Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Stanford gets $1.1B for new climate school from John Doerr

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 214 posts

Re: Stanford gets $1.1B for new climate school from John Doerr

#201

Post by strikelaserclaw »

ransom1538 wrote: post #184
metadat wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Donor behavior such as this comes down to human psychology and neuroscience. * Tribalism: Humans like people who "are like them", it's easier to relate. Thus, IME, Stanford grads prefer other Stanford-branded people. Or at least crême de la creme Ivy. Especially compared to the plebs and the proles. * Vanity: Donors find it appealing that the structure will be around for a long time, prominently and proudly emblazone…

People should invest local. I just handed a check to our sons martial arts center. It is used for scholarships for kids that can't afford monthly dues. Every dollar is treasured.

Yea but it won’t raise your prestige, I mean giving charity to Stanford, one of the top schools in the world, shows everyone how baller you are, and maybe the next 20 generations of Doerrs will get guaranteed admission too

Re: Stanford gets $1.1B for new climate school from John Doerr

#202

Post by etempleton »

perihelions wrote: post #33

They don't even have a nuclear engineering department! They might as well endow a theology seminary; it's the same category of problem-solving. This is mainly prestige signalling, isn't it? He's a Silicon Valley oligarch, and this is the elite Silicon Valley school. If there's some additional, meritocratic factor specific to Stanford, for this type of billion-dollar gift... what is it? edit: Perhaps it's synergies wi…

Donations are made because of relationships. The donor likely has a relationship with Stanford or leaders at Stanford and has had many conversations with them about what he might donate money for. This is what they came up with.

And, yes, donations are often vanity projects. He will likely get his name on a building, maybe an honorary degree. His name is now forever tied to Stanford.

Re: Stanford gets $1.1B for new climate school from John Doerr

#203

Post by hackernewds »

unmole wrote: post #52
aresant wrote: post #13

The most encouraging signal on climate to me is that the “money” seems to finally be waking up. ESG policies - backed by data monitoring requirements to combat greenwashing from sovereign wealth funds are real, arduous, and creating business and capital incentives with environmental alignment. Early stage climate tech funds - of which their are many today where there were few even a few years ago - are giving a new g…

As it stands stakeholder capitalism is a scam perpetrated by the professional-managerial class on everyone else. ESG offers a viable career path for people who don't actually like finance but want the money it pays. Plus, you get to tell yourself you're Making the world a better place. What's not to like?

That sounds like the right incentives and outcomes?

Re: Stanford gets $1.1B for new climate school from John Doerr

#204

Post by whack »

wolverine876 wrote: post #196
whack wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US government gets $0.16B less that it can control in social spending. But in return, a regulated non-profit institution gets $1.1B more in its budget. That's a pretty good tradeoff for the social good. For an alternative way of looking at things - almost any economist would tell you that it is wise to tax negative externalities and subsidize positive externalities. This is one of the most foundational insights f…

> The US government gets $0.16B less that it can control in social spending. But in return, a regulated non-profit institution gets $1.1B more in its budget. There's no reason to think the non-profit accomplishes anything or doesn't accomplish negative things. And there is an opportunity cost to the non-profit getting that money rather than, for example, schools.

> There's no reason to think the non-profit accomplishes anything or doesn't accomplish negative things

You could say the exact same thing about how the federal government spends its money.

> And there is an opportunity cost to the non-profit getting that money rather than, for example, schools.

There's also an opportunity cost to the government getting that money, rather than, for example, educational non-profits.

Overall, do I think the federal government would do more good with the same amount of money? Probably. But would the federal government do more good with $0.16B, as opposed to the non-profit sector with $1.1B? I highly doubt it.

Re: Stanford gets $1.1B for new climate school from John Doerr

#205

Post by ChrisLomont »

t_mann wrote: post #160
ChrisLomont wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't allocate money solely on the scale of the problem faced. I'd allocate it according to where it has the best utility. And several billion towards malaria is likely a much better outcome for humanity than a few billion towards climate change. It will move the needle more for on malaria than for climate change.

I guess it's a matter of personal preference. If I was rich to the point that I could focus entirely on having an impact instead of making money, I'd basically ask myself a variation of Hamming's questions (originally meant as advice for academic researchers: 1. What are the most important problems in your field? 2. Are you working on one of them? 3. Why not?).

To maximize impact you again should spend money not on the hardest problems, but on those where the money has the biggest impact. It's the definition :)

Consider two problems: one makes everyone's life 5% better and costs $100 to solve. One makes lives 20% better and costs $1 trillion. You have $100. Where does your money have the biggest impact?

This is malaria and climate change.

Re: Stanford gets $1.1B for new climate school from John Doerr

#206

Post by tesserac7 »

atlasunshrugged wrote: post #82
photochemsyn wrote: post #40

Stanford's last major foray into this area was "The Global Climate and Energy Project"... a major sponsor was ExxonMobil. As you might guess, that didn't really do much in the way of producing renewable energy alternatives to fossil fuels... more like a green PR initiative. Somehow I don't think oil companies are thrilled about everyone driving EVs and seeing their market share collapse. https://gcep.stanford.edu/abo…

Doesn't petro-state imply heavy economic dependence on energy sources for government tax revenue? I don't think that's the case in America and if it were we'd see far more federal involvement in the sector even with state run companies and far fewer tax breaks for the industry.

It's an interesting question. Saudi Arabia alone owns at least USD100bn of US Treasury debt (before custodial holdings via tax havens) [0]. Other Petro states own more

The petrodollar system is based on international trade in oil being denominated in USD. This finances the US deficit (in lieu of taxes) when oil exporters use dollar revenues to buy Treasuries

Not a traditional Petro state... Concepts like fiscal breakeven prices aren't in play. But some shades of gray perhaps

[0] https://ticdata.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-cent...

Re: Stanford gets $1.1B for new climate school from John Doerr

#207

Post by fatboy93 »

solveit wrote: post #172
bobbylarrybobby wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, that's bad, but those numbers aren't anything compared to what climate change is going to do. If the population of Earth drops by a billion over the next hundred years, that's 10M a year, on average. (I recognize that I'm not differentiating between premature deaths and a lack of replacement births, but still.)

Why do you think climate change will kill a billion people over the next century? Not saying you're wrong, just bewildered that you are able to make any kind of prediction on this at all.

Not sure where they got the number from, but every year the climates have become a tad more warmer with summer temperatures routinely being closer to 50C in India.

I've been hearing nearly all my life that coastal areas like Bangladesh, Mumbai, Kolkata, orissa etc are at a severe risk of drowning due to rising sea levels.

I've experienced first hand water scarcity in many parts of the country, but more prominently near the Deccan plateau due to rainfall failures and lakes, rivers drying up as a consequence of exploitation leading to crop failures.

Their 1 billion number doesn't seem too far off though if we take into account not many hospitable places have measures controlling resource usage and exploitation.

Re: Stanford gets $1.1B for new climate school from John Doerr

#208

Post by t_mann »

11101010001100 wrote: post #165
t_mann wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is, see it as a donation , not an investment. You probably won't get richer by funding carbon capture, but you also won't get richer from having your name on a building on the Stanford campus.

Take a look at the current carbon capture tech and the potential carbon capture rates from existing technologies. We are orders of magnitudes off from what is needed. You will require a fusion (something Gates is already invested in) level advance to achieve meaningful carbon capture. 1B isn't nearly enough.

Ok, 1B isn't going to go very far there, but that's why I mentioned the Gates Foundation. That sort of money (50B+) could get us somewhere, and might inspire guys like John Doerr to chip in some more as well.

Re: Stanford gets $1.1B for new climate school from John Doerr

#209

Post by allisdust »

photochemsyn wrote: post #40

Stanford's last major foray into this area was "The Global Climate and Energy Project"... a major sponsor was ExxonMobil. As you might guess, that didn't really do much in the way of producing renewable energy alternatives to fossil fuels... more like a green PR initiative. Somehow I don't think oil companies are thrilled about everyone driving EVs and seeing their market share collapse. https://gcep.stanford.edu/abo…

I call this the lazy philanthropy. Dump a bunch of money on well known names and it ends up sloshing around the system going into unrelated stuff.

On the other end is the active philanthropy (like what Bill Gates does) which is a lot more effective and shows results faster.

Re: Stanford gets $1.1B for new climate school from John Doerr

#210

Post by orbifold »

allisdust wrote: post #209
photochemsyn wrote: post #40

Stanford's last major foray into this area was "The Global Climate and Energy Project"... a major sponsor was ExxonMobil. As you might guess, that didn't really do much in the way of producing renewable energy alternatives to fossil fuels... more like a green PR initiative. Somehow I don't think oil companies are thrilled about everyone driving EVs and seeing their market share collapse. https://gcep.stanford.edu/abo…

I call this the lazy philanthropy. Dump a bunch of money on well known names and it ends up sloshing around the system going into unrelated stuff. On the other end is the active philanthropy (like what Bill Gates does) which is a lot more effective and shows results faster.

What Gate has done also seems largely a tax avoidance scheme that supports his BioTech and other investments. If you have a foundation which does investments and invest yourself I am sure there are really well worked out ways of avoiding capital gains tax indefinitely, while not giving up control on where any of your money really goes.
Post reply on HN