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Cleaning New York's harbor with one billion oysters

cnn.com

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Re: Cleaning New York's harbor with one billion oysters

#11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Imagine if the project was given the 5 billion tax dollars handed to Jeff Bezos instead of a measly 4.5 million... The $4.5 million is money New York has to spend out of revenue. Spending it lowers the amount of money New York has. Neither of those is true of $5 billion in tax incentives. Look at the cash flow.

Who cares where it comes from. Tax payers are out 5 billion does it matter how?

I believe the point of the gp is that the money isn’t coming from anywhere. No one is out $5B. There is no budget line item you could point to that identifies the expenditure “$5B for Bezos”.

Re: Cleaning New York's harbor with one billion oysters

#12
post #4

So uh, how edible will these billion oysters be considering the crap they’re filtering out of the river..?

If the goal is to build a reef, eating up all the oysters isn't going to help. So maybe it's actually a good thing that those oysters will be inedible for the first couple of decades?

Re: Cleaning New York's harbor with one billion oysters

#13
post #4

So uh, how edible will these billion oysters be considering the crap they’re filtering out of the river..?

My general understanding about bioremediation is the material has to be removed and put in a landfill.

> "Billion Oyster Project partners with more than 70 restaurants in New York City. The businesses save up their oyster shells rather than tossing them, and a collection partner for the Billion Oyster Project rounds them up and carts them off to Governors Island, a small island due east of the Statue of Liberty."

It seems unclear to me whether their deal with restaurants is limited to collecting shells from restaurants or includes distributing oysters to restaurants as well. Hopefully it's only the former. One hopes the oysters being served are not local.

Re: Cleaning New York's harbor with one billion oysters

#14

Imagine if the project was given the 5 billion tax dollars handed to Jeff Bezos instead of a measly 4.5 million... This is why the environments a disaster - not because you decide to buy an SUV

> Imagine if the project was given the 5 billion tax dollars handed to Jeff Bezos instead of a measly 4.5 million... The $4.5 million is money New York has to spend out of revenue. Spending it lowers the amount of money New York has. Neither of those is true of $5 billion in tax incentives. Look at the cash flow.

We have Bill Gates I think he is probably one of the best chances we have to make some positive real change here on earth. At least I think he genuinely cares. I am remaining cautiously optimistic that some great human somewhere will solve the worlds problems. That some day someone will produce food not for profit but just to help feed the world. And repeat that same sentiment for anything we sell. I do not know how one would replace a capitalistic market but I think it has truly failed humanity.

Re: Cleaning New York's harbor with one billion oysters

#16
post #5

We should all be freaking out about what we’ve done to the earth, but nobody seems to really be able to compare it within historical context. We just dont know what it was like just a century ago. I’m always surprised by facts like in this story and similar like https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2014/02/05/257046530/b... And https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/28/nyregion/new-york-city-sm...

Sometimes I think our only options going forward are a world where all natural habitat has been completely decimated, or an eco-fascist regime enforces pollution (and thus effectively population) control on the whole planet.

Re: Cleaning New York's harbor with one billion oysters

#17
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who cares where it comes from. Tax payers are out 5 billion does it matter how?

I believe the point of the gp is that the money isn’t coming from anywhere. No one is out $5B. There is no budget line item you could point to that identifies the expenditure “$5B for Bezos”.

It's all semantics - I don't understand why people want to defend a multi-billion dollar corporation, but, lets say, that NYC didn't write off 5 billion to Amazon. Could the city have budgeted more for the failing subway and nasty harbor given that they received more in taxes? Maybe.. if they really cared for the city.

All these corporations do with their profits and tax-incentives is hoard them overseas and spend them on stock buy-backs.

https://www.barrons.com/articles/2018-record-stock-buybacks-...

Re: Cleaning New York's harbor with one billion oysters

#20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My general understanding about bioremediation is the material has to be removed and put in a landfill.

> "Billion Oyster Project partners with more than 70 restaurants in New York City. The businesses save up their oyster shells rather than tossing them, and a collection partner for the Billion Oyster Project rounds them up and carts them off to Governors Island, a small island due east of the Statue of Liberty." It seems unclear to me whether their deal with restaurants is limited to collecting shells from restaurant…

> One hopes the oysters being served are not local.

Whether you're consuming the local waste or waste from somewhere else doesn't make much of a difference.

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