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Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

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Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#111

Post by chrdlu »

brunoTbear wrote: post #7

I'm surprised by the size of the commit. If $1M is the floor for what a Stripe-sized org is willing to spend, how expensive would a carbon tax actually be? Are there good estimators for my impact as a consumer and how much I need to commit to this? Basically I want to know how much it costs to feel ok about my flights to go skiing.

I've been posting about this a lot, but check out Project Wren! (https://projectwren.com/)

It costs me $40 a month to offset my own carbon footprint, but I take a lot more flights than the average person.

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#112

Post by titojankowski »

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?

Glad you asked! Basically, imagine I told you not much had been built and climate folks don't really "get" software.

It's true. The same revolution that connected software and biotech is coming to the climate. There's tons of super duper obvious stuff that has yet to be built.

You would probably guess there's a great website for tracking carbon levels in the air. Like that's super basic right?

Well There's not...or at least there wasn't.

This was/is the gold standard: https://www.co2.earth/ https://scripps.ucsd.edu/programs/keelingcurve/

Then last year a volunteer team (including me) built

http://carbondoomsday.com

it's open source on Github, you could work on that! It's a bit rough around the edges still. Could use a twitter bot!

You could also check out our index at: http://airminers.org

The software is pretty simple right now but we could improve it a lot!

Software related to climate change got stuck in the 90's...and you can break it out! Build cool shit!

Email me with any questions, see profile.

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#113

Post by chrdlu »

esotericn wrote: post #6

Proud. I'm in the process of setting up a new consulting business, and one of my major commitments is to donate a significant percentage (at least 10%; likely more) of profits towards CO2 reduction / capture efforts. I'm watching this space eagerly.

Trail of Bits (a security consulting firm) recently subscribed to an offset program that offsets all of the carbon from their employees!

https://twitter.com/trailofbits/status/1155840018797256711

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#114

Post by titojankowski »

Rapzid wrote: post #109
enraged_camel wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Politicians are powerless without good technology options.

Today, the technology options are not good. but good options are within sight. As a technologist, let's go make better tech.

Climate change is a technology problem and a marketing problem.

YC's carbon site does a great job marketing for these crucial technologies: http://carbon.ycombinator.com/

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#116

Post by sizzle »

nextos wrote: post #50
Areading314 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 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…

Are electric airplanes feasible in the foreseeable future?

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#117

Post by abalone »

Just to summarize (warm up those downvotes...):

* “almost certainly more” than 84% of stripe’s emissions will not be sequestered because it’s “financially infeasible”

* no mention of stripe’s actual carbon footprint

* talk of startups and trillion dollar industry “by the end of the century” but no mention of government intervention / green new deal to turn the tide in the next decade before it’s too late

Verdict: free market ideologues are not ever going to be leaders on climate. We need massive mobilization at the federal level to hit the necessary emissions reductions within the next 12 years if we are to avoid a catastrophic rise in temperature.

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#118

Post by shepwalker »

rtpg wrote: post #81
shepwalker wrote: post #78

I'm a big 'ol fan of Stripe, but large scale change isn't going to happen through corporate self regulation. I wish tech companies that insist they want to make large, positive changes would come to terms with the fact that putting pressure on political levers is fundamentally necessary. I would be far more aggressive in my support of this effort if it was explicitly "we're doing this effort to cover our own tracks a…

OTOH let’s say you spent $1M a year on a PAC. In this political environment how far would you be able to go? This feels like trying to establish some sort of technological catalyst. This also might not be enough but it’s something.

You can't throw a wifi-enabled juicer 5 feet without hitting half a dozen companies that are trying to be 'technological catalysts'. You're giving extra credit for unproven rate of return, which I'd still argue won't amount to meaningful change unless the political status quo is aggressively challenged.

The reason you spent $Xmil on a PAC is the same reason we (inclusive, hopefully) vote. Will one significantly contributor turn the tide? Probably not. But it requires good (corporate) citizens to put up or shutup instead of leveraging a tweak on a pet environmental project to gain a positive press cycle.

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#119

Post by shepwalker »

mLuby wrote: post #83
shepwalker wrote: post #78

I'm a big 'ol fan of Stripe, but large scale change isn't going to happen through corporate self regulation. I wish tech companies that insist they want to make large, positive changes would come to terms with the fact that putting pressure on political levers is fundamentally necessary. I would be far more aggressive in my support of this effort if it was explicitly "we're doing this effort to cover our own tracks a…

>I wish tech companies that… want… large, positive changes would [accept] that putting pressure on political levers is fundamentally necessary. I agree that corporate self-regulation is the laziest political solution. But instead of doubling down on a mistake, let's get all company hands off the political levers and have real separation of corp and state. Company influence on politics is an arms race that entrenches…

Absolutely, agreed. But unilateral disarmament isn't the way to do so. If Stripe has a nice post about vehemently supporting politicians and policies that aim to get corporate money out of politics, they will quietly get my upvote and thoughtful nod of approval.

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#120

Post by choeger »

sizzle wrote: post #116
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…

Are electric airplanes feasible in the foreseeable future?

No. That's physically not efficient. Synthetic fuels may be, though.
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