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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

#281

Post by sp332 »

soperj wrote: post #276
sp332 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

Maintaining "net zero" takes a lot of work/money. It's not something you can do once. Every time you put carbon into the atmosphere, you have to go buy an offset. Over time those offsets get more expensive.

Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

#282

Post by ForHackernews »

zo1 wrote: post #199
ForHackernews wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> mandatory contraceptive Starts to sound a lot like eugenics. All the evidence suggests that if you raise standards of living and give women control of their own fertility, then birth rates drop naturally (and fairly rapidly). Turns out, when given the choice, most women prefer to have one or two children. This trend has been replicated across (all?) developed countries with very different cultures. There's no reaso…

I didn't say mandatory contraceptives, there was a whole sentence you missed the ending of. "comprehensive and mandatory contraceptive, health-information and birth control drives" You make it sound like like I'm saying people need to be forced to use contraceptives. Guess the phrasing is not great. Maybe 'program' would have been better? But the mandatory modifier was on the drive/program, not the usage of contracep…

It still seems very ethically dubious to me to have a bunch of rich people (with absolutely massive carbon footprints) telling a bunch of poor people they need to get their birth rate down.

If you were serious about a programme like this, you should at least phrase it in terms of carrots, not sticks: if you embrace feminism, educate and empower your female citizens, we'll reward that with increased foreign direct investment.

Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

#283

Post by Spivak »

Qwertious wrote: post #240
Spivak wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The short answer is yes, the long answer is "it depends on your local electricity generation but probably still yes." There are some places in the world where gas wins out because they burn coal to produce electricity but it's rare.

'There are some places in the world where gas wins out because they burn coal to produce electricity but it's rare.' This statement always throws me - did we just make a complete context-switch from talking about car emissions to talking about gas turbines? Or is "gas" being used to refer to petrol ("gasoline")? The subject of the previous post was clearly cars, but that sentence is talking about gas and coal, better…

It might be a US-ism? I've never heard anyone in casual conversion call it gasoline or petrol. You would get weird looks if you called it gasoline.

"You fill up your gas tank at the gas station and get a gas can just in case you get low on gas before you can hit the next station to gas up."

Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

#284

Post by wolco »

ewidar wrote: post #274
air7 wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 doe…

If they didn't receive those high salaries they wouldn't be able to take those personal trips. The more employees the higher the multiplier. So what are we exactly offsetting.

Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

#285

Post by komali2 »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #251
komali2 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Capitalism does not mean we can’t have legislation to protect humanity —- think of the clean air act and a host of others (e.g. OSHA)

I actually agree wholly - I think we should pass regulation. But I don't understand why we don't regulate zero carbon and that's that. Beyond that, presumably it'd be the government's responsibility to purge remaining excess carbon from the atmosphere.

Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

#286

Post by jokoon »

So all their employees don't eat meat, don't use thermal cars? What about the concrete of their buildings? Another flagrant example of greenwashing. It's useless to pretend one entity has a low carbon footprint because carbon is systemic.

For example google as a business is only viable if smartphones are getting produced.

Why can't anybody understand and accept the fact that oil is an awesome source of energy? It's exactly like telling people to stop drinking sodas because it will kill them.

The problem here is that sodas drinkers will give diabetes to everybody. That cannot go on.

Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

#287

Post by wolco »

sp332 wrote: post #281
soperj wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

Maintaining "net zero" takes a lot of work/money. It's not something you can do once. Every time you put carbon into the atmosphere, you have to go buy an offset. Over time those offsets get more expensive.

Wouldn't they be cheaper as businesses invest to use less carbon over time.

Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

#288

Post by paconbork »

boogies wrote: post #156
actuator wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies do provide credits towards cycling and FB does this for even tube in London, but that will be still limited based on location. Though you are right about the location bit, they should force the hand of the state by speaking with their foot, I guess fear of losing talent opportunity scares them. > Facebook even builds their own employee housing. I wasn't aware about this, where are they building these?

Menlo Park, and apparently Google’s up to something similar in San Jose: https://levels.io/facebook-city/

Meh, if the tech workers lived in the city it would just be "gentrification". There's no winning.

Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

#289

Post by TheCoelacanth »

robertlagrant wrote: post #214
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…

You're already taxed (potentially a lot) on fuel. Adding another tax that's harder to measure consumption for seems like a bad idea.

The fuel tax generally doesn't even cover the full cost of roads. It doesn't even start paying for carbon offsets.

Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

#290

Post by syshum »

epistasis wrote: post #177
syshum wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>supporting initiatives that promote density This is not going to help you with "speaks to a large number of voters who don't respond to environmental appeals" There is a MASSIVE over lab in people that do don't respond to (government regulation based) environmental appeals AND have no desire to live in densely populated cities. Speaking as one of those people, the idea of living in an area of high population densit…

That's fine, you keep doing you. Just done stop other people from living the way they want to.

There is one group politically that wants to prevent people from living they way they want, and it is not Rural people
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