Launch HN: Bend (YC S22) – Automatically measure your company's carbon footprint

>> The attitude presented here is very fatalist and not aligned with reality.

No offense to you but Europe is in the middle of a heat wave currently and temperature records have been broken fairly recently. So no, I am not fatalist, I am a realist. I call a spade a spade. It is not debatable that all the issues that we are having now have been known for a least a few decades.

So this isn't a lack of foresight or that we were not warned. We knew and did nothing or almost nothing.

>> but the influence the act of recycling has on your own behavior and the behavior of others can bubble up to bring about real change.

Unless you can back up that claim, then there is nothing to say. Plastic recycling does not work because it is uneconomical. It is cheaper to produce plastic than to recycle it. Until that changes then plastic recycling is a waste of time and simply a feel good act that has been implemented to make people feel like they had an impact.

>> if you sincerely care about a cause, if something really matters to you, then you should be willing to expend some of your energy on it.

I care about the cause whether you think I am or not. What I don't care about is pretending to do something when we are not actually doing anything.

>> You can pick any example of human progress and apply your line of thinking to it. “Why should I bother washing my hands when nobody else is?"

I bother to wash my hands because it has an tangible effect on my quality of life by keeping me and my family safe from diseases.

Recycling a plastic bottle or taking a shorter shower is not going to save the world when governments around the world are dragging their feet and the biggest polluters out there can pollute as much as they want without consequences.

>> You’re choosing not to, so be it, but own that decision, don’t pretend that it’s the fault of someone else.

Give me a cheap electric car that I can buy second hand and make it easy to charge it at night and then I'll drive an EV. Unless you live in Norway or unless you own your own home, there is no way for someone who rents to charge their car on the street if they don't have a garage.

Force energy companies to sell a minimum at least 50% renewable energy and I'll be buying it.

Force the city councils around the world to improve the reliability and availability of public transport even on the country side, and I'll stop using my car.

This is a give and take situation. At the moment most citizens in the developed world are being hammered by inflation and a rising cost of living. Yet according to you, it seems only fair that we should shoulder most of the cost of the energy transition.

I don't think that's fair. Not when the various governments around the world are still subsidizing petroleum products, not when shipping companies can use the dirtiest fuel around to power their ships.

If you want people to change and people to make better decisions for the planet, people need to have options. At the moment those options are few and far between and mostly onerous.

Not every one can afford a model 3!

haha indeed — but actually, this is kind of the point — purchasing carbon removal credits is just like any other business purchase, but with a negative emissions factor. When you purchase carbon removal credits on Bend, it shows up as just another transaction, but with negative CO2e.

If you’re unwilling to make any sacrifice for the greater good then you’re asking the world to serve perfection to you without any effort on your part.

You can’t get a cheap second hand electric car that you can charge for free at your home? That’s unfortunate, but there are other options beyond “well whatever I’ll just get a petrol car then”.

Your government represents you, your government is not a nebulous self-sufficient entity that exists independent of you and your fellow country people. If your government isn’t doing enough, it’s up to you and the people around you to be a force for good, to do everything in your power to create change. Even if sometimes it feels fruitless, do it. Be the best you can be.

Also, the idea that you and I are shouldering the cost of the energy transition is completely ignorant to the realities of the world. The catastrophic disasters that we, the developed world, have created, are an order of magnitude worse in the global south than they will ever be for us. People are dying every day because of our choice to use fossil fuels, we are destroying the planet, your increased cost of living or exposure to the heat doesn’t come close to the suffering of people who are paying the price for our choices. Yes, this heatwave in Europe is painful, as is the cost of living going up, but perspective is important.

Sorry to see you downvoted friend.

I've been lamenting for a while the sole metric that is being used for environmental impact is "carbon footprint", just so that bureaucrats and companies can have something to measure while appearing to do something.

PFAS and microplastics might be damaging our genetic material, but their very existence if meaningless to the CO2 metric.

A bad metric is worse than no metric at times.

You can't fix systemic issues with individual choices.

That requires regulation and a system that can carry out those regulations.