Stripe Climate • Hacker News Board

Re: Stripe Climate

#21

Post by nanr » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 3:19 PM UTC

sritchie wrote: post #10

If anyone from Stripe is reading - is it possible yet for me to simply donate money to the portfolio you’ve assembled without running a business? We purchase monthly offsets now and I’d love to switch to funding direct carbon capture (and will happily spend more).

Hi, Nan from Stripe! Accepting direct contributions from individuals isn’t a central focus for us right now, but we intend to publish what we learn about carbon removal, which can help inform your own efforts. Some of our partners accept contributions directly: https://www.climeworks.com/subscriptions, https://projectvesta.org/crowdfunding/

Re: Stripe Climate

#22

Post by skrtskrt » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 3:23 PM UTC

tasogare wrote: post #16

parhamn wrote: post #2

This is really cool! Kudos to the team there for doing this!! Semi-shameless plug (it's for the environment!!): We're launching something similar next week here [1]. Instead pulling off revenue we're helping teams plant trees when they close an issue or merge a PR. I think the additional visibility to the team members as they work has a great feel-good vibe! We currently connect with Github, Bitbucket, Gitlab & JIRA.…

This smptomatic of the green-washing trend. Planting trees by itself is not an action that is inherently good: it is if placed where useful for instance to fight desertification, it can be dommageable in other cases such as planting non native species, or planting moni-cture forest. As usual with this kind of initiative, there is no info on the type of trees planted, where they are and why it does matter to the local…

What do you think about this option from Project Wren? It looks like the money is going to an established organization (TIST) run with an eye towards everything you said.

https://projectwren.com/projects/community-tree-planting

I just found out about Project Wren recently, turns out they are a YC company.

I want to pull the trigger on signing up for it but I want to be really sure what I'm donating towards is actually effective.

Re: Stripe Climate

#23

Post by toomuchtodo » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 3:24 PM UTC

nanr wrote: post #14

corentin88 wrote: post #8

Kudos to Stripe and the team behind for this proposal. Unfortunately, it's only available for US companies. Hope they will expand it soon.

Yes, we’re starting with U.S. businesses at first and working to quickly expand to more countries. Stay tuned!

Are you working with Tomorrow ("Tmrow") [1] at all? They're doing something similar with their Bloom Climate [2] product in Europe (their product helps businesses measure their impact and offset accordingly). Also the folks who built and run https://electricitymap.org and who Google is using to schedule compute workloads around low carbon intensity electrical generation [3] [4].

Definitely understand there is a "Faux Pax" (mea culpa) element about mentioning competitors in what looks very similar to a Show HN, but there's a lot of climate work to be done so I hope y'all can connect if you haven't yet.

[1] https://www.tmrow.com/

[2] https://bloomclimate.com

[3] https://www.tmrow.com/blog/announcing-our-partnership-with-g...

[4] https://blog.google/inside-google/infrastructure/data-center...

Disclosure: No relation except as a volunteer contributor.

Re: Stripe Climate

#24

Post by syndacks » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 3:30 PM UTC

I take serious moral concern with the notion that we can "spend our way out of climate disaster" as these initiatives ultimately suggest.

Furthermore, this makes individuals feel better about doing something (having agency). This is a false sense of making a difference; we need sweeping, fundamental changes to address climate change, not at the individual level, but at the state level and beyond.

Re: Stripe Climate

#25

Post by core-questions » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 3:31 PM UTC

BlueTemplar wrote: post #13

The history of the carbon removal companies is not good (mostly due to the large incentive to game the measures), and smells of indulgences . However, this industry is still quite young... EDIT : Also this initiative seems to be very research-focused, rather than be just about using already known methods?

It remains to be seen if carbon removal can be done in a way that makes sense thermodynamically (i.e. it takes tremendous energy input to do, where does that energy come from, is it using carbon-emitting energy from elsewhere on the grid, etc). If at any point a carbon-emitting energy source is involved, there's no way that the system is going to be absorbing as much carbon from the air as was emitted for the same amount of energy.

If we're going to flatten the peaks of power availability with anything, it should probably be novel energy storage techniques so that the carbon that is output is not wasted, so the energy is actually used eventually for something productive.

We already have a carbon removal system that is viciously efficient and solar powered: it's called a plant.

Re: Stripe Climate

#26

Post by gazelleeatslion » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 3:32 PM UTC

WOAH - That logo looks 100% identical to scotch.io. Even the animation... Not suggesting anything but wow what the odds.

Great program. Not enough organizations / people prioritizing climate and always great to see efforts by a business.

Also, FWIW “Carbon Capture” is a weird space and a bunch of young crazy tech worth looking into for engineer minded folks (direct air capture for example).

Lot of love, hate, skepticism from people, industry, scientist, activist, NGO, legislators but regardless offsets markets (even a global one) or cutting back is definitely not enough we need to do.

Re: Stripe Climate

#27

Post by googthrowaway42 » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 3:33 PM UTC

"In the teaching of the Catholic Church, an indulgence (Latin: indulgentia, from indulgeō, 'permit') is "a way to reduce the amount of punishment one has to undergo for sins".[1] The Catechism of the Catholic Church describes an indulgence as "a remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven, which the faithful Christian who is duly disposed gains under certain prescribed conditions through the action of the Church which, as the minister of redemption, dispenses and applies with authority the treasury of the satisfactions of Christ and all of the saints".[2]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indulgence

Re: Stripe Climate

#28

Post by core-questions » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 3:34 PM UTC

atilev wrote: post #11

Great initiative, though why not use those funds to also sustain forests and natural carbon capturing methods in the tropical regions? Use those funds, so that jobs can be created where forests are getting cut down for agriculture use? We could preserve our natural carbon capturing biosphere as well as invest in carbon capture technology. There will be little incentive to preserve biosphere lands.

Agreed, this seems like a more immediately effective vector, on multiple fronts.

Let's face it: this 1% transaction fee is going to mostly go into the hands of administrators, bureaucratic types, functionaries, middlemen, and grifters who have gotten themselves into the right place at the right time to proselytize a bunch of catabolic techniques to "capture carbon" that use more energy to capture carbon than was produced by releasing that same amount of carbon. It makes virtually zero sense.

Re: Stripe Climate

#29

Post by gravitystorm » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 3:36 PM UTC

Carbon capture is necessary in the long term, for particular emissions that are hard to avoid (like specific industrial processes and parts of agriculture). But while we're still pumping out emissions that can be easily and cheaply displaced today, like coal and gas fired grid electricity, then the money being spent on carbon capture is being spent terribly ineffectively. And globally, we don't have the time or money to waste.

For example, most electricity grids are still partially carbon-intensive, despite renewable sources being cheap and available and in use. Simply buying some more solar panels and hooking them to a carbon-intensive grid will displace coal or gas emissions by the following lunchtime, far more cost-effectively than any form of carbon capture.

I understand the principle on working on research projects that have a long lead time. But Stripe should treat carbon capture as such, and could have a more cost-efficient climate strategy: put most of this money today into the most cost-efficient solutions available today, rather than putting its entire budget into the least cost-efficient solution.

Re: Stripe Climate

#30

Post by immmmmm » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 3:37 PM UTC

Removing carbon from the atmosphere is a fight against the second law of thermodynamic. To win a fight against Entropy one needs energy, and typically a lot of.

My question is simple: where do we find enough energy to capture the carbon that was emitted during the 200 last years? Because we consume already too much energy i fear..