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

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#211

Post by fyfy18 » Sat, Aug 17, 2019, 4:29 AM UTC

esotericn wrote: post #53

ajross wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Ryanair flights for ten quid where the carbon tax might well whack up the cost by orders of magnitude.

It would be nowhere near that amount. I used a flight estimator which says a return flight from London to Malaga would emit 0.3 tonnes of CO2.

Project Wren charges $10 - $20 per tonne, so it would cost the same as the ticket at most, even including the cut Ryanair inevitably would take. If you take a more normal ticket price, it would be an insignificant extra.

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#212

Post by godelski » Sat, Aug 17, 2019, 8:14 AM UTC

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?

Foreseeable future, yes. Short term future (<15 years)? I wouldn't hold my breath. Might happen, but probably not.

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#213

Post by godelski » Sat, Aug 17, 2019, 8:16 AM UTC

icebraining wrote: post #138

choeger wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

We already know we can produce jet fuel from captured CO2 from the air. The trick is making it cheaper, particularly energy-wise. We can't dedicate half the world for solar panels to make fuel.

> The trick is making it cheaper

Honestly, this is a problem with a lot of technologies. Especially in the green sector. That doesn't mean we shouldn't keep funding research into it and trying to make it cheaper, but also a reason to be cautious.

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#214

Post by chrdlu » Sat, Aug 17, 2019, 10:33 PM UTC

glogla wrote: post #139

chrdlu wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ht…

I like it, but why do I have to give my email for emission calculation? It's off-putting, I don't want even more spam. And I will tell them where do I live and how, will they package it with my email and sell it to ad companies as a handy profile? Sorry to be paranoid, but most startups (uber, airbnb, paypal, not to mention facebook ...) are evil and exploitative.

Just got my first report from Project Wren! Loved it so much I copied and pasted it here so I can share it:

https://www.notion.so/chrislu/Project-Wren-August-17th-Updat...

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#215

Post by ncallaway » Sun, Aug 18, 2019, 3:29 PM UTC

fyfy18 wrote: post #210

ncallaway wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you add the cost of $100 per ton to the price of the plane ticket, you would see some amount of travel reduction naturally. What travel reduction we would have would, at that point, pay for the appropriate sequestration. Honestly, it sounds like we should just require everyone to buy 100% sequestration for their carbon production (priced into the goods and services). Add a phase in over, say 10 years to.

I'd like to see companies actually track how much CO2 goes into the production of their products. Imagine if everything you buy had the equivalent of an EnergyGuide sticker for CO2 emissions used in the production of that thing. It would lead to companies trying to optimise their products to reduce CO2 used in the manufacturing process.

Yea, that makes sense, then gives you an easy path to charging a tax with revenues going to offsets or sequestration based on the number on the sticker.

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#216

Post by esotericn » Mon, Aug 19, 2019, 1:57 AM UTC

fyfy18 wrote: post #210

ncallaway wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you add the cost of $100 per ton to the price of the plane ticket, you would see some amount of travel reduction naturally. What travel reduction we would have would, at that point, pay for the appropriate sequestration. Honestly, it sounds like we should just require everyone to buy 100% sequestration for their carbon production (priced into the goods and services). Add a phase in over, say 10 years to.

I'd like to see companies actually track how much CO2 goes into the production of their products. Imagine if everything you buy had the equivalent of an EnergyGuide sticker for CO2 emissions used in the production of that thing. It would lead to companies trying to optimise their products to reduce CO2 used in the manufacturing process.

Agree. This should be legislated just as calories are today. You could ratchet up the severity of the legislation slowly; initially you might allow estimates, over time you could start to audit the supply chain etc.

Some items do already expose this information, but it's pretty much all stuff for the eco market.

Though I remember Walkers' crisps doing this ten years back. 80g for a packet of crisps. Or about 3kg CO2 per 1kg crisps. Doesn't include final transportation though.

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#217

Post by nightski » Mon, Aug 19, 2019, 5:41 PM UTC

ako wrote: post #186

nightski wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It’s meant to ‘punish’ consumers: it needs to be painful enough that consumers reduce their consumption, otherwise pollution will not be reduced.

Right but it's not going to punish consumers equally. It will hurt the poor a lot more than the rich imho. Essentially a regressive tax moving the burden for the climate change problem to the poor.