[HN Gopher] Stripe is kick-starting market for carbon removal
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Stripe is kick-starting market for carbon removal
Author : frumpish
Score : 204 points
Date : 2021-10-26 23:26 UTC (23 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wsj.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wsj.com)
| kobbe wrote:
| The carbon removal plant in the picture is from climeworks where
| you can subscribe to carbon removal, if anyone is interested.
| Cost about $1000 per tonne https://climeworks.com/roadmap/orca
| janj wrote:
| Thanks for posting this, I just subscribed. They should include
| a way to invite others to check it out, send personalized
| invites to the emails I enter.
| kisamoto wrote:
| That's one part - they have a wide range of removal methods and
| you can see their applications on Github:
| https://github.com/stripe/carbon-removal-source-materials
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Is carbon directly useful? If I could extract it from the air at
| a hypothetical zero cost, would there be a market of people
| wanting to buy my carbon (bricks? powder?)?
| coolspot wrote:
| There is market for transparent carbon crystals.
| oldsecondhand wrote:
| > Is carbon directly useful?
|
| Yes we can burn it. /s
|
| Then we can capture it from the air, making profit both ways.
| It's the perpetuum mobile of business.
| philwelch wrote:
| That's called a closed loop, and it's actually vaguely
| feasible for natural gas:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabatier_reaction
|
| The problem is that it's not cost-effective to produce
| methane via the Sabatier process when you can just drill it
| out of the ground.
| consumer451 wrote:
| Launch HN: Prometheus (YC W19) - Remove CO2 from Air and Turn
| It into Gasoline
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19842240
|
| Anyone know what's going on with this?
| [deleted]
| jmarbach wrote:
| This line is telling: "Governments are going to need to be
| purchasers to get things moving, get the cost down and improve
| the technologies," he said.
|
| If if it were so critically needed, why is there no market demand
| for this product? Should the countries with low carbon production
| endlessly subsidize high carbon producing countries?
|
| The hysteria around climate is starting to look much like Corona
| hysteria. Next will be the carbon passport.
|
| If Stripe was serious about climate change, they would support
| the development of nuclear energy, stop flying on airplanes, move
| their data centers to cold climate locations, etc
| tekstar wrote:
| (This is all a rough idea in my head, with no sources to back up
| claims, but putting it out there nonetheless)
|
| Over the course of history, how we evaluate companies and value
| them has changed. The concept of valuing companies based on
| quarterly earnings growth, is a relatively new concept and is not
| a necessary attribute of capitalism. So let's change how we
| evaluate companies.
|
| What if we evaluated companies based on their environmental
| benefit or impact again? Tax break their environmental impact,
| tax break their environmental benefit?
|
| I want to see "Ford company announces third quarter results,
| sequestering 100b tons more than expected".
| GDC7 wrote:
| > The concept of valuing companies based on quarterly earnings
| growth
|
| Maybe not quarterly earnings but there was always some sort of
| financial metric.
|
| Because financial metrics cut through the BS. If you read HN
| and reddit you'd think Zuckerberg is some sort of terrorist
| hiding in the mountains of Pakistan, conspiring 24/7 to
| compromise the mental health of Americans, whereas in reality
| if Facebook is ubiquitous in our lives, there's a clear reason
| for it.
|
| And even if Zuck mandated a maximum Facebook time per day per
| user, you'd have people creating burner accounts to circumvent
| that.
|
| That's how people love Facebook, and it shows on quarterly
| earnings, nothing but perfection ever since they went public.
|
| Same goes for Google and Microsoft.
|
| The market for techno-utopianism is alive and well even without
| laws which mandate things such as forceful carbon
| sequestration, all you have to do is look at the price action
| of Tesla and Bitcoin.
|
| Plus once you make a law it's very hard to remove it, just look
| at the Patriot Act.
|
| Americans don't care about terrorism the same way they did back
| in October 2001, but still the Patriot Act is as harmful to
| privacy as it was back then.
|
| There is no guarantee that Americans will care about climate
| change, 10 years down the road...matter of fact it's more
| likely that people will forget about it altogether once they'd
| start losing their parents to heart disease, cancer, alzheimer
| and not glamorous climate change
| ferdowsi wrote:
| You're making a point about the permanence of laws by citing
| the Patriot Act, which started to expire in 2006 and expired
| completely in 2020.
| skinnymuch wrote:
| Permanence of the status quo adjusting would make more
| sense. Even if the Patriot Act technically expired, I would
| think a lot of the extra powers granted have had staying
| power. I'm not saying I'm right about this for sure.
|
| I think of Homeland Security and the Patriot Act together.
| They were both reactions. Homeland Security isn't going any
| where. It's likely Space Force isn't going any where even
| while it is still considered a punch line
| davidw wrote:
| > financial metrics cut through the BS
|
| Negative externalities are not 'BS' though, and may well
| eventually get internalized at some point, which would then
| be quite pertinent to the financials.
|
| An example would be a company that has high profits because
| it eliminates waste by dumping it in the river. Their
| financials are good, but they don't tell you the whole
| picture, because sooner or later, something is likely to be
| done about the waste dumping.
| DennisP wrote:
| Or, suppose the government charged a fee to emit CO2, and paid
| the money to companies who pulled the CO2 back out of the
| atmosphere?
|
| Then everyone is paying the direct cost of fixing the damage
| they do, and the money is going to people who fix the damage.
| csee wrote:
| Companies _will_ be evaluated that way if the government
| intervenes in the carbon market and fixes the price. But
| profits will still be the metric, as it should be. You 'll just
| get much better alignment between profits and the environment.
| joshmarlow wrote:
| I think we're making baby steps in that direction. I don't know
| the details as much as I like, but Certified B-Corporations are
| a thing https://bcorporation.net/
| CamelCaseName wrote:
| I'm not sure if I'm misunderstanding, but wouldn't introducing
| tax breaks simply be reducing the problem back to financial
| metrics?
|
| I think what you're talking about most closely aligns with
| charities, and how charities talk about their societal impact
| they're able to have. Even then, the discussion seems to
| generally come back to impact per dollar.
|
| I'm not sure how we can replace thinking of incentives in a
| financial sense with their societal impact, but it would be
| great if we could.
|
| I would perhaps put forth the idea of a "hours/years saved"
| metric vs. some next best alternative? Good luck to the
| accountants on this one.
| tekstar wrote:
| I'm trying to say the market would judge Ford, primarily, by
| its quarterly environmental impact instead of its quarterly
| finances. Stock goes up when they've sequestered carbon,
| stock goes down when they're burning carbon.
|
| And the preface was attempting to say that judging a company
| by it's quarterly finances is already arbitrary, and flawed,
| and a relatively new concept. I can't find the link but I
| think it was suggested and socially adopted only in the last
| 40 years as the True Metric to evaluate companies.
| kisamoto wrote:
| If you - as an individual or a company - also want to kick-start
| the market for carbon removal then check out my project
| https://carbonremoved.com
|
| We offer subscriptions and one-time purchases for a carbon
| removal portfolio with direct air capture, olivine, bio-oil and
| forestation. The removal mix is currently defined by us but we're
| building the option to make this fully customizable.
|
| In the mean time you can email me at ewan@<the domain above> and
| I will be happy to answer any questions or build you a fully
| custom portfolio.
| boplicity wrote:
| I like the idea, but I would much rather support a version of
| this that doesn't include re-forestation. Is that something
| you're thinking of offering?
| cwkoss wrote:
| What is your concern about reforestation?
|
| Sounds like a good thing to me, but I don't know much about
| it. (Monoculture issues?)
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Lots of governance issues. Is there long term management of
| the area reforested? or is it done quickly and poorly and
| the benefits are overstated? There's also no guarantee the
| forest stays standing, but the money has already been
| collected.
|
| Mineralization (Climeworks) is much more expensive per ton
| but is assured to stay sequestered in inert, stable form.
| kisamoto wrote:
| As a company we want to support a portfolio so we generally
| recommend a minimum of 2% in every method but I do understand
| your concern about forestation and we do have a 'tech only'
| plan in the pipeline to address exactly that.
| boplicity wrote:
| Thank you for the reply!
|
| One of my other thoughts, is that things like a direct-air
| carbon capture facility require a big upfront investment.
| What do you think about a "fundraiser" to make one
| possible. I.E., it would be gratifying to donate money,
| knowing it would be going directly to the construction of a
| new long-term carbon capture facility. I would then be
| confident that my donation would be going towards _new_
| sources of carbon removal.
|
| (Ha -- Kickstarter for carbon capture???)
| kisamoto wrote:
| Interesting take - maybe something we should branch into
| ;)
|
| Actually a lot of carbon removers are currently trying to
| sell removals for the future. Shopify and Stripe are both
| spending money for removals that will only be taken out
| of the atmosphere in some years.
|
| For us we try to focus on products that are actively
| delivering at the moment. We want our customers to
| actually be able to say their footprint has been removed.
|
| I think though an 'innovation' plan or similar for
| methods that are maybe only at prototype phase could be
| possible. We just have to decided what happens if the
| project is unable to deliver in the future.
| kisamoto wrote:
| Whenever carbon removal is mentioned there's always a bit of a
| push back (cost, effort, excuse to keep emitting etc.). So I'd
| like to address some of these:
|
| Carbon removal is not a substitute for reducing emissions.
| However even if we stop emitting tomorrow there is still an
| excess of emissions in the atmosphere that must be addressed.
| Nature can do it in theory but it would take millenia and there
| is a chance that we - as humanity - have tipped the scales too
| far.
|
| Carbon removal is expensive and inefficient - for now. This is
| how technology starts and will come down an innovation and cost
| curve with enough demand and investment. Do not try and
| extrapolate the cost and efficiency now to the total removals -
| there will be constant innovation and new methods that we haven't
| discovered yet.
|
| There is no silver bullet. Trees, DACS, bio-oil and whatever else
| - nothing can do this on its own and we need to support as many
| of these as possible to work together.
|
| If you want to do something may I suggest looking at how you can
| reduce your footprint and - if you can afford it - look at
| removing your carbon footprint instead of merely offsetting it
| with cheap carbon credits. Set yourself a realistic price per ton
| and check out https://carbonremoved.com (disclaimer - my project
| that I made to remove my own footprint) to remove it.
|
| We also need system change so talk to people, educate them (and
| yourself) and vote for politicians who support a green agenda
| rather than those who block it.
| Traster wrote:
| For me, carbon removal is a quite good answer to the
| international crisis of the commons. A constant difficulty with
| international efforts for carbon reduction is that different
| countries think they should have different 'budgets' for
| carbon, or are under an unfair burden. On top of this almost
| any significant enough country can effectively destroy the
| communcal effort to reduce emissions. Carbon removal is almost
| the only hope for rich nations to unilaterally reduce carbon in
| the atmosphere.
| WithinReason wrote:
| I wonder if you could have some kind of (cypto?)currency that has
| its price backed by 1 ton of carbon captured. You can get one by
| paying the market price for it, or by capturing 1 ton of carbon.
| So if you want to offset your carbon footprint you can just go to
| a CarbonCoin marketplace and buy the appropriate amount of
| CarbonCoins. Could the crypto craze be exploited to save the
| environment?
| mac01021 wrote:
| What does it mean to be "backed by" carbon captured?
|
| Talk of backing a currency traditionally refers to some
| mechanism that guarantees people will continue to value it in
| the future:
|
| - a currency is "backed by gold" if it is exchangeable for
| hunks of metal by whoever holds some of it (the future value of
| those hunks being taken as granted)
|
| - a currency is backed by a government if that government
| guarantees that the currency will remain sufficiently scarce
| and that it will be a/the means of paying taxes due to that
| government.
|
| In this case, though, you just mean that a coin is minted each
| time a ton of co2 is sequestered, right? And you would need
| some other mechanism to generate demand for the coins?
| WithinReason wrote:
| > In this case, though, you just mean that a coin is minted
| each time a ton of co2 is sequestered, right? And you would
| need some other mechanism to generate demand for the coins?
|
| Exactly.
| lxgr wrote:
| The economical scheme makes a lot of sense, but it seems like
| the practically hard part would be to prove to the world that
| carbon capture has actually occurred. I don't see how
| blockchains would help there.
|
| The rest is just bookkeeping, which can happen on any kind of
| ledger, distributed or otherwise.
| SmooL wrote:
| See https://www.gwern.net/CO2-Coin
| burkaman wrote:
| This is a major plot point in Ministry for the Future, pretty
| much exactly how you describe. Great book, and it's a good idea
| that I think has some real-world support from economists and
| others. Here's a site about the idea:
| https://globalcarbonreward.org/
| joshmarlow wrote:
| Almost this exact thing launched in the last couple of weeks -
| https://klimadao.finance/
|
| In a podcast, I heard one of the founders describe it as a
| first step at creating a 'non-extractive' economic system.
| darepublic wrote:
| good idea but also sounds like it could be gamed. eventually
| people will be printing themselves carbon dollars for carbon
| they could have emitted, but didn't
| specialist wrote:
| Rulesets more complicated than tictactoe have edge cases,
| holes, exploits.
|
| That's why market design is important.
|
| Open markets require boring stuff like properly aligned
| incentives, contract law, property rights, transparency and
| auditing, fair & impartial courts, right to appeal, and so
| forth. Your basic sanity checks.
|
| Maintaining and protecting a balance is never easy. We can
| only hope to minimize cheating.
|
| All the alternatives are much worse. The popular criticism of
| market failures are often because the obvious safe guards
| were eliminated or ignored.
| short12 wrote:
| Sort of related but there was a great episode on American
| greed about exploiting the RIM or RIN marketplace by simply
| making up contract numbers
| frumpish wrote:
| https://archive.md/QYaxg
| ThePhysicist wrote:
| We currently produce around 50 gigatons (50.000.000.000) of CO2
| per year. The cost estimates for removing one ton of CO2 range
| between 100-10.000 USD. Let's assume we can really get to 100
| USD. That means just in order to capture a single year worth of
| CO2 output will cost us 5 Trillion USD (5.000.000.000.000), which
| is around 6 % of the worlds' GDP. And that doesn't even take into
| account if we'll actually be able to do it (which I strongly
| doubt).
|
| So IMHO all these carbon removal efforts are just the next magic
| technology that's proposed in order to keep us from effecting
| real change. We already know how to stop climate change (rapidly
| decrease our CO2 output), but instead of doing that we're chasing
| solutions that might never become viable. And once it will become
| clear that CO2 capture won't work the next magic solution will
| probably be geo-engineering, which is just as unrealistic IMHO.
|
| BTW I'm not saying that CO2 capture or geo-engineering will never
| work, just that it probably won't work in the timespan that's
| available to us.
| jasonlaramburu wrote:
| >That means just in order to capture a single year worth of CO2
| output will cost us 5 Trillion USD (5.000.000.000.000), which
| is around 6 % of the worlds' GDP.
|
| The US is expected to spend a total of $6T on COVID relief with
| the passage of the Biden Plan (around $4T was already spent
| under the Trump administration)[1]. It's debatable whether or
| not this spend 'worked' as intended.
|
| Investing in carbon removal will create entirely new
| industries. Rather than paying people to stay at home, it will
| create skilled tech jobs for Americans. In terms of
| justification, emissions reductions alone won't stop climate
| change at this point. It will take centuries for natural
| processes alone to remove our historical greenhouse gas
| emissions [2].
|
| [1] https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/us-spending-on-covid-
| rel... [2] https://www.npr.org/2021/04/14/981333730/carbon-
| emissions-co...
| s17n wrote:
| I mean 6% of GDP is a lot, obviously, but it's also just as
| obviously a cost that can be paid. The important questions are:
| - Is it more expensive than simply reducing emissions? - Is it
| easier (politically or economically) to deploy?
|
| I see no reason to believe that development of carbon removal
| tech has had any impact on CO2 emission reduction efforts.
| mijamo wrote:
| I have. Many political parties are trying to aim at carbon
| neutrality nearly only through carbon removal and
| technological improvements in efficiency.
|
| This is actually a huge point of debate in a lot of
| countries.
| Voloskaya wrote:
| > We already know how to stop climate change (rapidly decrease
| our CO2 output)
|
| No we don't. Even if we stopped all emissions starting today,
| climate change would not be stopped, it's already too late for
| that.
|
| Now, assuming the most ambitious but realistic reduction plan,
| we will still be emitting massive amounts of CO2 over the next
| few decades, so we are guaranteed to have to endure significant
| global warning.
|
| And this is why we need both reduction and removal. Reduction
| is the most efficient medium term solution by far, but long
| term we absolutely need removal as well.
|
| I wish people would stop pitting reduction vs removal, wind vs
| solar vs nuclear etc. There isn't a single technology or policy
| that will save us, we need advances on all fronts and the
| solution will come from a mix of many different complimentary
| contributions.
|
| However you are right that we need to be careful to not use the
| possibility of future carbon removal as an excuse to not reduce
| our GHG emissions.
| boplicity wrote:
| > I wish people would stop pitting reduction vs removal, wind
| vs solar vs nuclear etc. There isn't a single technology or
| policy that will save us, we need advances on all fronts and
| the solution will come from a mix of many different
| complimentary contributions.
|
| Agreed. Twenty years ago, we had the luxury of being able to
| "pick and choose" the "right" path forward. Unfortunately,
| the _wrong_ path was chosen, so we now have to do
| _everything_ we can to mitigate the looming disaster. The
| cost of doing too little is just so very, very high. (And
| yet, doing too little seems to be exactly the path we 're
| on.)
| apendleton wrote:
| > We already know how to stop climate change (rapidly decrease
| our CO2 output)
|
| Yes, but we don't know how to do _that_. The technology exists
| now in many domains; with adequate public will and money we
| could probably rapidly electrify surface transportation, for
| example, and maybe electricity production (though long-duration
| storage is probably still a ways from production readiness),
| but the technology to produce concrete or aluminum without
| emissions just doesn 't exist yet at anything other than (at
| best) the concept stage. Likewise for trans-oceanic shipping,
| or long-haul aviation, or fertilizer production, or... (etc.,
| etc.). People think first about cars and electricity because
| they're tangible in people's daily lives, but industrial CO2 is
| a big, very much not-yet-solved problem.
|
| Work is absolutely happening in all of these domains, but it
| will take time and resources, and we don't know which efforts
| will or won't succeed, or if any will succeed fast enough to
| meet IPCC targets for keeping warming below 1.5C without carbon
| capture as well.
| FredPret wrote:
| > "We already know how to stop climate change (rapidly decrease
| our CO2 output)"
|
| Who knew it could be this simple? All we have to do is go
| nowhere, buy nothing, sell nothing, eat nothing, do nothing,
| and freeze to death in the darkness.
| anakaine wrote:
| This is not a helpful stance to have. There are developments
| and solutions for industries, processes, and individual
| households all drawing to the same goal. Renewable energy
| generation looks to be pricing coal and gas powered energy
| generation out of the market by being cheaper to build,
| deploy, and maintain, for example. Bonus, it comes with its
| own industry.
| a13n wrote:
| > We already know how to stop climate change (rapidly decrease
| our CO2 output)
|
| Yeah all we have to do is convince China, US, and India to
| rapidly decrease CO2 output, no big deal at all.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| The thing I'd like to understand about carbon capture is that,
| I would assume that once the process is scaled and costs come
| down that _most_ of the cost would come from the energy to run
| the process.
|
| But then, of course, the energy to run that process needs to
| come from a renewable, non-carbon emitting source, or else the
| whole thing is moot. So my question is that if we had all this
| renewable energy to run carbon capture systems, wouldn't it
| just make more sense to have this renewable energy put to use
| to offset fossil fuels in the first place?
| philwelch wrote:
| I'll do you one step better: you could use that energy source
| to produce closed-loop hydrocarbon fuels (e.g. methane via
| the Sabatier process).
|
| It seems to me that virtually all of these problems reduce to
| the problem of finding a plentiful, climate-neutral energy
| source. (If only we had already invented such a thing in the
| 1940's....)
| zardo wrote:
| I don't see scaling direct air capture of CO2 beyond demo
| facilities until we are near zero CO2 emissions. But fixed
| concentrated CO2 streams should have had CO2 capture decades
| ago.
|
| The problem of course is that no matter how cheap CO2 capture
| gets, it's not likely to beat dumping it to the atmosphere
| for free.
| cameronbrown wrote:
| The best carbon capture technology is to plant trees. As
| in, billions of trees per year, which is carbon negative
| only if the net number of trees is growing. Maybe even get
| creative on the biology side of things to make them easier
| to plant in harsh environments.
| philwelch wrote:
| > As in, billions of trees per year, which is carbon
| negative only if the net number of trees is growing.
|
| Or if you chop the trees down and use them as building
| materials. Your hardwood floors and wood wall paneling
| are also sequestering carbon!
| FredPret wrote:
| Genetically engineered ultratrees in the Sahara! Of
| course this would have impacts on rainfall patterns in
| Europe and South America and might backfire (the large
| amounts of Saharan dust apparently helps form raindrops
| and new soil in both places)
| tnorthcutt wrote:
| _That means just in order to capture a single year worth of CO2
| output will cost us 5 Trillion USD (5.000.000.000.000), which
| is around 6 % of the worlds ' GDP._
|
| That seems easily worth it, and ignores the possibility of
| lower costs in the future, this working in tandem with efforts
| to decrease emissions, etc.
| alexbouchard wrote:
| Exactly, 6% of GPD is shockingly low cost to pay for net 0
| annual growth in CO2. Now that doesn't mean you can
| practically deploy that capital but it makes me more bullish
| on carbon removal.
| boxed wrote:
| You are correct in that it's not a feasible approach to
| neutralize emissions. But that's not why this tech is so
| important.
|
| We need it to _undo_ the damage we 've already done. Will it be
| expensive as hell? Probably. But we need to do it. And if we
| cut emissions hard and fast we won't need to do carbon removal
| in panic but can do it more slowly.
| azeirah wrote:
| The main idea carbon capture as I always understood it is that
| it will become cheaper per ton as more is invested. Just like
| how solar panels lowered in price drastically over the past
| decades.
|
| Right now carbon capture as a technology is in its infancy.
| gumby wrote:
| I'm not commenting to contradict you (I agree with your point
| on a macro scale).
|
| But I have to point out that a lot of proposed techniques
| only work at certain concentrations (e.g. all the limestone
| techniques I've seen) and even the ones that don't change
| their const structure (e.g. require more energy/g removed).
|
| None of which means we shouldn't be trying. I'm working on
| CH4 removal myself, even though there is less of it than CO2
| DennisP wrote:
| Another way to look at it: burning a gallon of gasoline emits
| about 20 pounds of CO2, or a hundredth of a ton. So at
| $100/ton, charging purchasers to clean up their emissions would
| cost a dollar a gallon.
|
| If we were to charge that, then many people would likely find
| it more efficient to switch to electric cars and so on. But for
| those applications where it's very expensive or infeasible to
| cut emissions (e.g. long-haul jets), having tech like this
| available makes net-zero feasible anyway.
|
| Besides, at this point we're going to need to actually reduce
| atmospheric CO2, and as you point out it's a hard problem, so
| we'd best start scaling the tech for it now.
| dntrkv wrote:
| > but instead of doing that
|
| I keep hearing this like there is nobody working on this
| problem. There are a significant amount of resources being
| dedicated to this problem. Is it enough? No, of course not.
| These types of global coordinated efforts are more difficult
| than any technological problem we have ever faced.
|
| In developed countries, per capita CO2 emissions are decreasing
| at a steady rate. Adoption of EVs and renewables will
| accelerate this decline.
|
| The problem is in the developing countries (especially China
| and India) where these rates are increasing. But we can't
| exactly tell these countries to stop developing. So our only
| option is to continue to develop technology that will make it
| cheaper to use renewables over fossil fuels. And that's all
| well under way.
|
| Carbon capture is just another tool for us to explore that may
| scale as more entities adopt it. The idea that because it costs
| too much to do now, we shouldn't explore it is silly. Solar was
| not financially feasible just a decade or two ago. Battery
| storage was the same.
|
| Point is, we should explore every option. That does not mean
| all our progress in EVs and renewables stops, it's just another
| avenue for us to reduce our carbon footprint.
| ThePhysicist wrote:
| No, the problem is not mainly China and India. China emits
| just half as much CO2 per capita as the US and has already
| effectively halted further increase several years ago [1].
| India is at 1/10th of the per capita emissions of the US. You
| can of course explore every option but there's already an
| option that works, so we should start implementing that.
|
| [1] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC?locat
| ion...
| dntrkv wrote:
| I am well aware that the US, Canada, and Australia have the
| highest CO2 emissions per capita. They all have a lot of
| work to do. I am not dismissing their major contribution to
| the problem.
|
| The US in particular has reduced per capita emissions
| significantly and continues to do so.
|
| The reason I pointed out China and India is that they are
| still developing and a large chunk of their population has
| yet to modernize. In the process, they will significantly
| increase their emissions. I am not blaming them. Any other
| country would do the same in their place.
|
| My point is that the only way we can reduce their coming
| impact (and all of the other developing countries) is by
| developing renewables and battery storage tech to be a
| viable alternative to fossil fuels.
| brightball wrote:
| Per capita is great and all, but the population is still
| 4.5x for China and 4x that of the US for India. If we're
| being honest, a lot of those emissions probably would be
| coming from the US if so much manufacturing hadn't moved to
| China over the last few decades.
|
| From everything I've read, India isn't a big problem from a
| CO2 perspective but from an oceanic pollution perspective
| from trash dumping.
| swnddw wrote:
| Stripe is also working on crypto, with no mention of disallowing
| proof of work types
| leesec wrote:
| Yes, you're right. It's Stripe's job to shut down proof of work
| by not allowing them (which wouldn't matter). I for one am glad
| Stripe is funding ideas in this space that are not proven out.
| hwers wrote:
| Why do we have this attitude towards crypto but not towards the
| enormous mountain of energy required to power non crypto
| servers as part of normal professional software businesses.
| adflux wrote:
| Because mining bitcoin alone consumes more power than the
| entirety of the Netherlands. And all that for a very low
| amount of transactions.
| politician wrote:
| If you're concerned with high energy requirements for a low
| number of transactions, just wait until you learn about
| FedWire!
| saddlerustle wrote:
| A single aluminium smelter consumes more power than the
| entirety of the Netherlands. It's not a very useful
| comparison.
| Retric wrote:
| That's wildly incorrect, why would you think it's true?
|
| Netherlands uses 108,800 GWh per yer. Global aluminum
| smelting is 8x that, but no single smelter comes close to
| producing 1/8th the worlds aluminimum.
| jamiek88 wrote:
| Yes and that is useful work. Unlike bitcoin.
| objclxt wrote:
| > A single aluminium smelter consumes more power than the
| entirety of the Netherlands. It's not a very useful
| comparison.
|
| This is patently false. The Netherlands _has_ an
| aluminium smelting plant[1].
|
| Why would you say something so obviously disproven?
|
| [1]:https://aldel.nl
| tata71 wrote:
| Seemed like hyperbole in order to put forth the point
| that NL is the size of a German neighborhood.
| saddlerustle wrote:
| No I got the Netherlands confused with Denmark, which was
| a comparison from when bitcoin was much smaller.
| snarf21 wrote:
| Because crypto isn't usable and never will be. It isn't built
| to handle processing charges of $0.30 plus 3% on a $10
| transaction and that it what it is competing with. Instead it
| is simply speculation and gambling and pump & dump. BTC
| already uses more power than several countries. Visa uses a
| fraction of that for a better and more functional system.
|
| And please don't say PoS. PoS is centralized by default. If
| you are going to be centralized, why do crypto at all?
| fastball wrote:
| How is PoS centralized by default? You think ETH mining is
| less concentrated than ETH holding?
|
| I know scores of people who hold ETH. I know like 2 people
| that have tried mining it.
| tenuousemphasis wrote:
| Second layer technologies are the solution to that problem.
| We can build systems on top of bitcoin that have some
| tradeoffs but allow for exponentially more transactions at
| lower fees. Lightning is one example of these second layer
| systems. Custodial wallets like Coinbase and others are a
| poor, but simple and easy example.
| eropple wrote:
| From a physical or a regulatory perspective, any of those
| second-order systems are going to be subject to the same
| money-transmitting laws in place across the world. So you
| can reimplement the existing money-moving tools with no
| significant benefits to anybody except the creators of
| the money-moving tools, who can take a vig instead of a
| bank or Visa.
|
| Let's burn the planet down for _that_ , hell yeah.
| _Kristijan_ wrote:
| There is not only PoS. Open Representative Voting (ORV) is
| a working solution: https://docs.nano.org/what-is-
| nano/overview/
| burkaman wrote:
| We care about both. All the major cloud platforms are putting
| a lot of work into powering their data centers with as much
| renewable energy as possible, and surfacing carbon
| information to engineers using the platforms. See the feature
| Google just released, for example:
| https://cloud.google.com/carbon-footprint. It's even a
| somewhat mainstream topic - I'm pretty sure I've seen NYT
| articles about the carbon footprint of Zoom calls and Netflix
| streaming.
|
| It's something I personally think about a lot, and I know
| many others do. Here's a community of people that discuss
| this topic a lot if you're interested:
| https://climateaction.tech/
| Rygian wrote:
| Because power spent on mining is effectively 100% wasted for
| no useful computation.
| fastball wrote:
| Except, ya know, it powers the decentralized currency with
| a market cap of $1T.
| wussboy wrote:
| Perhaps that's the part they think is not useful?
| yxwvut wrote:
| A currency that is practically impossible to use as
| such...
| TheSmiddy wrote:
| In a disgustingly inefficient way.
|
| Global Financial System: 263.72TWh
|
| Bitcoin: 113.89TWh
|
| -
|
| GFS deposits: US$404.1 trillion
|
| Bitcoin: US$1.1 trillion
|
| -
|
| GFS energy per US$: 0.65 Wh
|
| Bitcoin energy per US$: 103.53 Wh
|
| And this is calculated just for the value of deposits, if
| we do it again for number of transactions it's even more
| scathing.
|
| https://docsend.com/view/adwmdeeyfvqwecj2
| invisible wrote:
| I'm not trying to be pedantic, but this doesn't seem to
| include the daily commute for bank employees, the waste
| from each bank, and the collective volume of mail
| delivered.
| rtpg wrote:
| Perhaps the definition of value goes beyond dollars, and
| into what is valuable or not for society (even if it
| makes people money, or not!)
| vimy wrote:
| Crypto today is like e-commerce in 2000. Or the internet in
| 1995. It has enormous potential to change the world.
|
| I bet if the internet was invented today we would hear the
| same energy arguments.
| coralreef wrote:
| This is not strictly correct.
|
| When you game on your 3080 GTX at max graphics in VR, you
| wouldn't call that wasted computation because it provided
| utility to a human in the form of entertainment.
|
| Proof of work provides utility in the form of trustless
| proof, allowing a decentralized network to actually work.
| The computational work carries meaning which is valued by
| network participants.
| coldpie wrote:
| I _guess_ you can make the argument that crypto is useful
| as a form of entertainment, but that 's one hell of a
| polluting casino you got there.
| coralreef wrote:
| Crypto provides utility by being decentralized,
| permissionless to participate in, and censorship
| resistance.
|
| The reason mining consumes so much aggregate energy is
| because it is the most profitable use of energy at the
| moment. Part of this is because the cost of energy for
| fossil fuels in not accurately represented in its price.
|
| Tax payers / governments subsidize the fossil fuel
| industry in billions every year, including coal which is
| used in coal power plants. A carbon tax is also not
| implemented. So externalities are not captured in price.
|
| It should fairly obvious how energy sources change once
| those issues are addressed.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Yeah, the utility is obvious. We just need to internalize
| GHG mitigation costs and then prices will hit the correct
| place. It's unfortunate, but the most effective way to do
| this would be to actually tax power sources and power
| generation at source, which means fuel taxes.
|
| It will be hella regressive, but that's the reality. Most
| poor people are polluting the planet disproportionately
| to their output.
| infecto wrote:
| Why can we not be critical of new inventions? Should we not
| be trying to make things better? To me thats like making the
| argument that because we have coal plants today means we
| should have no problem generating XY new plant because it's
| not worse than what we have now.
|
| BTC is old, the possibilities have been proven but I think
| it's totally fair that we try to get somewhere more efficient
| than what we have now.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| efficiency
| agumonkey wrote:
| Honestly, even though I don't like the insane power usage
| of PoW cryptos, I don't like the waste of the normal
| economy either. There's so much waste ... but anyways that
| would require its own thread I guess.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| The important difference is, normal economy[0] profits
| off efficiency. There's waste, but that waste means
| companies are making less money than they could be.
| Everyone is incentivized to eliminate the waste. In
| aggregate, the market strives towards minimizing
| waste[1].
|
| In contract, PoW cryptocurrencies have pure waste built
| in as a necessary component. They're literally waste
| incarnate, made into code and used to provide trustless
| consensus. It's a _feature_ , that has to scale with the
| size of the network, and participants are _encouraged_ to
| create more waste.
|
| --
|
| [0] - Let's for the moment ignore the negative-sum game
| cancer the advertising industry is. But even advertising
| tries to be efficient at micro level.
|
| [1] - In fact, it's a major source of modern problems
| with the market economy. Companies optimize way past the
| point it makes sense, because the consequences are borne
| by someone else (e.g. customers). See e.g. the whole
| field of value engineering.
| agumonkey wrote:
| I have a weird opinion on this. Markets and industries
| are complex multilayered systems. Each subsystem tries to
| be somehow efficient but actually it's not. People are
| slow, the tools they use are often slow (unless you have
| serious knowledge and resources on optimizing logistics,
| throughput, management), their partners are too, and
| asking optimizations from them will cause friction.
|
| Market might be a minimizing function of some sort but
| it's a blind one. Very often groups could do 4x more for
| 4x less just with a change of mindset alone.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| I don't disagree. I'm not claiming the market achieves
| total efficiency, just that it _tries_. Much like a
| submarine is a bubble of air at pressure of 1 atmosphere
| resisting much higher pressure outside, it is possible
| (and even common) for low-efficiency areas to remain
| stable under market pressure, but the overall gradient is
| still clear. In contrast, PoW schemes use inefficiency as
| a fundamental component; they 're wasteful by design, and
| it's considered a feature.
| amelius wrote:
| Yeah, advertisement generates a lot of waste by making
| people buy stuff they do not want or need.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Sure, let's stop most of that too.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Yeah there's waste everywhere, the amount of energy
| wasted by the over-reliance on cars in the US could
| probably power the entire planet.
|
| It's telling that the bitcoin defense is 99%
| whattaboutism - but have no fear readers, I scream into
| the void about those other things too.
| agumonkey wrote:
| I don't think it's only whattaboutism, it's mostly that
| crypto is becoming a meme complaint and even
| whattaboutism is thrown as reflex "what about you".
|
| ps: I'm trying to go from screamer to proactive these
| days. I was already frugal and dropped car use, I'm also
| thinking into starting clubs to make more walk/bike use,
| recycling/upcycling repair shops and the likes. Do you
| have similar ideas ?
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| I already do things like you mention... walk most places,
| reuse/repair when feasible, buying less packaged food,
| avoiding leisure flying (I used to travel often)... but
| individual impact is fairly minimal, so I've been putting
| more effort into supporting local political candidates
| who prioritize the climate.
|
| I also complain a lot at community meetings for new
| development in my immediate area (things like reducing
| parking in new buildings, including bike storage, EV
| charging, better public transit infrastructure)... I've
| found some of this stuff more fulfilling in that the
| impact tends to extend beyond what I'd be capable of
| doing alone... sometimes it's fruitless, but sometimes it
| works.
| agumonkey wrote:
| I'm trying to skip politics because I think it's fluff
| and too laggy. But I'm still at theory level. Ideally I'd
| find a few open warehouses to set up stuff. Tools,
| materials, gather smart / knowledgeable people, teach and
| viral spread the new habits. Hopefully it will cost next
| to nothing and happen faster than politically impeded
| initiatives.
| tata71 wrote:
| ...that's a joke, right?
|
| Have you seen the average enterprise's stack?
| user-the-name wrote:
| The worst enterprise stack you have ever seen is most
| likely at least a million times more efficient than
| bitcoin.
|
| That is not an exaggeration, and is more likely to be a
| severe understatement.
| agumonkey wrote:
| I can't claim numbers but even if you have the fastest
| and leanest information system, the rest of the economy
| might be problematic, the human layer is really bad. I
| stopped counting how many time we asked people to come
| back another day (more car use) because the old
| paper+digital system is not made for high throughput. Our
| servers are probably super fast.. but the apps are not
| useful, the system is not useful, thus lots of waste
| above.
| user-the-name wrote:
| I'm not sure I see what this has to do with what I said?
| user-the-name wrote:
| Exactly: Bitcoin is using as much energy as the entire
| country of Sweden in order to do work that could be done by
| a single desktop PC from 2004.
| fastball wrote:
| If the work Bitcoin is doing could be done by a single
| desktop PC from 2004 then... the work would be being done
| by a single desktop PC from 2004. But clearly it is not.
|
| Every time I see a thread on HN about crypto it makes me
| want to buy BTC or w/e because people are so unbelievably
| disingenuous on here that it probably still has a lot of
| steam left. The side that needs to be misleading to make
| their point is rarely the correct side to be on in my
| experience.
| infecto wrote:
| And sadly both sides are misleading.
| user-the-name wrote:
| Bitcoin processes, as a maximum dictated by technological
| choices, 2-3 transactions per second. Each transaction is
| around a few hundred bytes.
| tenuousemphasis wrote:
| Luckily Bitcoin has second layer systems being built on
| top of it, which allow it to leverage that 2-3 on-chain
| transactions per second to process thousands of millions
| more transactions off chain either through decentralized
| systems like Lightning or centralized custodial wallets.
| user-the-name wrote:
| Second layer solutions that do not actually work and that
| rely on solving unsolved problems in computer science to
| actually get working at scale.
| objclxt wrote:
| > not towards the enormous mountain of power required to
| power non crypto servers as part of normal professional
| software business
|
| The incentives are very different, I don't think you can
| compare them like that.
|
| Miners and companies like Google both make more money the
| less power they use. However, in the case of Google power
| consumption is a _side effect_ of their business.
|
| To put it another way: if you overnight doubled Google's
| datacenter capacity you would not double their revenues. But
| if you doubled a bitcoin miner's capacity there would be an
| _immediate change_ in the amount of revenue being made.
|
| This means that for miners there's a very clear incentive to
| use whatever resources you can at your disposal, because the
| more power and hardware you have the more profit you can
| make.
| corentin88 wrote:
| Wondering if the money is from Stripe's pocket or if it's part of
| the 1% initiative [1] that Stripe has started.
|
| [1] https://stripe.com/climate
| kisamoto wrote:
| It's both. They fund some themselves and allow other companies
| to contribute with their climate program linked above.
| Biologist123 wrote:
| Well done the lads from Stripe!
| sydthrowaway wrote:
| Any Stripe jobs related to this?
| magneticnorth wrote:
| Looks like there's an open role for an engineering manager in
| North America but nothing else right now:
| https://stripe.com/jobs/search?q=climate
| ganzuul wrote:
| Why not plant fucking trees?? Jesus Christ what is wrong with
| this world.
| dntrkv wrote:
| In many places in the world, we are seeing those trees go up in
| flames and releasing that carbon right back into the
| atmosphere.
| tarsinge wrote:
| That would require people changing their habits like eating
| less meat to free up the land. Apparently it's still
| controversial for some people that it's time to adjust some
| behaviors.
| Voloskaya wrote:
| If you have to ask why not, maybe you should invest 5 minutes
| of your time do some research before firing the expletives.
| akie wrote:
| Because all (current) 18 comment are talking about crypto instead
| of about carbon removal, I'm just going to say: THANK YOU STRIPE!
|
| We indeed need a lot more options for carbon removal, and
| directly investing in companies who want to make that happen is a
| very necessary first step.
| newswasboring wrote:
| People are talking about crypto because it feels like one step
| forward one step back.
| jseliger wrote:
| Indeed. There are also some U.S. government efforts in this
| area, like the "Direct Air Capture Combined With Dedicated
| Long-Term Carbon Storage, Coupled to Existing Low-Carbon
| Energy" program: https://www.fedconnect.net/FedConnect/default.
| aspx?ReturnUrl..., but they remain small.
| [deleted]
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| Indeed. Carbon removal is the only hope for making the climate
| better in next several generations. Reducing carbon footprints
| simply is not enough.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| Reducing our _personal_ carbon footprint (e.g., everyone
| becomes a vegan) isn't enough, but reducing our collective
| carbon footprint (via making pollution economically
| infeasible via carbon pricing) is significant. If we can
| actually remove carbon at scale, that's great but for now
| that's a pipe dream--we should absolutely invest in it, but
| we shouldn't pin our hopes on it while we continue polluting.
| shiftpgdn wrote:
| Farm runoff (specifically roundup) is one of the greatest
| dangers humanity faces but absolutely no one is willing to
| talk about it. The ocean is the largest co2 sink in the
| world and we're killing everything that allows that to
| occur with commercial biocides.
| whiddershins wrote:
| How would anyone implement this internationally?
|
| Without that, this strategy is pointless.
|
| How do you get India, China, all of Africa to stop
| producing CO2?
|
| The US could go net zero and the effect wouldn't be nearly
| enough to stop anything.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| It turns out you aren't the first person to have
| considered this problem, and the answer is well-
| understood: border adjustments. Basically, these are
| tariffs on imports from countries which don't have an
| adequate price on carbon. If you want to do business with
| the West (probably 70+% of the global economy), you need
| to clean up your economy.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Cross border carbon tariffs.
| Voloskaya wrote:
| Removing carbon is also not enough. We absolutely need both.
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| Capturing carbon at the point of emission (e.g the exhaust
| stream from CCGT plants) seems orders of magnitude more
| important than any attempt to remove atmospheric carbon. In
| the atmosphere CO2 is at 400 parts per million. That's a
| lot of irrelevant gasses to move around a process to
| capture a very dilute component.
|
| It's the same reason why people reassuringly pointing to
| the amount of Thorium or Lithium in the ocean isn't useful.
| Bhilai wrote:
| I think private companies and corporate American might be the way
| to go about trying to alleviate climate change. We are already
| seeing some effects on automobiles too where major US companies
| are trying to move towards EVs. In the current political climate
| I doubt the US government would able to do much but corporate
| America can maybe move the needle.
| jorblumesea wrote:
| It's just sad we've gotten to the point where we are unable to
| solve any problems using government means. If you talked to
| someone in the 60s and told them about the future, they'd be
| astounded.
| eckmLJE wrote:
| One reason car companies are moving to EVs is the coming
| regulatory pressure from governments on fossil fuels and car
| emissions. They aren't doing it out of the goodness of their
| hearts.
| 1234letshaveatw wrote:
| I was prepared to be annoyed at the announcement of another
| carbon credit swap or some other virtue signaling scam. I like
| Stripe's approach here, I hope other companies take note. Feels
| like the difference between charities that promote awareness vs.
| those that are actually supporting research.
| user-the-name wrote:
| They could probably have a much bigger effect by working to stop
| cryptocurrencies instead of supporting them.
| leesec wrote:
| It's amazing to me the impact they seem to be having with...a few
| million? With all the VC money getting thrown around these days
| you'd think some of it would get tossed towards unproven climate
| change solutions.
| Factorium wrote:
| The best way to spend money on carbon removal is to lobby
| politicians to initiate carbon taxes, or at least to place
| tariffs on nations without them.
|
| We cannot physically replicate the Azolla Event or the
| Carboniferous Period. There's no better form of carbon storage
| than coal, gas, oil. And it needs to just stay in the ground.
|
| Otherwise I guess if we're looking at terraforming, we should
| consider iron fertilization.
| philwelch wrote:
| I think you're dramatically overestimating the efficacy of
| politicians.
| akie wrote:
| How about the following scheme:
|
| 1. A government, any government, puts aside about EUR500
| million.
|
| 2. Anyone who can submit a proposal, and anyone with a decent
| enough plan and a convincing group of people to execute it gets
| EUR250k. Total budget for this phase is EUR50 million, so this
| funds 200 ideas.
|
| 3. If ANY measurable progress has been made once the money runs
| out, your group gets another EUR500k. Expect 50% of the
| companies of step 2 to fail. Total budget for this phase is
| again EUR50 million, for (now) 100 ideas.
|
| 4. If the money from 2. or 3. turns out to be spent
| maliciously, the government will haunt you to get you to pay it
| back (there are existing protocols in place to deal with this).
|
| 5. If the money from 3. runs out, there is a go/no-go decision.
| In case of "go", you get EUR2 to EUR5 million to really have a
| go at it and build the real thing. In case of "no go", it stops
| here. You are obviously free to take your idea and try to find
| other investors for it. Weeds out (say) 50%, so now left at 50
| ideas - total budget about EUR175 million.
|
| 6. For the companies that get the "go" in step 5, observe their
| performance. If it's promising, give them another EUR10
| million. Again you probably only fund 50%, so that's 25 ideas
| for about EUR250 million.
|
| 7. Profit.
|
| Tada, a working process that probably gets your country a
| fairly large number of actually competitive companies that can
| end up employing thousands of people and at the same time help
| save the planet.
|
| Germany could run a competition like this for EUR6 per person.
| The EU could fund it for EUR1 per person. Heck, even the city
| of New York could fund it for the low, low, price of EUR20 per
| person. This is eminently doable.
| 293849283 wrote:
| This is already done in Europe in the form of EU and country-
| specific research/development grants (e.g. ANR in France,
| BMBF in Germany). While in theory it sounds amazing, in
| practice it is a very poor way of making progress from my own
| personal experience.
|
| The applicants form a consortium, usually a heavy hitter
| followed by some universities and smaller firms. They usually
| promise something that they are already working on in the
| context of a thematic package that the ministry puts up for
| grabs. The research is usually done by the university, while
| the large company moves the money around citing 'management'
| workloads. The small companies don't really do much, or
| present past results as cutting edge R&D.
|
| To your number 4, you forget that all systems involve people,
| and in the small world model everybody in the industry kind
| of knows each other. It's very easy to wine&dine, then show
| some fancy demos to scruffy suits in Brussels and get away
| with doing absolutely nothing at all.
|
| In my personal opinion this is more or less a consequence of
| all innovative and intelligent people going to work at FAANG
| for ads and whatnot, the rest of them being locked in the
| politics of academia.
| janj wrote:
| There are some programs like this. My town just one $1m to
| tackle climate change. I had a very small part in the
| proposal process, it was exciting to see the news yesterday.
|
| https://www.petaluma360.com/article/news/petaluma-
| earns-1m-g...
| capital_guy wrote:
| This is called DARPA in the US.
| akie wrote:
| There you go! We can call it CARPA (Climate Advanced
| Research Projects Agency) to help sell it.
| jseliger wrote:
| _2. Anyone who can submit a proposal, and anyone with a
| decent enough plan and a convincing group of people to
| execute it gets EUR250k. Total budget for this phase is EUR50
| million, so this funds 200 ideas._
|
| This is basically ARPA-E:
| https://arpa-e.energy.gov/faqs/general-questions. I've
| written a bunch of these, and they're more straightforward
| than many federal applications.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Research is relatively cheap. It also has a very low
| probability of success (on each initiative) and very long time
| horizon. Investor really don't like those two.
|
| Normally, governments would invest those few millions. But
| government spending seems to have become almost completely
| broken recently and isn't generating that kind of result
| anymore.
| boringg wrote:
| Climate tech (ie hardware and software solutions) is a bad fit
| for VC money outside of carbon accounting software (which adds
| little value) benefits.
|
| As well this direct air capture is slightly better than CCS
| (read: pretty bad) but is also a red herring in terms of
| climate solutions that will provide a lot of value. I say this
| because large amounts of money will get diverted into this kind
| of investment that hasn't proved to be particularly successful
| but has an easy to understand narrative.
| jherdman wrote:
| > Climate tech (ie hardware and software solutions) is a bad
| fit for VC money outside of carbon accounting software (which
| adds little value) benefits.
|
| Can you elaborate on this assertion?
| murph-almighty wrote:
| I think what OP is saying is that documenting the amount of
| carbon released into the atmosphere does nothing to
| actually remove it, and hence is of little value to anyone
| except whoever invested in the company and makes money
| licensing the software.
| boringg wrote:
| Exactly - while it does allow for measurement where the
| likely candidates are for scope 1, scope 2 and scope 3
| emissions it doesn't do anything to actually solve the
| problem (which is a hardware problem).
|
| That and there are way too many people who are now
| building carbon accounting software and the benefits that
| will accrue to it (similar to greenwashing). If only we
| could get some people to work in areas where there was
| real world impact instead of LP returns :)
| boringg wrote:
| Also note Stripe probably has a deal in that they will get equity
| in the company. By signing on as the first deal they will signal
| to others to join in and over the next decade if it is successful
| they will make money on a good exit. Its similar to how Amazon
| was an early client to Plug Power - good lots of good stock and
| thus their investment was free at the end of the day.
|
| Direct air capture is different in that it provides little value
| with a large capex. I hate how proven technologies are in the
| background but because a highly successful tech company decides
| to splash money in climate tech all of a sudden low quality
| technology is getting all the headlines.
| beckman466 wrote:
| > Stripe Inc. is signing up to pay for carbon-removal
| technologies that haven't been invented yet.
|
| > The payments company has formed a partnership with Deep Science
| Ventures, a London investment firm that specializes in building
| technology companies from the ground up. DSV will recruit
| scientists to develop ways to remove carbon dioxide from the
| atmosphere. If they come up with viable concepts, Stripe will be
| their first customer.
|
| why not focus on implementing already existing ecologically
| sustainable inventions and strategies?
|
| what i read here: _rent-seeking tech founders aim to funnel
| profits they collected from the taxing of economic activity_ [1]
| _towards a privately-funded lottery of hoped-for future tech._
|
| the techno-fix is dangerous because it 1) ignores existing
| systemic dysfunction:
|
| _" The current political economy is based on a false idea of
| "immaterial scarcity." It believes that an exaggerated set of
| intellectual property monopolies - for [trade secrets,]
| copyrights, trademarks and patents - should restrain the sharing
| of scientific, social and economic innovations. Hence the system
| discourages human cooperation, excludes many people from
| benefiting from innovation and slows the collective learning of
| humanity. In an age of grave global challenges, the political
| economy keeps many practical alternatives sequestered behind
| private firewalls or unfunded if they cannot generate adequate
| profits."_ [2]
|
| and 2) it covertly wields the lone genius myth [3], that
| supposedly the Stripe brothers are intellectually superior and
| can make better funding decisions compared to a democratic body
| of scientists.
|
| check out this awesome video of just one ecological solution:
| _Life in Syntropy_ with Ernst Gotsch,
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSPNRu4ZPvE
|
| the work of Million Belay of the _Alliance for Food Sovereignty
| in Africa_ (AFSA) is also impressive and worth checking out:
| https://afsafrica.org/
|
| and this video narrated by Jeremy Irons, and with Vandana Shiva:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-bK8X2s1kI
|
| and this book by her:
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43890614-oneness-vs-the-...
|
| this is what global north capitalists are doing instead, _Dead
| Donkeys Fear No Hyenas_ by Joakim Demmer:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isiYYVmvn2U
|
| [1] _Rent-seeking as a service_ by Wendy Liu,
| https://dellsystem.me/posts/fragments-86
|
| [2] _Peer-to-peer economy and new civilization centered around
| the sustenance of the commons_ ,
| http://wealthofthecommons.org/essay/peer-peer-economy-and-ne...
|
| [3] _The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking Public vs. Private
| Sector Myths_ by Mariana Mazzucato,
| https://marianamazzucato.com/books/the-entrepreneurial-state
| afarrell wrote:
| Another way to describe solving problems in a way that
| sidesteps systemic dysfunction is "not boiling the ocean".
| csee wrote:
| I read the whole of [1] and it doesn't actually explain why
| these companies are rent seekers. Just puts the label on them
| with no stated justification.
| beckman466 wrote:
| the companies are rent-seekers because they gained an
| overwhelming market share (read: monopoly) using their VC
| war-chests and positioned themselves as unavoidable
| middlemen. this can be anything from a gig economy app like
| Uber or DoorDash, to the proprietary pharmaceutical recipes
| 'owned' as intellectual property produced under a brand name
| and sold with a massive markup far in excess of the material
| ingredient costs, as well as the 'cost' of labor under our
| current system. we know this because the same meds that are
| sold in America often cost orders of magnitude less in
| European countries.
|
| the underlying strategy here is about starving or buying out
| competitors until one brand name becomes a literal verb. that
| is to say: the usage of a proprietary product or service
| becomes so ubiquitous that we are conditioned to rely on the
| profit-seeking monopolizing Silicon Valley/Wall Street
| juggernauts in every aspect of our daily lives. so it's no
| longer _" i'm getting a taxi to your place"_, it's now _" i'm
| Ubering to your place"_. or _" i'm going to search the
| internet using a search engine"_ has now become _"i 'm going
| to google"_.
|
| so to use tech platforms as an example: the client-server
| software paradigm obscures and hides all algorithms,
| protocols, and personal data behind a black box
| server/software/system. in another article, Wendy Liu writes:
|
| _" What I want is to see Uber's technology become a
| protocol. Same with Airbnb, same with Postmates, same with
| other companies in the gig and sharing economies. Same with
| lots of other important technology companies, while we're at
| it. Obviously this can't happen overnight, but if the
| technology is useful enough to provide real value, then it's
| too useful to be subjugated to the whims of profit forever. I
| would love to see these technology platforms either fully
| decentralised, or centralised in such a way that the entity
| running it is not-for-profit and, ideally, accountable to all
| stakeholders. The actual mechanisms for making this work are
| beyond the scope of this post, but I want to throw this idea
| out there and get people thinking about it, because it's the
| only way of making the future work for all of us."_ [1]
|
| the most exciting emergent project where i am starting to see
| the development of fully distributed protocols/software
| become a reality is the holochain framework. the team behind
| this open source library are aiming to make it as simple to
| use as Ruby on Rails was to make centralized apps. other
| projects in the dweb space that i'm following are
| activitypub, DAT and SSB. i've heard the above described
| shift referred to with different names: platform
| cooperativism, protocol cooperativism, platform socialism,
| protocol socialism and more. i am personally most excited
| about the holochain framework, because of the way it uniquely
| combines proven existing tech: Git, DHT's, etc.
|
| [1] https://medium.com/@dellsystem/dont-put-your-faith-in-
| uber-7...
| csee wrote:
| I think there's a decent degree of truth to this rent-
| seeking framing, but many of these companies are also
| legitimately value adding as well, and the ratio between
| these two things differs by company.
|
| Groupon skews heavily to the former (because it adds no
| efficiency anywhere and is just various brands engaging in
| zero-sum price competition for eyeballs), Uber skews
| heavily to the latter (because Uber is barely profitable
| and brings significant operational efficiency due to their
| algo and the physical network effects).
|
| I'm not sure I agree that non-profit is the way for some of
| these firms. Would either consumers or drivers be better
| off with a non-profit Uber? What's the incentive to make
| things extremely efficient? There'd be no centralized
| entity skimming off the top, but at the same time there
| might be an efficiency cost which is even bigger. So I'm
| skeptical.
|
| I definitely do think a non-profit would be a great thing
| to replace AirBnb, Groupon et al.
|
| Two side comments. One, those tech alternatives are very
| interesting to read about. Two, expensive drugs are because
| of the government (or because of lobbying), arbitrageurs
| would love to import some cheap insulin from overseas but
| doing that is illegal.
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