Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment • Hacker News Board

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#101

Post by kasey_junk » Fri, Aug 16, 2019, 2:04 AM UTC

aVx1uyD5pYWW wrote: post #90

>This leads to Stripe’s Negative Emissions Commitment. We will seek to purchase negative CO2 emissions at any price per tCO2, starting immediately. We expect that the best price will initially be very high: almost certainly more than $100 per tCO2, as compared to the $8 per tCO2 we pay for offsets. We don’t expect to be able to sequester all of our carbon emissions, both because the relevant technologies are not yet…

In this context offsets are paying to reduce new CO2 emissions while sequestration is getting rid of previously emitted CO2.

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#102

Post by paulsutter » Fri, Aug 16, 2019, 2:05 AM UTC

godelski wrote: post #55

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 re…

That’s a cool video. However the variation looks to be only about 2% from highest to lowest.

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#103

Post by allday » Fri, Aug 16, 2019, 2:06 AM UTC

matznerd wrote: post #87

Major respect to Stripe for starting this program, as this helps solve a real problem in the carbon dioxide removal (CDR) field. At Project Vesta (thanks for the shoutout[1]), while we have a plan for individuals to pay for their CO2 removal by donating directly for a specific tonnage of olivine to be placed on a beach in their name, all of the investors/fund advisors who have approached us and are interested in gett…

If anyone from Stripe is reading this, I do hope a significant amount of support goes to Project Vesta. I have not seen a better sequestration strategy, in that olivine weathering is both a long term CO2 sink, and -also- helps deacidify the oceans. I have no affiliation with Project Vesta, I'm just very excited by it.

My question for the Vesta folk is, what is the current status of the project? There is a timeline on your website but no indication of how close any of these stages are to being a reality. What are the blockers, who can help, when will you "start shipping", as it were?

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#104

Post by Areading314 » Fri, Aug 16, 2019, 2:09 AM UTC

BurningFrog wrote: post #93

nextos wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we need to implement world-wide tax on pollution to avoid some crazy externalitiees. For example, cheap flights used frequently are a ridiculous luxury we cannot afford. I know lots of people that use budget airlines more than once per month to make weekend trips across Europe. The amount of CO2 they are putting into the atmosphere is simply insane. A bit more than doing the same trip by car, for each passeng…

A carbon tax is well known to be the rational solution to the problem. Even conservatives agree. It just happens to be politically impossible.

People pretend it's hard to create a carbon tax, but it's really not. Just tax the fuel (gas/oil/coal), and the cost will be passed on to polluters.

Edit, of course, politically yes it's hard.

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#105

Post by papreclip » Fri, Aug 16, 2019, 2:41 AM UTC

They might make up for their electricity bill 1:1 but they'll never go neutral on the amount of carbon wealth they consume in payment for their services.

Imagine I have a business where I busk for money with my guitar outside of a coal plant and a single coal minor is my patron. I may be "carbon neutral" but in fact I owe my whole existence to coal being mined and burnt. Coal is my life blood and the sole source of wealth in my life. I may as well mine the coal myself and play guitar for myself, and if you consider me and the miner to be a unit it's obvious the two of us are living on coal and the fact that he does all the work while I play guitar hardly means anything.

Companies like stripe are sufficiently separated from coal and oil that they can believe they don't suck at the teat of fossil fuels, and that the only coal wealth they consume is whatever powers their light bulbs and servers. But ultimately you can track back the wealth that comes their way - all of it - to operations that generate quite a bit more emissions.

We can run subsidies and credits in little isolated corners of our economy, but it's like running a refrigerator in a closed room. Ultimately you're just burning wealth which creates a greater load on the wealth-generating machine that is the fossil fuel industry.

Real advances that make it possible to generate wealth without fossil fuel money in subsidies should be celebrated. These tech guys taking $1m of their $100m in profits (the coal miner pays the busker using stripe) to pay their $1m light bill is a shell game

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#106

Post by jeromegv » Fri, Aug 16, 2019, 3:01 AM UTC

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.

Not as much when the carbon tax is tax-neutral. In Canada we started getting back a carbon tax credit. Consumer impact is still there but a lot more mitigated.

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#107

Post by enraged_camel » Fri, Aug 16, 2019, 3:04 AM UTC

titojankowski wrote: post #72

For people really into carbon removal --- Check out AirMiners, the largest community of entrepreneurs, researchers, and funders exploring opportunities in negative emissions and carbon removal. Folks from every major carbon removal startups like Climeworks, Global Thermostat, etc. Join 320+ of us on Slack! Apply here to join: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/12L8drO9a6OZf3-I9578PieBI0fw... There's also a public meetup…

Let's say I'm a regular web developer and know nothing about climate science, carbon removal, or any related science or technologies, but might be interested in donating my time and and skills.

Do you have any recommendations?

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#108

Post by chrdlu » Fri, Aug 16, 2019, 3:35 AM UTC

PascLeRasc wrote: post #86

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…

Nearly every day on here there's a thread about empty/meaningless work and feeling like we're not contributing anything that will matter 50 years from now - and I often participate as I feel this way quite strongly. This is the kind of work that's meaningful. This is a huge commitment to well-thought-out climate healing and using wealth for actual tangible good. Stripe already deserves a place above FAANG for their i…

The founders of Project Wren (https://projectwren.com/) went from building HR Software to building software to combat climate change.

We need profitable enterprises focused on this large global problem! I think the tides are starting to shift and would love to see the smartest minds of our generation focused on this issue!

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#109

Post by Rapzid » Fri, Aug 16, 2019, 3:47 AM UTC

enraged_camel wrote: post #107

titojankowski wrote: post #72

For people really into carbon removal --- Check out AirMiners, the largest community of entrepreneurs, researchers, and funders exploring opportunities in negative emissions and carbon removal. Folks from every major carbon removal startups like Climeworks, Global Thermostat, etc. Join 320+ of us on Slack! Apply here to join: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/12L8drO9a6OZf3-I9578PieBI0fw... There's also a public meetup…

Let's say I'm a regular web developer and know nothing about climate science, carbon removal, or any related science or technologies, but might be interested in donating my time and and skills. Do you have any recommendations?

This is probably a really sensitive topic but.. Donating your time to help get politicians elected who are serious about doing what's necessary may be the best thing you can do.

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#110

Post by chrdlu » Fri, Aug 16, 2019, 4:07 AM UTC

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.

Individuals matter too!

Netflix made had $5.8B in revenue from small $10-20 subscription users!

Today, for $20 a month you can offset your own carbon footprint! This matters because the more resources that goes into fighting climate change allows innovation. Even by generating more demand for carbon credits and offsetting, new businesses can thrive and grow by fighting climate change!

I've been super obsessed with https://projectwren.com (YC S19) for these exact reason!