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

121–130 of 217 posts

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#121

Post by mLuby »

shepwalker wrote: post #119
mLuby wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

100% I realize I was unclear that I meant corporate lobbying should be used to end corporate lobbying.

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#122

Post by eanzenberg »

gbrown wrote: post #43
taurath wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, th…

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

Because reducing US emissions to 0 will have no effect on global warming.

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#123

Post by WrtCdEvrydy »

chrdlu wrote: post #108
PascLeRasc wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

You know, I would love for an option that just asked how old you are and just let you pay to offset your expected life's worth of tree replanting (this might just be the closest thing I've ever seen).

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#124

Post by davedx »

chrdlu wrote: post #111
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.

Great, didn't know about that. Subscribed on the spot and sharing it around, thanks for posting.

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#125

Post by esotericn »

chrdlu wrote: post #113
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

I had an incomplete checkout process with Wren.

Just signed up for 200% (I suspect the estimate is on the low side as I don't know the impact of producing a lot of the things I own).

Cheers for the reminder!

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#126

Post by cca »

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…

Thanks Eric. This well-captures what we hope to do. Please drop me a message at christian@stripe.com -- I'd love to talk about how our projects can work together.

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#127

Post by gnopgnip »

taurath wrote: post #27
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 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, th…

It is difficult to get people to agree if it means gas and cheeseburgers cost twice as much.

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#128

Post by sbierwagen »

ajross wrote: post #42
sbierwagen wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That paper avoids mentioning BECCS, the most extensively researched plan for carbon sequestration: reducing wood to charcoal, burning the syngas you produce during the process to generate electricity, and then sequestering the charcoal.[1] The Kyoto protocol for limiting global warming to 2C requires massive use of BECCS. Pros: The output material has a higher carbon content, so you're locking up less water, and it's…

> Cons: Syngas still has some carbon in it, so you're generating more emissions than if you just buried the wood. It's a crop, though. That carbon you put into the atmosphere got sucked out by the tree you baked to begin with. Use renewable biomass (a "farm" in the jargon) and this problem goes away.

You have 1000 tons of green wood, which contains 400 tons of carbon.

Should you bury it, and sequester all the carbon, or BECCS it, emitting maybe 50 tons of that carbon back into the atmosphere, which you will eventually have to spend more money to capture again?

Burying wood costs money, and doesn't produce anything useful. BECCS produces some electricity, but that electricity is so expensive there's only a handful of pilot plants in the entire world. Which is better?

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#129

Post by jrv »

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…

I'm really interested in the topic and would love to just lurk and read what people say on there for a while, but the text in the signup form makes it sound like a person like me wouldn't be accepted, since I don't have super concrete plans to make that my next profession (although I'm generally interested in exploring this field if I really started thinking that my skills would make sense there).

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#130

Post by chrdlu »

davedx wrote: post #124
chrdlu wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Great, didn't know about that. Subscribed on the spot and sharing it around, thanks for posting.

We need lots more people like you! :)
Post reply on HN