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

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

#91

Post by phphphphp »

rdm_blackhole wrote: post #90
phphphphp wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-suf…

You are misinterpreting what I said but I am not going to repeat myself to reiterate my views which I have expressed pretty clearly in my previous response to you. You completely forgot to address all my rebuttals to your arguments so I will chose to believe that you are arguing in bad faith at this point. For the sake of closure let me respond to you and then we can leave it at that: >> If you’re unwilling to make a…

You're a software engineer, you're in the upper echelon of the upper echelon, please don't try and appeal to some unearned sympathy. I am arguing that you, as a person of privilege, should do the best you can do to bring about the world you want to see. I would not have the same argument with a person living in poverty, I would not argue that someone struggling to survive should be concerned about their carbon footprint. Most people in Europe are not struggling to survive by global standards.

The obligation you and I have is very different, because you and I (and the others on this website) are in a position of privilege, we are in a position of power, our actions influence the lives of the less fortunate. "The big corporations" are just a convenient get out for not taking responsibility for your own choices. Who do the big corporations answer to? Their customers. Who are their customers? You and I. If you choose to purchase petrol, you're creating demand. If you choose to purchase food grown overseas, you're creating demand for fossil fuels to be burned to transport the food thousands of miles. Are there ~8,000 planes in the sky right now because corporations are evil, or because there's 8,000 planes worth of demand for planes to be in the air? If everyone chose to fly half as much, how many planes would there be in the sky?

You're trying to shift blame to boogeymen, you're trying to argue that "developed countries" and "big corporations" are to blame without acknowledging that you're a part of a developed country, you're a customer of big corporations, you are creating demand. Every time you burn fossil fuels for convenience, you're choosing to pay for your convenience with the suffering of the people in the global south impacted by fossil fuels.

My point is not that you must be perfect, not that you must live a saintly life with no worldly pleasures, my point is that you should do your best, and that if we all do our best, it will have a meaningful impact on the world around us. If what you're doing today is your best, so be it, but from what you've said, it doesn't sound like it at all.

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

#92

Post by WalterBright »

thomasmost wrote: post #85
WalterBright wrote: post #56

Bluntly, this is a completely fruitless, hopelessly inaccurate, and unnecessarily expensive way to measure and deal with CO2 emissions. What's the easy, accurate, and fruitful way? Toting up the amount of fuel that comes out of refineries and coal mines multiplied by its carbon content. Then, tax it, which will provide a disincentive for all uses that burn that fuel.

We're huge supporters of a carbon tax, but there are significant challenges, both technical and political. If we had perfect information and the political will, I think the approach you describe would be great—in the meantime, unfortunately, the market needs tools like Bend. I actually wrote a blog post on the subject, if you're curious: https://bend.green/blog/the-path-to-a-carbon-tax

"It’s a relatively simple idea: corporate CO2e emissions are tracked and companies are charged some flat rate of dollars per kilogram."

As I mentioned, tracking and measuring emissions is hopelessly complicated. It's far easier to tax the carbon content of the fuel where the fuel is produced.

As for taxing, we already tax gasoline (rather heavily). I don't really understand why taxing the carbon content is resisted so strongly. Taxing the carbon content would also do things like make natural gas more attractive than coal, because ng has twice the energy in it per carbon atom.

As for the amount of the tax, one starts out with a small carbon tax, then gradually increase it until the CO2 emissions go down. This also gives the market time to adapt.

It is impossible to determine the carbon footprint of a mere pencil, let alone some large business operation:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32175325

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

#93

Post by dang »

thrownaway561 wrote: post #57

Quoted post unavailable.

Name-calling, personal attacks, and flamewar will get you banned here, so please don't post like this. You can make your substantive points without any of that.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

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

#95

Post by qikInNdOutReply »

And then we travell to some third world country to buy "forrest planted" certificates from some corrupt official, to return that imaginary crime number down to zero with imaginary good deeds.

And that kids is how you not only not solve a problem, but introduce a bureaucratic feeld good layer that actually accelerates the problems.

Easier solution would be to just compute industrial product logetivity, aka how long it lasts as a usefull entity and tax accordingly. That would change things up, to reward a car lasting 40 years.

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

#96

Post by thomasmost »

thomasmost wrote: post #88
Snoozus wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So replacing a 100k employee by a 10k cloud service would increase a companys co2 balance? Seems counterintuitive, no?

I don't understand what you're saying. Replacing a 10k cloud service with 100k of private server equipment would probably reduce a company's co2 balance.

I meant this turned the other direction lol

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

#97

Post by baxuz »

phphphphp wrote: post #84
baxuz wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't fix systemic issues with individual choices. That requires regulation and a system that can carry out those regulations.

Finish the thought, where do regulations come from?

From government intervention.

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

#98

Post by pawsforthought »

thomasmost wrote: post #86
hnhg wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A corporate carbon footprint isn't a scam if it's calculated using primary data and according to the GHG Protocol standards - https://ghgprotocol.org/

+1, it also really depends on the offset (as to whether it's a scam or not)—like I talked about elsewhere, even our low-cost offset is a much more credible project than some of the credits frequently purchased by big companies. If we don't start changing the standard for what's acceptable, who will, ya know?

Incidentally, do you have any advice or resources for assessing the credibility of carbon offsets (for purchase by individuals I suppose, not that it should make much difference)?

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

#99

Post by thomasmost »

Just wanted to update the Hacker News community here that we just launched on Product Hunt as well! Y'all asked a ton of amazing questions here and if you wouldn't mind checking this out as well and engaging if you're so moved, every little bit helps! Thanks https://www.producthunt.com/posts/bend-3
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