Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

stripe.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 217 posts

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#51

Post by itcrowd »

bobbygoodlatte wrote: post #30
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…

Well put, the scalability is a nice insight.

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#52

Post by keithnz »

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…

so, the average total carbon emission per person is 4.5 tons, and your flying alone is 13?

Isn't it better that you/we change your/our air spending habits? I don't believe that we can offset our carbon footprint fast enough with carbon sinks while still maintaing the same levels of carbon emission.

Reality of course is that if there is significant upfront economic costs then very few people are going to buy into the scheme, I think innovation is our best bet and if $100 per ton is a price point where people are in then that's probablly the best pragmatic choice.

However, needless transport seems a great target for emission reduction, we still need to get around, but "commuting" while emitting carbon would seem the easiest way to reduce carbon emissions, we have all the tech we need for that (public transport/remote work/online shopping/ride sharing/EVS/reduced work weeks) just no incentive to change.

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#53

Post by esotericn »

ajross wrote: post #41
brunoTbear wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Express it as an overhead on ticket price. You're using terrapass, so I plugged some numbers in and it out to about 20-30% based on what I can remember paying for typical domestic economy seats. If you fly on more expensive flights, it's even cheaper. That sounds tolerable to me as a price of saving the planet. Certainly it's not an economy-busting impossibility given that it's in the range that can be reasonably bor…

Yeah. The major problem I think comes about with stuff like Ryanair flights for ten quid where the carbon tax might well whack up the cost by orders of magnitude.

I think it's incorrect to categorise limiting flying as 'economy busting' in any sense to be frank - what percentage of flights are things like people visiting relatives?

It might be a bit of a shame, but economy busting is surely hyperbolic, it's primarily a leisure activity.

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#54

Post by esotericn »

keithnz wrote: post #52
brunoTbear wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

so, the average total carbon emission per person is 4.5 tons, and your flying alone is 13? Isn't it better that you/we change your/our air spending habits? I don't believe that we can offset our carbon footprint fast enough with carbon sinks while still maintaing the same levels of carbon emission. Reality of course is that if there is significant upfront economic costs then very few people are going to buy into the…

The average in the US is about 16.

I agree that the correct solution is to just whack a carbon tax on flights.

It's ideal if people voluntarily reduce - I've committed myself to not flying except in case of family emergency - but ultimately that's not going to solve the problem because it's a tragedy of the commons.

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#55

Post by godelski »

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…

To your sequestration comment.

No one is saying don't plant trees. Fuck yeah, plant all the trees! But that won't wont be enough. Sequestration will get better, but one of the big things it helps with is locality. CO2 isn't homogenously spread across the globe. It also doesn't spread very well. Concentrations vary drastically over the year and so do plants' ability to capture carbon. Carbon can build up in certain regions. Worse, it can pool where we can't grow trees [0]. Places where we can't get enough water to introduce new populations of trees (without significant carbon costs, defeating the purpose. Also the local ecosystem) Cities. The Arctic. The ocean. I'm all for planting trees (even beyond CO2, I just feel better around trees) but people need to stop making the trees vs sequestration argument. It's trees + sequestration (air and ocean) + promoting corral development + more. (This same argument applies to a lot of things, especially in climate. It's not a "this vs that" argument, it's "this PLUS that".

[0] https://youtu.be/x1SgmFa0r04

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#56

Post by omosubi »

nightski wrote: post #49
gbrown wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's literally economics 101: externalities, but for some crazy reason in the US it's seen as a leftist anti-capitalist issue.

Because you are acting like this would punish the company. It might to an extent but in reality consumers would hurt the most. That in my opinion is why it doesn't happen.

The tyranny of the majority :/

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#57

Post by finnh »

kingbirdy wrote: post #44
tomjakubowski wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Skateboards don't stay skateboards forever. Eventually they'll be thrown out, where they'll degrade & eventually decompose, re-releasing the stored CO2.

True, but my model of CO2 is that its damage is proportional to the area under the curve (quanity CO2 * time in atmosphere). So deferring that C02 release by 10 years is strictly a win, b/c you haven't incurred the climate effects of that C02 for those 10 years.

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#58

Post by bacon_waffle »

tomjakubowski wrote: post #28
surfmike wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Even if the trees are burned for fuel, that may offset some amount of burning fossil fuel and so be a net win.

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#59

Post by mapster »

I've seen a lot of tech companies carefully analyzing impact of commute. Essentially re-locating closer/central to employees like using the commutestudy tool.

100% public transit commute is a long term goal, so work/live distance should be as short as possible short term.

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#60

Post by [deleted] »

ajross wrote: post #35
doctorpangloss wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That does nothing to reduce consumption. Oil isn't zero sum. If you make the market less efficient prices will rise a bit, but production numbers will still match demand. Fracking taught us this. If you want a simple solution, buy a farm and bury the output. Simpler than storing a bunch of oil, even. But not very effective relative to land use.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN