Launch HN: Wren (YC S19) – Offset Your Carbon Footprint

Thanks. For question 1, I guess the question has two parts: why you ask for the size of my home, i.e., how does it factor into the calculation; and why the density of the area it is in does not seem to factor directly into the calculation.

As for 3 and 4, yes, the more information I can get in the overview the better. And always with a link to the service you are actually providing for money :-)

>So how do you think we can do this? Masses won't listen to people like you who are talking too much about numbers and then doing this in a very pedantic way (as you did in your first comment). Even if you have the facts.

The giving pledge has more than a trillion dollars pledged as of right now, certainly at least one of those individuals or couples has interest in climate change. With an incredibly small amount of that trillion dollars of pledges we could gather data and educate people.

- Ask a healthy sampling of random people if they know what global warming is, do they believe in it, have they seen signs of it, is it affecting their life (talk to farmers, ranchers, amusement park operators and owners of tourist destinations, wildfire firefighters, etc as well as random people).

Then find out what misconceptions there are, what fears there are, what falsehoods people believe.

- Talk to experts: climatologists, entomologists, financial market experts, marine and wildlife, biologists, agricultural sciences types. Find out what effects are being seen right now, ge the data from all the fields, get video interviews with them saying who they are - what they do - what they see happening - why it concerns them - if the changes continue what are the probable outcomes in the next 5/10/15 years. Start a campaign, edit this stuff and start putting it on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram as short clips.

You do this to build awareness. You create plenty of resources that people can use to educate themselves and you drive interest by raising awareness. The only way we are EVER going to tackle climate change, other than just struggling to adapt to the changes, is by educating people and getting them personally interested.

Go ask 50 random people you know "So, what do you think about global warming", you're probably going to be surprised when several flat out think it's made up and others are along the lines of "I don't know, it might be true, but I can't do anything about it".

We're not going to make changes by paying to protect Amazon rainforest. We're going to make changes by convincing people they really don't need to take their 4th international vacation in as many years, nor do they need their 3rd iPhone in 5 years, that their year and a half old MacBook is perfectly fine and they don't need the newest model just because it now has ultra hologrpahic flurm instead of super hologrpahic flurm because all they do is watch YouTube and write emails with the damn thing.

People can make small changes that add up to significant changes when you get widespread adoption.

People will illegally harvest lumber as long as there are trees, there are people literally stealing entire BEACHES [1][2], lumber (especially exotic hardwoods) sell for way more money than sand. But what if we can convince people to make some small changes:

- Do you like meat? Eat chicken instead of beef, it's an order of magnitude better per pound of meat as far as greenhouse gas emissions, not to mention land use

- 71F is a wonderful temperature for that AC but is 72F so bad?

- So, you want to fly a bunch of founders out to the Bay Area for in-person interviews for your tech accelerator batch? Seriously, can't you just use skype? Sure it's slightly annoying with the delay but it'll save a couple of tons of CO2 per person.

- You live alone, do you really need 4 lights on in the kitchen and your bedroom when you've been in the living room for the past 6 hours? And why is your tv and soundbar on, you've had headphones on listening to classical music while you stare at your laptop screen playing GorkaMorka 27 or trying to finish some code.

You have to educate the masses if you want to make change. Just because you, or me, or that guy over there recognize climate change at varying levels, does NOT mean that the majority of people do.

And you know what happens when you start to get the masses interested? You actually stand a chance out getting legislation passed that can begin to put pressure on companies. Lobbyists carry a lot of weight, but if you can sway enough voters to acknowledge climate change is an issue, then you stand a much better chance of putting pressure one existing politicians, or removing them during voting cycles and installing politicians that do care and start to create a legal framework to force change. Change in community planning, change in tax incentives, change in legal requirements, make it illegal for HOAs to tell homeowners they can't have PV panels 'because they hurt property values and ruin visual appeal'.

You know encouraging people to eat locally grown food, instead of eating exotic fruit like, bananas and coffee and oranges, year-round that get shipped from halfway around the world will have more impact than giving 20$ a month to 'protect the amazon'. Yes, we should protect rainforests because of the incredible biodiversity, but ehhhh a subscription service to wash the guilt from your conscience (not unlike the Medieval Indulgence system) just is not a realistic solution, at any meaningful level anyway.

[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/07/13/628894815/epis...

[2] https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?stor...

Thank you.

I hope you are still reading replies, even though I'm a couple days late. But if the calculator has such a high impact, why hide it behind a requirement to give out our email? I'd love to give it a try, but have no desire to sign up until I've seen more. It sounds like you are hiding one of your most effective conversion tools from me.

Hi! Jet-Set Offset here (www.jetsetoffset.com). This is an interesting approach for offsetting. We’re a startup with a similar focus on air travel -- which is one of the largest contributors of carbon emissions in the US and around the world, with emissions rates that have been increasing 4% each year as more and more of us are flying. We’ve found that lack of awareness around this issue is almost as great as the difficulty of navigating the traditional carbon marketplace to “offset” your flight emissions. While flying less is the best thing each of us can do as individuals, it's not always possible or realistic.

Jet-Set Offset was founded with the belief that we can make better choices and do good when we fly. Jet-Set Offset is a platform that allows eco-conscious travelers to do something about the environmental impact of their air travel by automatically donating one-cent per mile to their choice of non-profit environmental organization - every time they fly. Rather than operate as another carbon market, we've developed a donation-based alternative. Our model allows members to give based on the exact air mileage of their flight (not an estimated subscription model), and give to nonprofits in a meaningful way without taking a 20% cut.

We share similar aims to Wren but our approach is different. Here’s how: - We provide a donation-based alternative to the traditional "purchase and sale" carbon offset market. Some of our nonprofit partners operate certified carbon offset projects, but Jet-Set Offset is not just another carbon marketplace. - Jet-Set Offset operates as a business, but every donation made through the platform is 100% tax-deductible, as it’s made directly to the organization of the flyer’s choice. The organizations pay Jet-Set Offset a 3% fee of every donation made for use of the platform, in addition to credit card processing fees -- which means that the non-profit organizations are receiving 94% of each donation made. - The work of many of our nonprofit partners moves beyond the direct mitigation of carbon emissions by also focusing on climate adaptation, resilience, energy transformation, and policy change. - We’ve made choice a huge part of our model. Flyers can choose to give where they live and support a local organization with an environmental mission that resonates with them.

As public consciousness of this issue grows, we think that air travelers will seek viable options and alternatives to the traditional 1:1 carbon offset markets -- which can be challenging to navigate and bring up separate issues of resilience, additionality, permanence, and leakage (see Andy Newman’s recent article in the NYT, “If Seeing the World Helps Ruin It…”). While certifying organizations go to great lengths to verify carbon offset projects, verification has limits.

To all the readers, check us out! We’re interested in feedback to our approach and connection to more nonprofit partners doing amazing work that we can support. Is that an organization you’d want to give to when you fly? (Currently, any US-based 501c3 organization can request to become a Jet-Set Offset partner, provided that part of their mission is working to combat climate change and that they can provide measurable results of how donations made via the platform will be used.)