheme of things... But it's a huge step (and commitment) coming from a single company. I can honestly say that no company the size of Stripe has even come close to being this "cool" (in a good way, not in a superficial sense) on so many things: company culture, remote-ok, perks, and now environment. At least from my point of view. Kudos. Lots of kudos. Keep the good work, guys. As a si…

The big polluters, like airlines, energy, transportation, and chemical companies are the ones that will have to take these steps to see any effect. Every bit helps, of course, but the cost of implementing something like this is doable for some, while for many would mean extinction, or fundamental changes to their business model.

I think it’s on all of us, including all the corporations. We should have a carbon tax to disincentivize mass c02 production - at the moment all the profits are private and all the losses (to the environment) are public. If they want to pay someone who’s planting trees for carbon caps then that’s fine for me. Just solve the damn problem. Who’s standing in the way? Shareholders of the above companies (and by proxy, the lobbyists and politicians). Because protective action doesn’t get them gains. It requires government action.

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#28

Post by tomjakubowski »

surfmike wrote: post #20
simonebrunozzi wrote: post #14

It's a small step in the grand scheme of things... But it's a huge step (and commitment) coming from a single company. I can honestly say that no company the size of Stripe has even come close to being this "cool" (in a good way, not in a superficial sense) on so many things: company culture, remote-ok, perks, and now environment. At least from my point of view. Kudos. Lots of kudos. Keep the good work, guys. As a si…

Don’t you then need to worry about enforcement mechanisms to keep those trees from getting cut down? If they’re all harvested after say n decades, there’s no net effect on climate.

How does it follow that there's no net effect on climate (or amount of atmospheric carbon) if the tree is cut down? I can only see that if the timber is burned for fuel. If someone instead carved the timber up into N skateboards, modulo waste, the carbon would stay with the skateboards.

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#29

Post by itcrowd »

tlb wrote: post #9
itcrowd wrote: post #3

This is an amazing pledge and very powerful statement. However, I am not 100% convinced morally of CCS solutions. The main counter argument being that CCS technology enables the status quo of fossil fuel burning to continue. On the other hand, there are some heavy industries (steel production?) that do not have any alternatives to coal burning in order to operate and CCS can offset the carbon footprint in these indus…

There isn't some intrinsic moral sin to burning carbon. There are just practical problems with having too much in the atmosphere. If you can remove carbon, especially if you can also convert it back into fuel, that solves the problem. (Carbon isn't the only emission from burning coal -- it contains sulfur and thorium too. But these can also be mitigated with some expense. And if you're converting CO2 directly to fuel…

I would argue there is a moral "sin" in releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, because (in your words) it leads to "practical problems", i.e. anthropogenic climate change.

If you can remove the carbon again, then it is still a "sin" unless you pay to have your share removed. If it can then be converted to fuel again that is an added bonus.

Of course, this whole process needs to occur at a massive scale because we are releasing so much carbon dioxide and want to remove more than we are currently emitting.

(P.s. I don't like the word "sin" in this context because of the theological connotation it implies, but I hope the message is clear)

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#30

Post by bobbygoodlatte »

itcrowd wrote: post #3

This is an amazing pledge and very powerful statement. However, I am not 100% convinced morally of CCS solutions. The main counter argument being that CCS technology enables the status quo of fossil fuel burning to continue. On the other hand, there are some heavy industries (steel production?) that do not have any alternatives to coal burning in order to operate and CCS can offset the carbon footprint in these indus…

I think it depends what the lower limit of this technology is in terms of cost-per-ton. If the technology can get 100X cheaper, it would be immoral not to pursue it. If it only gets 2-3X as cheap as it is today, it might create the moral excuse you cited and be a net-negative.

My instinct is it could be an extremely important technology for fighting climate change. And while it develops it's important to continue to insist that it doesn't excuse the emissions it might offset.

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