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Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

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Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

#271

Post by boo_boo »

parasubvert wrote: post #148
growlist wrote: post #70

Here's a wild, crazy, dangerous idea for discussion: how about we start curtailing globalism, and encourage people to live less carbon intensive lives by building economies based around what's available nearby?

Lots of reasons? A) We’ve globally lowered poverty to its lowest levels in history through trade. Pretty much every government And populace on earth would be against this policy except the absolute richest blocs (eg. The EU, elements of the USA). B) Globalism has already been pretty curtailed by populism the past 20 years. But this includes the good parts of globalism, like coordinated carbon reductions. C) Carbon re…

> oil rich nations can just locally use and trade their energy

Sure, but the point is that local demand wouldn't be anywhere near the demand of the global market currently

Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

#272

Post by Loughla »

opwieurposiu wrote: post #176
Loughla wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like that idea, and it is legitimately how I am trying to live my life, but - The problem with that is - it requires people to either migrate away from areas that are not great at producing food without massive resource investment (or bringing it in from somewhere else), or to splinter basic things like hygiene and nutrition based on region. For example - for the last 5 years my family has exclusively eaten locally…

Wow that is really cool. How many acres/person do you need to farm for this?

Family of 3, on 56 acres. The breakdown is as follows: 10 acres for pasture, 9 acres for vegetable/grain production, 30 acres of timber, 2 acres of pond, 5 acres of grass/brush/fallow ground at any one time.

We could support 9-12 people on this amount of ground, if I had to guess, and if we had to. I like to have a lot of woods/timber for hunting and trapping as a hobby. The gardens produce WAY more than enough for our needs - but storage is an issue. Not everything lends itself to drying, canning, or pickling. So you learn to eat when the food is there and pack on pounds for when it's not. This time of year, I'm 5-10 pounds overweight; in March, right before spring, I'll be well under my regular weight.

Not sure about the long-term effects of that. . . .

We practice steady rotation of crops, and do square foot practices instead of traditional row crops. The time spent is minimal, once it's up and running. I can't even begin to imagine the thousands of hours we spent setting everything up, though. We've lived out there for almost 2 decades now, and are JUST getting to the point where it works.

Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

#273

Post by Forbo »

ip26 wrote: post #122
namdnay wrote: post #14

I'm always suspicious about carbon offsets. From what I've seen buying flights for example, the price seems surprisingly low. Either being carbon neutral is not as economy-killing as some say, or the true price is much higher. Does anyone have more expertise on this?

being carbon neutral is not as economy-killing as some say I think this is a big part of it. Just look at carbon tax proposals. A commonly suggested initial tax is $40/ton. My family racks up about 4-6 tons of CO2 each year driving. That's $160-240/yr. By comparison, registration is ~$300 and insurance is ~$700. A large portion of the voting public opposes virtually all regulation & taxes simply on principal. For thi…

What's really nutty is that if it were a tax and dividend system, the majority of households would actually end up with more money back in their pockets. That this hasn't already been implemented is absolutely maddening.

Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

#274

Post by ewidar »

air7 wrote: post #249
ohthehugemanate wrote: post #109

There's a really good explanation of different loopholes in calculating carbon emissions in the Microsoft carbon target announcement from last year[1]. Eg do you count secondary services your employees use, like food services or emissions from their commute? Do you count partner services, like shipping providers for physical product? These, along with your direct emissions, are categorized into three "scopes" of emis…

> do you count secondary services your employees use I find this question to be a classic ridiculous slippery slope. For example: Do you count the foot print of the plane that takes employees on vacation bought using the company's salary? Or the foot print of the extra child they decided to bear thanks to the finical stability the company offers? I feel these type of claims should not be taken literally but rather as…

It does not need to be a slippery slope though.

I would expect companies to count plane emissions when their employees go on business trips, but not on holidays.

I would also expect companies to count emissions produced by their employees when they work remotely, which should be a part of the total emissions of their home.

Sure, they may not be able to get an exact number, and it will be lots of estimates, but it does not mean that we should accept some approximate statement such as "We're trying our best"

Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

#275

Post by [deleted] »

Forbo wrote: post #273
ip26 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

being carbon neutral is not as economy-killing as some say I think this is a big part of it. Just look at carbon tax proposals. A commonly suggested initial tax is $40/ton. My family racks up about 4-6 tons of CO2 each year driving. That's $160-240/yr. By comparison, registration is ~$300 and insurance is ~$700. A large portion of the voting public opposes virtually all regulation & taxes simply on principal. For thi…

What's really nutty is that if it were a tax and dividend system, the majority of households would actually end up with more money back in their pockets. That this hasn't already been implemented is absolutely maddening.

[deleted]

Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

#276

Post by soperj »

sp332 wrote: post #189
soperj wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but once you reach "zero" what's the incentive to improve now?

Offsets are better than nothing, but they're not sustainable. Low-hanging fruit will be used up at some point, and actually removing CO2 from the atmosphere is really expensive (most optimistic figure I've seen anywhere estimates $50/ton for the mid-to-long term). So the incentive is to push for actually zero emissions instead of net zero. And as sibling comment mentions, climate change is bad for business too, so th…

I get that, but they haven't actually arrived at zero. They've arrived at their version of zero, and thus have incentive to get to actual zero, since they're already at "zero".

Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

#277

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

paul_f wrote: post #259
ohthehugemanate wrote: post #109

There's a really good explanation of different loopholes in calculating carbon emissions in the Microsoft carbon target announcement from last year[1]. Eg do you count secondary services your employees use, like food services or emissions from their commute? Do you count partner services, like shipping providers for physical product? These, along with your direct emissions, are categorized into three "scopes" of emis…

Sorry, buts carbon offsets are utter BS. Google has a 500,000 square foot office in Los Angeles. The City of Los Angeles gets 20% of its electricity from a coal plant in Utah. Power is fungible, you cannot select the source for your power if on the city's grid. Therefore, Google's electricity comes from burning coal. Seriously, you cannot just cut a deal with the building next door and say, I'll give you a bunch of c…

> carbon offsets are utter BS

You seem to be mixing green energy and carbon offsets.

I'm not convinced that offsets are complete BS, even though a lot of bullshitting and optimistic metrics are likely involved.

"Additionality" and accurate measurement are usually the big questions. I'm pretty sure many "offsets" are just getting extra money from credit-selling for measures that would be taken anyways because they make economic sense, but in theory, additionality (e.g. by pushing something that wouldn't make economic sense into economic feasibility through the added reward from selling credit) is a requirement for offsets (or at least "high-quality" offsets).

Let's say you go to a third world country where people are cooking with wood on open fireplaces, and start handing out stoves that need 1/3rd of the fuel. (This is actually a real offsetting effort). You've not only improved the lives of those people, but you've also reduced the amount of wood that will be burned (and potentially forest that will be cut for it), which creates a calculable impact.

At least that's the theory. The carbon savings from all of these projects are estimated, and of course everyone involved is incentivized to make the project look successful by overestimating. For example, the cookstove projects' effects are disputed: https://www.climatechangenews.com/2016/08/10/are-carbon-mark...

Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

#278

Post by soperj »

komali2 wrote: post #190
soperj wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but once you reach "zero" what's the incentive to improve now?

Assuming they actually reached zero, who cares? I mean I'd love google to work on carbon removal efforts for the world at whole, but, capitalism.

they haven't, that's the point, and why I had the zero in quotes.

Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

#279

Post by thu2111 »

tonfa wrote: post #263
thu2111 wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it would most likely mean forcibly destroying petrol powered cars, which is pretty economy killing as well as vote killing. Consider: if you don't do that, you're emitting a lot of CO2. You could wait until everyone upgrades to electric cars but it takes several decades for the vehicle fleet to turn over, so even if everyone started buying nothing but electric now, it would take decades to phase out the old v…

In bunch of countries phase out of ICE cars is planned for the 2030-2040 time frame.

But the details of that phase out are nowhere to be found. Given today's electric car sales and vehicle fleet turnover rates, if they started in 2030 and were serious it would require not only making all ICE cars illegal to buy, but it would also require seizing and destroying cars that were already in existence, to speed up the turnover rate.

Given that electric cars require new factories and supply chains to scale up, the chances of this being achieved by 2030 is minimal. Not only can't the cars be built fast enough short of some Manhattan-style program (very expensive for all but tiny countries), but neither can the factories that build the cars.

And this evades the whole question of people who like or want ICE vehicles for whatever reason.

Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

#280

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

actuator wrote: post #116
ohthehugemanate wrote: post #109

There's a really good explanation of different loopholes in calculating carbon emissions in the Microsoft carbon target announcement from last year[1]. Eg do you count secondary services your employees use, like food services or emissions from their commute? Do you count partner services, like shipping providers for physical product? These, along with your direct emissions, are categorized into three "scopes" of emis…

> emissions from their commute Isn't stuff like this kind of out of their hand unless the state itself tries to fix this.

Where a public transit alternative exists, employers can often create strong incentives by limiting or charging for parking and/or subsidizing public transit.
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