What fossil fuels are doing to our oceans | Hacker News Reader

What fossil fuels are doing to our oceans

newhumanist.org.uk

196 pointskawera174 comments

It's not really enough to read and upvote, but I'm at a loss as to what I can personally can do about this.

So in the spirit of the askhn "how would you turn around Twitter" - let's apply the same thinking to this: "how would you fix the oceans "?

There must be some practical steps that one or many of the hn audience can execute?

Become a vegetarian. Not only will you not contribute to the fish market, but you'll also reduce the amount of fertilizer flowing into the ocean.

To make a dent I suspect becoming a vegetarian isn't enough - you'd have to become an effective-evangelical vegetarian.

So, given that fear and shock tactics are failing - how do I convince the world (or a sizeable portion of it) to become vegetarian?

I heard a podcast recently about a guy working to produce real meat from plant matter. This would probably be an effective solution.

By spending time otherwise used for side projects perhaps I could help bring the cost of production down to below that of animal-meat? Know of anything I can work on to help?

[ I have no idea why people are downvoting me, so I'll just remove this comment. ]

I think you missed the point of the comment... "fear and shock tactics" have been applied to me wrt climate change, vegetarianism, etc. But all they seem to have done is desensitize me. Hence my saying that they do not work.

I'm exploring whether there are things that I (and the rest of the HN audience) can do to make a dent. Right now my measure of effectiveness and productivity is almost exclusively related to dev work. It'd be worthwhile to find a way to expand this to include more nebulous objectives - and having some practical things to work on seems a step in the right direction?

I wasn't suggesting fear and shock tactics, and I agree that they don't work. My suggestion was quite different.

You seem to have redacted your comment - but if I recall correctly your suggestion was to go ahead and evangelize but asserted that I would fail because I mentioned "shock and fear tactics"?

Fear and shock dont work. Shame is the solution. Work to make bad actions socially unacceptable.

Kind of like the star rating system from Black Mirror?

I think someone would see more success convincing people to eat less meat rather than eat no meat. e.g., make red meat a special occasion thing rather than an almost nightly occurrence.

This could work a little at a personal level, but any larger campaign is going to come up against industry groups with more funding and no financial reason to care about much of the environment.

I don't know about the US, but in Australia, there are very strong campaigns promoting lamb consumption, for example. It's tied very effectively, through marketing, to our national identity as part of Australia Day.

"eat less meat" has been tried and doesn't appear to work that well.

In the US, there are lots of industries in which producers of beef, eggs, pork have to pay $$ to a marketing board that buys advertising. Needless to say, they won't buy advertising that says "buy higher quality X" or "eat less X!" The government is for it and the courts have upheld being forced to pay into it, so, there you have it.

The best way to convince a large number of people is to write an emotionally powerful novel or screenplay. Fictional characters are by far the most powerful role models in society, so tell that story.

People are quick to forget though? I can't think of a film or book that brought some ethical misstep to the fore and changed human behavior en-mass over the long term?

Edit:

I guess religious texts could be used as a counterpoint.

I'm a vegetarian myself, although for another reason: I don't want living beings to be tortured and killed for my food.

But I find is that vegetarian propaganda is many times so disgusting and based on lies that it's probably going to turn people away from vegeterian food. Some vegeterians and vegans are obnoxious bigots and their efforts are generating opposite result - people start hating vegeterians and vegeterian food.

So I don't evangelize vegeterian. Besides, my reasons are too complex for most people to understand: "But chicken and cows were created for us to eat! They are not suffering!".

Although, male calves are killed in milk production. Dairy cows cannot produce thousands of liters of milk without living a short life. Chickens that produce eggs were bred into monsters that can't live long.

I do not think any hate is rational and believe that any kind of vegan propaganda is beneficial to the cause.

Fossil fuels are nothing compared to nitrite waste.

I've noticed that when you blame people for something (eating meat, for example), they're not going to listen, it's causing opposite reaction - to defend and continue doing the same thing.

So, maybe it's possible to persuade people to stop eating meat, but it requires much wisdom and patience... I don't really try. When my friends ask me, I answer politely, but it's very hard, because when I say: "I'm do not want to kill living beings for food because they're suffering" it's already sounds like I'm blaming them. :(

Dito for me (although I personally take the climate influences more as a reason than the ethics). The interesting thing is that, if someone finds out by chance that I'm a vegetarian, they always ask me for the reason. At times I almost suspect they expect some moral lecture just to be able to oppose it.

Something in human nature just seems to force us to dig trenches that way.

Also, there are the moments when you as the vegetarian get lectured on how "it's natural" to eat meat when in my area, some 50-60 years ago, you would have been inredibly rich or lucky if you got one piece of meat each day. Go figure.

I know. Lately I've been realizing the enormity of the fact that of all the planets we've found this one is the only one where life flourished.

How then can we possibly take the killing of life so lightly?

It's the mass extinction event that we've created that really grinds at me. All these amazing species of flora/fauna erased from the universe to make our lives a little more convenient.

It is unrealistic to expect that any one person could convince a sizeable portion of the world to become vegetarian, but simply by being one you can influence others without being evangelical. I would not have become a vegetarian without the passive influence of friends who demonstrated that it was possible (and easy!), without actively encouraging me to switch. Being a vegetarian also reduces the amount of meat consumed by people who I cook for, or who prepare food for a group that includes me.

I was vegetarian for about 6 years but didn't have quite the same experience as you (in the early 2000's). By and large I was met with incredulity or confusion. Top Gear using the word "Vegetarian" as an insult didn't help matters either :p

Soy beans / palm oil are one of the top causes of deforestration in rainforests around the world.

Being vego doesnt mean good for the planet, although yes, probably the main cause of desforestation is beef production...

The permafrost is melting. coral reefs around the world are dieing. Its only a matter of years until fish populations to collapse (coral reefs house 75% of the world fish). Unfortunately the writing is on the wall, we have already tipped the scales and its going to take another 100k years for the balance to be restored.

Realistically, we are doomed. How do we reverse climate change when our goal in life is to go out, have a career, make money. We make every effort to reduce poverty and 3rd world conditions becauase its better...

But its not. I saw on a doco last night a guy from PNG, his community just sold their land to Exxon Mobile to drill for gas, 50billion they say they would extract. He was filmed with a with a primary rainforest in the background, saying he expected the place be like new york city (but all the money has been embezled by corrupt politicans). I looked at him, with his ripped muscles and young features, pelo diet and thought "people who have it all, want to look like you. Live and eat like you. YOU HAVE IT ALL. Sure, you dont have collatoral for a house, but u have the life that educated and developed people strive for..."

> Soy beans / palm oil are one of the top causes of deforestration in rainforests around the world.

75% of soy beans are used as animal feed [1].

[1] http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/footprint/agriculture/soy/so...

Interesting! May I know the name of this documentary?

We are living the Malthusian dystopia and the solution is as trivial to state as it is impossible to implement. A global one child policy.

As societies get richer, they have less kids. And each child has more capital. This isn't a bad outcome.

That has been the trend so far. But I would be cautious about extrapolating too aggressively from that. A situation with rich people that aren't breeding is not evolutionarily stable.

What does that even mean?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionarily_stable_strategy

TIL

Super interesting!

Though it wasn't exactly what I meant. I just meant some people will be more and some will be less inclined to children. And that in society where people choose not to have children there will be a strong evolutionary force favoring those with a stronger drive for children.

Oddly, I think outright banning fossil fuel refinement and usage would do more.

Being an only child seems to be a bit psychologically damaging. I could conjecture for pages here, but suffice it to say I believe one is better off having 2-3 children or none at all. Sure there can be situations like being raised closely with cousins or friends that are similarly beneficial, but kids absolutely must have close companions near their own age -- they don't seem to fully learn to be empathetic otherwise.

This is only the opinion of one person, take it however you wish.

I agree with your first assertion, but would need to see some science on the second. I don't recall ever reading about negative outcomes for only children. On the contrary only children often have many advantages. More parental attention and time. More resources, all other things being equal. More money for college. More money for medical care (braces, eye care, etc.). More money and time for hobbies like sports or music.

I don't have any stake in this (no kids and unlikely to ever have any), but I feel like I've read that only children do better on many metrics than kids with siblings, all other factors being equal.

If you have siblings, one of the most important lessons you can learn is that it's not all about you.

Having more advantages is exactly the problem talking about. People, especially kids, need to scrabble a bit and fight for resources in order to learn how to treat the resources themselves and the other parties who might need them respectfully.

Fossil fuels are responsible, in multiple ways, for approximately 100% of the food eaten by human beings today. Additionally, fossil fuels are responsible for heating homes in winter, and for transportation networks which allow access to modern medical care.

Therefore, if fossil fuels were banned, wouldn't millions of people quickly die from starvation, cold, and lack of medical care? Wouldn't that be psychologically damaging to humans all over the world, to watch loved ones die and worry about one's own premature death?

> This is only the opinion of one person, take it however you wish.

As someone who is supposed to be unable to be empathetic, I kinda wonder how you came to have this opinion.

That's pretty polarizing. I think I said something to the effect of not developing the same, not "failing to develop any empathy at all". I and many of my friends have kids. They don't come into contact with each other more than occasionally, but the ones who are only children are much less willing to create something out of nothing and, say, play with the one toy that was available. Social situations, like having very close friends or cousins help, but something like preschool isn't 24/7. From observing the little guys, the ones who pitch screaming fits when their mum leaves them and I'm dropping off my kids are not the ones with siblings. And they're losing resources they haven't learned to share yet. I wouldn't say it's impossible for only children to learn empathy, just that it happens later, differently, and maybe doesn't achieve the same end goal of having a human being who's always had to share things 24/7.

I agree this would make sense in countries with high birth rates, but applying it to countries with low birth rates would just accelerate their extinction. Also partially related, but movie "Idiocracy" (http://m.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/) comes to mind here.

> A global one child policy.

This would essentially wipe out siblings, which could mean that we lose any associated culture?

The concern is that the alternative could wipe out humans, which of course includes siblings.

You can start an iron fertilization project for around 20k in boat rental fees + legal fees for illegal ocean dumping. Major companies do it for less altruistic reasons all the time.

This is an interesting suggestion - though I'm not sure of the net effect of iron fertilization? How much iron achieves what?

I guess the legal fees cover dumping of anything ranging from nuclear waste to rubbish destined for recycling? I'd assume one could get those waived if there was a proven positive effect of the fertilization.

Recent studies say that iron fertilization sequesters a lot less carbon than you might think, so maybe we should defer worrying about the economics until we know how much carbon it sequesters?

i think if we ever battle climate change, its going to be this geo-engineering that saves us.

Purely with population growth, we are doomed. Even if everyone had solar powered everything, feeding this population on anymore more then plakton will fully utilise all arrible surfaces on the planet by 2050

>>how would you fix the oceans

Use your bike whenever it is possible instead of your car. By the way it is also good for your health not only for the environment.

Buy products that are produced in your neighbourhood and are not shipped twice around the world.

I don't have a car so tend to take public transport or walk. But that aside, I recall reading that heavy industry releases a great deal more CO2 than all cars on the roads and that cars are a bit of a red-herring. No source though so I could be wrong.

Shipping, yes. That is a great polluter - good shout - though it primarily applies to food right? It's tricky to buy everything locally-produced e.g the mac I'm typing on. Shipping exists in part because raw materials are spread throughout the globe.

Yes, shipping your 1,3 kg mac (or whatever it weights) around the world once in his lifetime is much more harmless than shipping all your fruits from Brasil to Europe where you could buy local products. Maybe we could survive without eating mango or banana all the time.

There is a lot of finger-pointing going on. Every proposal for a solution which involves me changing the way I live is a red herring. The industry I am working in is not responsible for killing our environment. The car I drive is much harmless then the meat you eat. Turning off my TV set and reading books or going on a walk instead would not save the world until everybody follows my example so why not spend 5 hours of my free time every day in front of the screen? Everything - except talking online about what others should change in their lifes to protect our enviroment - is too uncomfortable for me so let's use Rust or Go instead of the inefficient Python because this will save the world from humanity.

Yes it will, if you work on Skynet. Otherwise won't.

Make all plastic based on petroleum illegal.

Kill 2 birds with 1 stone.

That is a terrible idea, for many reasons, and it would not reduce CO2 emissions... probably the opposite.

A much better idea would be to reserve petroleum and natural gas for production of high value products such as plastics, instead of using it as an energy source now that renewable energy is competitive on cost.

Is that so? I recently bought some fake-plastic bags made out of plant matter (not fossilized mind you) in the hope that they would be more environmentally sustainable. As I remember it, googling did not turn up any conclusive evidence to the contrary. Why do you think banning plastics would be a bad idea?

Because:

- there are very many plastics with different properties, and - AFAIK - not all of them can be replaced with plant matter

- replacing all plastics with plants will likely compete with agriculture for land use

- if you just went and banned plastics, we'd have to use things like glass, metals and woods instead; not sure how the manufacturing footprint compares between metals and plastics, but just consider that if every plastic item you have around you was made from steel instead, how much heavier everything would be, and how it would impact energy requirements to move those things around

Plastics are pretty awesome materials.

Elect people who are willing to take science-supported reality in consideration when creating policy.

Votes only count if the people you vote for can be counted on. Those people are often very thin on the ground, hard to identify (it could be a political masquerade) or are unelectable because the voting majority don't like them.

Then, at least don't vote for candidate who makes a campaign point out of mocking science and promoting quacks in key public positions. That's something that most people could do.

Petroleum is a multi hundred billion dollar industry in the US alone. Attempting to vote our way out of this problem is in vain when considering the influence/ownership of the oil lobby on the political system.

Technically.

+ Instead of hunting on the seas we should perform aquaculture. Establish diets that can use sea vegetables. Create methods to harvest on sea. This can reduce CO2 in the oceans and reduces the burden on land.

+ Accelerating research into reducing the CO2 footprint of our food. Lab grown meat and fish needs to be on wafer scales.

+ Create market places that reduces friction between CO2 producers and CO2 reducers. Make it easier to share solar panels or to share roofs. Make it easier to provide clean energy to Indian or Chinese households. Make it easier to find locations for wind mills. All these things can be accelerated through digital communication.

All great suggestions. Something that seems like it could be a side project would be to "Make it easier to find locations for wind mills." I suspect at present the primary limiting factors are locating areas of land that are

(1) windy (2) accessible (3) cheap to develop?

The job of finding technically suitable locations is (as far as I know) pretty well covered: it's fairly straightforward meteorology and the industry obviously has a huge interest in getting it right, so they have invested into good tools for it, both for theoretical modeling and for in-the-field evaluation of candidates.

Harder parts are:

* navigating the conflict of interest with/impact on people living nearby, land owners/users, nature, ... to actually get permission to build and operate

* getting locations properly integrated into the grid, since they often are far away from areas using a lot of electricity.

* and of course predicting the legal and market framework for the future, to figure out profitability

Do not eat meat, become a vegetarian. Drive less or get an electric car. For your household, get clean energy. Do not use plastic when not needed. Repair your products instead of purchasing new ones. Recycle. Etc.

I see people mentioning things like "become a vegetarian" or "bike to work", but those are easy and neglible-impact things. Sure, they'd have a huge effect if half of the population suddenly adopted them, but that's not going to happen - so just going vegetarian yourself and calling it a day is not really helping anything.

What I'd love to see is a list of high-impact work one could use their skills to help with. Maybe some research groups would use a better software package? Maybe there's a process that could help and is not yet economically viable, but could be made such?

Let's try and list things like that.

This is exactly what I was thinking, though clearly failed to communicate. I already do a number of the things mentioned but I feel like it makes very little, if any difference.

From the comments below I've stared thinking of some things I can do by putting my dev skillset to use:

* contact Ethan Brown of Beyond Meat to see if there's anything he could do with my volunteer hours

* Investigate whether there is an issue with finding locations for windfarms and if that is a real limiting factor in having more. Seems like a simple enough problem to solve

I have some doubts about becoming vegetarian: soya cultivation has a huge negative impact on rain forests and on farmers. I prefer to obtain meat from local farmers that use traditional methods - don't abuse antibiotics and use locally grown pasture.

A large part of the soy is being fed to livestock.

Soya beans aren't the only bean a vegetarian can eat. There are plenty of protein rich plants that will grow in almost every climate.

While I applaud your meat buying preferences, it would be an environmental disaster for every meat eater on earth to attempt to do the same.

While I applaud your meat buying preferences, it would be an environmental disaster for every meat eater on earth to attempt to do the same.

I might not get the point, but why would it be a bigger environmental disaster?

Because we'd need significantly more land/pasture to feed livestock that way.

in a 1:1 substitution case. but locally, sustainably (yeah, maybe not the right word ... organically?) produced meat is more expensive, which should lead people to eat less meat, but if they eat meat to consume meat produced locally with a smaller environmental footprint (if that's the case, I'm not an expert in that field).

maybe that's just wishful thinking though.

Alcohol is ridiculously expensive in Australia. We don't drink less of it.

If the cost of meat were a driving factor in reducing consumption, consider that it's maybe 4x less expensive (a guesstimate based on my own experience) to eat whole plant based proteins than meat.

It is inherently more efficient and sustainable to eat the plant proteins we grow than to feed them to animals. 1kg of meat also requires 100x the amount of water per kg of protein [1].

[1] http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/78/3/660S.full

Data centers use a lot of power. Make data centers more efficient, for example by improving GCC or the Linux Kernel, and you can save a chunk.

Don't write your billion-user apps in Python, use a more efficient language like Rust or Go. Don't make 10MB webpages where 100kb would also suffice.

But I think useful change can only be made using political means. Write your representatives and tell them how you feel. Vote for politicians who want to change things.

Data centers are about 1-2% of emissions.

Animal agriculture is comparable to all transit, while heating/cooling/electricity is heavily at the top.

If I were profiling I'd optimize the highest bottleneck first.

I don't think many people on HN have the skills to make other people stop eating animals, so I focused on computers.

http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/02/27/517531611/wha...

> But I think useful change can only be made using political means. Write your representatives and tell them how you feel. Vote for politicians who want to change things.

I like technical solutions because they're undemocratic - they can step around conflicting short-term agendas and force change by exploiting market / people's preferences. In the day and age when climate is at best a very distant concern for most people, political solutions seem like a hard work for little and uncertain effect.

I wish I could be proven wrong on that though. Are there any low-hanging, high-impact fruits one could focus on? Maybe one should refocus on local politics? It seems much less messy and corrupt than national-scale politics.

Improving local infrastructure to improve walkability and prioritize cycling over cars helps, but in the near term we need to stop producing GHGs completely. So unless you have a found a cheap way to get fusion power to market in the next fifteen years or so, or have grid scale power storage up your sleeves, a large scale, expensive shift of our whole economy seems necessary. I don't see how you can do that without politics.

Politics will necessarily have to be a part of it - even if you could bring fusion power to market in the next decade. Politics responds to the shape of the solution landscape, so I see working on technologies (and "social technologies") as one way to influence it, with possibly better ROI than just voting for people who promise to "fix things".

(Also, voting is really a low-hanging fruit, so the best response here would probably be "why not both?".)

My worries about engaging directly in politics - becoming a politician - is that I see it as a very inefficient process, in which you'll have to give away most of your morality (and possibly interest in the original problem) before you get in a position to effect big changes.

I was walking one night and I noticed streetlights are always on. Why aren't they proximity detecting/linked to each other so they'd anticipate you moving to the next one. Also same with stop/go lights. I realize infrastructure.

Edit: I was thinking about lights, I don't know far away sensors maybe? Not helpful if the lights are always being used (lots of cars).

Liquid salt thorium reactor haha

I'd guess several reasons, or rather aspects of the issue:

- proximity detector is another potential point of failure; including it raises both installation and maintenance costs

- when you're walking at night, you'd like to see further than the distance between two lampposts; this would require the proximity sensor to trigger several lamp posts arond you (totally doable, I guess, but again extra installation and maintenance costs for having the lamps wired together in the right way)

- in the past, streetlights were using sodium-vapor lamps, which have a significant warmup time

- now lamps are switching to LEDs so warmup time is not a concern, but I wonder how constantly turning them on/off impacts their longevity

Wearing my optimist hat, I think city planners are comparing costs of the issues above with potential savings. But pessimist in me tells me that it's mostly because electricity is cheap and incentives to optimize streetlights aren't strong.

Yeah I heard of something similar regarding turning light bulbs on/off versus just keeping them consistently on.

It is pretty crazy how we just expect electricity to work, one day when everything is destroyed and we're back to the stone ages how long would it take to get back to where we are now I wonder haha. An offline version of wikipedia on how to turn ore into a generator. Oh well I guess we'll figure it out hopefully.

> one day when everything is destroyed and we're back to the stone ages how long would it take to get back to where we are now I wonder haha.

A long time. Technology level isn't just about know-how. You'd also need a global supply chain ensuring access to all the raw materials, subcomponents, sub-subcomponemts, etc. You need a civilized society and the rule of law so that people can specialize and still put food on the table.

> An offline version of wikipedia on how to turn ore into a generator.

That's the easy part. Some people are already working on it.

A "Hitchhiker's guide book" if you will haha

I would say those are hard and seemingly-neglible-impact things, and that's why the general populace don't do those sorts of things. I see a parallel with being afraid of flying but not driving; people are not very rational or good at assessing impact. There's no reason not to change our habits, further, there's a positive feedback loop for vegetarianism: more consumer, more products, more consumers.

If you want to apply your skills come up with ways to help people change their habits. Better mass transit (ride-sharing etc.), new low-impact comsuption choices (e.g. digital goods/experiences), apps to help eat or live greener, better food production...

I would say those are hard and seemingly-neglible-impact things, and that's why the general populace don't do those sorts of things.

God help us...

Welcome to Humanity 101.

This probably doesn't belong here...

I thought I read/heard that we became smart because our brains grew a lot due to eating meat. I realize this sort of change probably took hundreds/thousands of years not over the course of someone's life. Also can't argue the salt/red meat stuff either. I'm just curious if it made our brains grow/possibly lead us to today. Moderation I suppose. I don't want to stroke out at 55.

I don't know for certain but I suspect it may be more due to the calorific density of meat. Grazing on vegetation is a full time activity leaving zero time for other activities. Whereas if you only have to have a single meaty meal in a day you can spending the rest of the day planning your next hunt.

I read somewhere too that the protein is different from a meat-source versus plant source.

I don't know, it's odd to do the "is it right?" thing regarding killing other animals for food when that is how nature operates. Still with the way technology is progressing, I suppose one day you could just build "meat" directly without an "animal". (not a new idea) I don't know I heard some interesting stuff regarding that.

Crazy to think so many people before me were able to conceive so I'm alive today haha. It's my turn, helloooo ladiesss....

The compounded impact from multiple people is not negligible.

Of course it isn't. But the marginal impact is. That's the difference between "go vegetarian" vs. "convince millions to go vegetarian".

I'm asking for things a skilled individual can do that would have larger marginal impact that changing one's own dietary habits.

Sadly, this attitude has been the problem for too long now, it might be our undoing.

The common individual waits for some authoritative direction, without taking any immediate action or responsibility of their own.

The individual somehow believes they won't have an impact, failing to realize they're part of the same system as everyone else and, it's the sum of all our behaviour that has got us to this crisis point.

If the old way isn't working, why not try something new?

Don't forget the power of influence. It's monkey see, money do with us humans!

I'm not saying don't make the individual-level changes. Do them, sure. But that - talking about personal responsibility - is exactly the "old way" that isn't working. I'm looking for impactful things that one can do beyond personal changes.

> Don't forget the power of influence. It's monkey see, money do with us humans!

Sure, marketing / propaganda / public outreach is a very good example of things I'm looking for! However, I assume most people here are better at building than talking, so that's why I asked for examples in which one can apply engineering skills.

This doesn't mean marketing, bragging or propaganda. It's about making an effort.

Take divesting your savings from banks that fund non-renewablecenergy projects, for example. Actually doing it is effort, it's something you can do, and it will have a positive impact on climate change, even if it's small, it's a start; However, here's the kicker, actually doing it is the key. You will see how others respond to this action, it's different to just making a suggestion. It's leadership.

Honestly, making changes on an individual level (sometimes this can mean some sacrifices) is probably a much stronger catalyst for change in others than you might think.

This quote from Ghandi is great, it's just not always easy, I hope you enjoy :)

Be the change that you wish to see in the world

Thanks for reminding me of the quote :). Also, interesting example with banks; this has never occured to me.

I'm not denying that individual efforts and "leading by example" is worthless. It's powerful when in aggregate, and for that very reason it's worth doing.

My question is generally - after one does the individual-level changes, what else can one do that could help with the skills that one has?

As the problem is really a compound of millions of people and not any one indivdiual, the answer is then really nothing - bar more unrealistic options such as becoming a dictator and banning fossil fuel, or become a genie and invent an engine running on water.

The more realistic approach is to change ones own behavior where possible - get an electric car, demand your electricity company switch to clean tech, switch to getting electric from non-fossil fueled power, fly less miles, use a bike, and so on - and try to convince others to do so too. If noone does anything, it's pretty certain nothing will change either.

I disagree. There is a whole spectrum between "change your own behaviour" and "become a global dictator". It's a spectrum of influencing people around you. Marketing and persuasion are ways to directly influence people, but there are also many more ways to do that indirectly - e.g. creating / improving technologies that change the default behaviour of people for the better. To use a simple example - switching to renewables would not possible without people inventing ways to economically extract power from renewables.

You first need to go vegetarian to convince others to do the same.

Agreed. This is not a problem that is tractable on an individual level. Sure, if everyone became a vegetarian and cycled to work and only partook of goods and services that were part of a circular economy, then the world would be a place. But that's not going to happen, because in many places, food choices (and food culture) is terrible; cities are designed in cycling/pedestrian-hostile ways; the circular economy just can't supply all the goods and services you need to keep your family in good shape.

So that's not gonna work. I mean, do it if it makes you feel good -- personally I don't own a car, am a vegetarian, etc. -- but don't kid yourself that that's how the world gets saved. It isn't. The problems need to be fixed on an institutional/structural level.

Here's how I'm personally doing that:

- Worked on a new urban transport technology (http://www.ultraglobalprt.com/) that is significantly more attractive than the car in many respects, is all-electric, requires 70% less net energy, and uses 95% less land.

- Although I failed at getting the above technology implemented at urban scales, I discovered a more fundamental problem that needed to be cracked: cities have difficulty innovating (and integrating) because all the various planning/engineering/policymaking disciplines are heavily siloed. So I started a software company (https://www.podaris.com/) that has now created a collaboration platform for transport planners, urban planners, architects, policymakers etc. If it helps us to create better cities, it may actually help to save the world.

If I could clone myself and work on other things, they would be:

- Bio-engineered vat-grown meat and yeast-derived dairy. I have no intrinsic problem with small-scale, local, traditional meat production, but the mainstream industry, based on feedlots and Brazilian Soya, needs to die.

- Sea farming: seaweed and oysters. Sustainable, and also highly freaking yummy.

- Vertical / urban farming tech. (Still not 100% sold on this, but where it makes sense, it should be done!)

- Create software tools for tracking, comprehending, and shaping designs and resource flows in the circular economy.

- Get involved in public policy: reform campaign-finance laws that allow entrenched industries to capture and distort the regulatory landscape; implement a carbon tax; abolish farm subsidies.

- Electric aviation. Somewhere in the next 10 years this will be crossing into the realm of viability. Would be exciting to get in on the ground floor.

- Electric storage systems. A decarbonised electrical systm needs better way of buffering electricity, whether that's in batteries, potential energy, air pressure, or whatever. Much innovation needed here.

- Electric shipping. Hey, why isn't this a thing already?

- Sustainable building materials. Concrete is one of my favourite materials, but it has one hell of a carbon footprint. Figure out better ways to make concrete, or innovate with other materials entirely. (I suspect that bamboo still has a hell of a lot of untapped potential, and could even be a viable carbon sink.)

- Better automation in the production and installation of solar and wind. The more that robots do the work, the faster it can get done. (Elon Musk is very much on this track, with his whole "factories that make factories" thing). You should be extremely pessimistic every time you hear people extol how many jobs will be created by the Green Economy: the flipside of the jobs-creation scenario is that it'll take a very long time and an unsustainable fuckload of money. Want it to be done quickly and economically sustainably? It'll have to be done with robots. Go build 'em.

- Do research on / campaign for a Universal Basic Income. Wait, what does this have to do with ocean acidification? Simple: 1. We're not getting out of this mess without software/robots eating the world. The decarbonisation process is going to destroy millions of jobs in old, polluting industry -- and won't replace them with an equivalent number of new jobs. Heck, even my urban planning collaboration software is going to eventually displace a lot of middlemen. So the entire wage-labor economy, with one's salary being the cornerstone of the social contract, is going the way of the Dodo. 2. When people are economically insecure, they have a difficult giving a damn about any of the above. They just want their coal-mining jobs (or whatever) back. And thus we end up with the politics of our age. 3. This problem is worse in emerging economies, BTW. 4. So until more people can achieve economic security, all of the above will be a very uphill battle. But the world has more than enough money to solve this problem, so let's bloody well solve it so we can get on to the harder problems.

There's your list, for a start. It'll be tough work, but somebody's gotta do it. Might as well be you.

Thanks for the detailed response. That's exactly the kind of things I was looking for.

Of course none of those points are something a single individual can tackle, but what I'm thinking about is to:

- identify broad areas in which changes / development could meaningfully help with the problem (like you started doing with this list)

- rank them on impact potential

- subdivide them into smaller areas

- use that as a reference for what to work on, and encourage people to work on that

- track progress in these areas (this alone is a good list item; I haven't really seen anything yet that does a good job of tracking how solutions for big problems are progressing)

EDIT:

Regarding Podaris, how is the project turning out in the real world? Do urban planners use it?

In reverse order:

Thanks for asking about Podaris! Yes, there are a handful of planners using it. We soft-launched a little over a year ago, and since then have been working with a small group of planners from my personal network. They've done some good things with it, and it's gratifying to seen them now spending several hours every day in the software, so we're clearly addressing some kind of need. However up until now it hasn't been ready to be pushed out to the wider industry, so we don't really have a compelling traction story to tell. That push will start later this month, however -- so hopefully that will happen soon!

It's a slow-moving industry, so I'm not expecting Snapchat-like growth curves, but am still quite optimistic.

Re: making a list -- there are some serious attempts to do that, for example McKinsey's work on carbon abatement cost curves: https://everythingischanging.wordpress.com/tag/abatement-cos...

However, such an endeavour can be problematic in that it's much easier to capture incremental innovation as opposed to disruptive innovation, and component innovation rather than systems innovation.

If you look at the cost curve they came up with in 2009, for example, you'll see that "hybrid vehicles" are on the list but "all-electric vehicles" aren't. This is because all-electric vehicles were thought to be a pipe dream, unrealistic without some kind of radical change in the cost and capabilities of batteries.

That change is actually happening, however. Considered in isolation, radically cheaper and better batteries have no environmental impact per se, but their knock-on effects are fantastically impactful. This is how disruptive innovation generally works -- modest low-level innovation which enables the development of radically new capabilities. Capacitive touchscreens enable smartphones; elevators enable skyscrapers, etc. Those low-level innovations are really important, but hard to value in isolation.

Systems innovation is another area that's hard to compartmentalise. You can see "better insulation in houses" on that McKinsey list, but you don't see "build dense multifamily housing in city centres where people can walk to work and shopping", even though the latter is comprehensively more impactful, more than just about any item on their list. There are ways to value the latter, but it requires evaluating a complex scenario that includes not just housing efficiency, but also transportation, public policy, etc. This can only ever be indicative: it will never be as deterministic as saying that "replacing X insulation with Y insulation will save Z amount of energy". Doesn't mean that it's not worth doing, however!

So what I'm saying is: be careful in subdividing things: it's possible to lose track of a lot of value in the process. But better ways of monitoring and evaluation would of course be a good thing! What you really need is a way of doing M&E for complex systems innovations...

...oh, wait, I started another company (https://www.futurescaper.com/) which does that, among other things. Forgot to put that on the list, since it was a bit meta, but yes, could be valuable. Hasn't changed the world yet, but we're working on it!

Great to hear positive news about Podaris! I wish you success, and if you have an interesting testimonial or story, don't forget to post it here :).

RE list, thanks for the link, I didn't know about this work. I'll try to dig through it after work today.

Thanks for pointing out the issues with subdividing systems innovations and knock-on effects. I guess I've assumed that building a comprehensive list would be easier than it is. Still, something is better than nothing, and even by just looking at the HN discussions, I can see that there are many people with skills who would like to quit doing bullshit jobs, but don't know where to look for impactful work matching their skillsets or interests. This is an area I believe needs improving.

In this subthread I asked for ideas to start a rough list. If such a list was to be turned into a kind of reference for people, it would need to be continuously maintained. As you pointed out, you often can't predict which innovations will turn out impactful or not. The landscape constantly changes. But if we can't predict things well in advance, the least we can do is to try and track them and keep revising best guesses about their evolution.

I'm trying to understand what your other company does. From what I can tell from the website, you're selling some kind of framework for collecting and collaboratively sorting/annotating documents, and for on-line surveys? Is there any less business-speak overview available somewhere?

Yeah, the messaging around both companies needs to get a lot better.

Futurescaper is a tool for collaboratively creating and analysing crowd-sourced systems maps. The purpose of doing this is to better understand the dynamics of a complex problem domain, where many different perspectives are required to get a complete picture. It's not really about annotating documents; more about getting people to tell stories in ways that can be converted into causal graphs, which then can be combined with each other to produce a detailed map of the possibility space, which can then be inform strategic planning. If that makes any sense!

Our biggest customer is the United Nations, which uses it for projects like this one: http://www.la.one.un.org/media-center/publications/252-un-su...

The advantage of doing in this way is that it explicitly encourages the people who interact with it to take more of a systems approach to their thinking, helping to surface hidden root causes and predict unintended consequences or emergent knock-on effects.

It's a bit of an odd company, but happened kind of accidentally: just a weekend coding project (to assist a friend's dissertation on crowdsourced scenario planning) which spun badly out of control.

So I understand the following document is a kind of use case description of the solution your company provides?

http://www.la.one.un.org/images/publications/Analysis_UN_sur...

It looks very interesting indeed. Is it potentially suitable for NGOs, and if so, are there any plans of making some of it available for such nonprofits? I ask partly because I'd love to get my hands on this (and do run an NGO I could use as an excuse ;)).

Yep, that's exactly what it does, and indeed, we've worked with quite a few NGOs and nonprofits! If you're interested, send a note on the website's contact form. Mention that you found out about it from Nathan on Hacker News, and I'll make sure you get priority treatment. :-)

Thanks! I just sent you a note :).

What we need is to begin working really hard on creating a new society. A society where every human life is priceless, where there is no space for "race" or "sex" on the application because it's not needed.Where the environment is cared for and not exploited. Where science is respected and not just used to push someone's agenda. Where people are supported and helped whenever they need that help, but they also understand basics of being responsible for their own actions.

While it seems impossible (and most likely it is), there is only one way to find out - try.

I don't know about you, or anyone else here, but I bet there are thousands, if not millions of people here who don't give a ff about having the newest phone in their pocket, newest social app, etc. but would give all the time and money they have to create a better world if not for themselves - at least for their children.

"How do you propose doing that?" most people will ask - a very good question with a very simple answer - I don't know, but I'm sure that it's not something that few like minded people could figure out. We would possibly fail, but so what? Either way, it seems like we're doomed, so we have nothing to lose.

I think you missed the thrust of TeMPOraL's request for high-impact projects. There's a spectrum of difficulties (or, alternatively, price) and of effectiveness:

            Very Easy/Cheap
                 ^
                 |
                 |
    Not          |       Highly
    <------------+--------------->
    Effective    |       Effective
                 |
                 |
                 v
             Very Hard/Expensive

Your suggestion is in the bottom right corner, requiring a complete rework of society. It makes sense to prioritize efforts in the top right corner - perhaps as adrianN suggested, contributing a change that will reduce power consumption of millions of servers. That is a lot more important than changing that light bulb in your closet to LED and saving a couple kW while the home stands, versus a small fraction of an industry that consumes gigawatts of power. Similarly, while we can hope for an immortality solution or cancer cure in the distant future, right now your dollars are a lot more effective at the Against Malaria Foundation.

I'm not sure it would require a complete rework of society, but of course large part of it would need to be redesigned. It would be not easy but it would definitely have a large impact, that's why I think it's worth it. And of course sooner we start replacing rotten foundations of our society with something better, the better.

> [...] changing that light bulb in your closet to LED and saving a couple kW while the home stands, versus a small fraction of an industry that consumes gigawatts of power.

Yes and now. By changing light bulb bazillion times, we were able to save gigawatts of power. It did require just a little bit of work and investment from everyone, but it was more attainable than building new ecologically sound power plants. If just 1mln bulbs were replaced, and each saved 50W /day - we were able to save 50GW of power each and every day. How much more work/money/politics would be required to save as much by building cleaner power plants?

> right now your dollars are a lot more effective at the Against Malaria Foundation.

That might be right, but we have enough resources, to tackle all of the important projects, however due to the way our society is structured we waste these resource on stupid, pointless stuff.

> It did require just a little bit of work and investment from everyone

The problem is, this work adds up superlinearly. The thing about humans is that coordination is hard.

In order to change enough lightbulbs to have an impact on global energy use, you'd have to convince many millions of people to act against their personal, short-term, economic best interest (if it was already in their perceived interest, they'd change the bulbs by themselves). This is a kind of problem you can't really take on directly. An indirect approach would be to e.g. significantly reduce the cost and increase distribution of the better bulbs, leveraging technology and market economy to your advantage. This way the bulbs will start making economic sense, and people will switch by themselves. It's a difficult approach, but much less difficult than persuading people directly.

But then again, you may discover that optimizing power usage in data centres can save as much power, but requires less work and less convincing than the lightbulbs scenario. It would be better to start from that.

This is the kind of solutions we need to prioritize - low effort, high impact.

> This is the kind of solutions we need to prioritize - low effort, high impact.

And I fully agree, but we have a lot of "technical debt" in our society. We have to keep supporting our existing "software", and fix all critical bugs, but we should also dedicate some time to refactor the society, even if it requires building version 2.0 from scratch, adding only these libraries that make sense.

As far as optimizing power usage in data centers - armies of engineers are already working on it, and there is really not much more we can gain there, but changes in software, to be more efficient, simpler and less bloated is something that would have a large impact. This however, as in the case with the light bulb, requires coordination of many different people/companies/technologies. This will simply be impossible not because it's hard, but because our society spends too much effort on making stuff look great, and making sure that we can be tracked by advertisers so they can sell us stuff we don't know we need or want.

> "How do you propose doing that?" most people will ask - a very good question with a very simple answer - I don't know, but I'm sure that it's not something that few like minded people could figure out.

Non-profit non-government education programs. I'm designing one currently.

Any details? Need some help?

I will post to HN as soon as it's ready to get more people on board. Now it's just dozens of drafts, we will need ~2 years more to get it to MVP since it's not full-time currently.

The main idea is to create a learning platform for 9-13yo kids, with high quality apps to learn English, basic coding, and (!!) life skills like personal finance, critical thinking, even using Google efficiently. Then you can just download and deploy it on RaspberryPi/OrangePi or old PCs in your country and distribute it to disadvantaged kids.

Making a decision to change is important not just because of the direct impact it may have but also because it's empowering. Being empowered is enabling and has an amplifying effect on both personal and social change.

Consume less. Don't buy useless things. Don't drive a car. Don't fly. Buy your electricity from a sustainable source. Eat less meat.

Try to get other people to do the same.

I find it's hard to do most of these things, and I don't really have much hope that people will change their habits.

Most people don't even realise that they live in an illusion of reality where "everything is possible, you just have try hard enough".

Sure, I try to do that, and then I realise that just one US state is burning off millions of dollars worth of natural gas per day[0] , purely because it's too cheap to make it worth capturing. Or I go back to my home country and see people burning rubbish and mud coal and realise I can't breathe in winter and the snow is black/grayish.

So you know, at some point you think to yourself - why would I stop driving my Euro 6-compliant, modern, very efficient car, that is extremely heavily taxed to offset pollution, to make....what difference? I know if a million other people made the same choice it would make a difference, but it's the same as telling someone who is already leading a very considerate, very heavily taxed lifestyle that they should do their part too, while their neighbour is clearly burning plastic in their front yard, and no one cares.

It's a weird one, because I don't want to say "it's ok for me to pollute a little bit, because there are people who pollute lots", but damn, it is super hard to justify making life even more expensive for myself.

[0] http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-dakota-gas-flaring-20140...

I agree, it's not easy to justify.

"Would you like to breathe some unfiltered exhaust on the side of the road, completely unprotected from the heavy vehicles that pass by at high speeds? Bicycling! Health benefits!"

But seriously, if there is no infrastructure, its quite hard to sell something that depends on it.

CONSUME LESS! I feel like that really is the key- A holistic approach is best- trying to be aware of the impact you have across the board. Eg. It's not much good being vegetarian if you're also drinking a few bottles of water from plastic bottles everyday. Preaching to others is not that effective, so leading by example is the only way in my opinion!

Sadly the people who hold the most visible positions in our society lead by an example of unchecked hedonistic consumption.

I don't think there is much hope for real change if the systematic problems are not addressed.

And of course, showing a good example is still a worthy cause.

Perhaps you can write more efficient code? Use HTML instead of JS when you can? Don't force people to buy a new phone/computer every x years?

First I laughed, then I thought. Perhaps one could build something akin to Google Page Speed, but instead it provides a measure of green-friendliness? It detects expensive animations, overloading of javascript, etc. I reckon the React community wouldn't like it much though...

The question is - if the whole internet uses 10% less power, does it make enough of a difference given its growth rate?

Population control is the only long term option.

It has naturally happened in Japan and most of the West. China is now under control as well.

We now need to limit the artificial growth of Africa by stopping food programs and allowing balance to be reached.

> We now need to limit the artificial growth of Africa by stopping food programs and allowing balance to be reached.

That's not how it works. Check out Hans Rosling: https://www.gapminder.org/videos/will-saving-poor-children-l...

The ocean cleanup project is working to remove plastic: https://www.theoceancleanup.com/ I'm not affiliated so can't speak for due diligence etc. but they have posted regular progress updates whilst they test and develop their solution

Same for a lot of other issues:

- society

- forest

- health

- education

- thermal insulation

- homeless

The web make you feel connected .. but to all the wrong projects. I'm going to redirect the efforts toward "physical" change from now on.

There is plenty in the world that needs fixing. But as is the case with startups - if you try work on everything nothing works.

Focused* effort brings about the greatest likelihood of success.

*I realize I'm being a bit hypocritical as I'm proposing working on fixing oceans (which will have plenty of added benefits wrt climate change etc.) as a side project to bring about change; in addition to my full time freelance dev work.

Fair point nonetheless, being organized is one of the most important factor.

I agree. But we could use a good summary of what are the most important problems, subdivided into areas that need work / improvement and some estimate of their impact potential, so that people who want to focus on a single thing can choose high-impact things.

I think the Global Priorities Project [1] has that covered - at least to first order.

"Definition: Global Catastrophic Risk – risk of events or processes that would lead to the deaths of approximately a tenth of the world’s population, or have a comparable impact."

[1]: http://globalprioritiesproject.org/

I'm slightly smiling. Aren't we reinventing politics ?

Are we? I don't see the similarity yet.

What I had in mind was an information source for individual decision-making (what to work on to best tackle problem X, how things are going), whereas politics is more about deciding as a group what problems are worth solving and then ordering resources to be directed into them.

Maybe I used the wrong word, "government" ?

I mean, joining forces to fix or improve the place we live in is the root of ideal politics/government.

Maybe, yes, but "politics"/"government" in this aspect is already a recusrive phenomenon - people self-organize on national scale, city scale, block-of-flats scale, etc.

Still, I don't think we need to try and make another body that would tell people what to do. Instead, I'm thinking of helping people who want to help by telling them where that help would have biggest impact, and as a secondary effect, creating a high-level overview of the scope of important issues[0]. Less of a government, more of an information service, I guess.

[0] - even just reading and responding in this thread, I learned about areas that I never realized impact ocean acidification.

Pretty nice. A catalyst in a way.

We're just pawns in the game of life played by the few thousand members of the global ruling class. Nothing you or I do can have any impact whatsoever on anything of importance. Consume as much as you can, because nobody who can do something will do anything until the sky is literally falling.

If we don't manage to turn this stuff around then all this tech progress we read about all day won't mean very much.

I'm talking about things like VR and new programming languages... Obviously tech that saved the oceans would be a different story...

Reading this struck me: What is the difference between primordial volcanoes and human pollution? During the dinosaur age it was a lot hotter [0] and there were really extraordinary organisms. Further reading seems to go down a rabbit hole [1],etc.

[0]http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2014/07/11/what-geology-has-to-... [1]https://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2010/apr/21/ice...

The difference is that during primordial times, we did not have all our infrastructure built out across the globe.

Although global warming is often talked about in "bad for the Earth" terms, really, the Earth will be just fine. It's been through worse.

Global warming is scary because it's bad for human societies. We built our cities and farms and national boundaries in certain places based on the climate we have had. Significant shifts in sea level, precipitation, temps, etc. will cause massive costs and unrest.

>Although global warming is often talked about in "bad for the Earth" terms, really, the Earth will be just fine

In the wise words of George Carlin:

>The planet is fine. The people are fucked!

From a human perspective, there weren't 8 billion humans whose lives dependent on the status quo.

I always thought there's way more human pollution than the amounts casued by a couple of volcano activity here and there? A quick search turns up multiple responses like this one:

Scientists have calculated that volcanoes emit between about 130-230 million tonnes (145-255 million tons) of CO2 into the atmosphere every year (Gerlach, 1999, 1991). This estimate includes both subaerial and submarine volcanoes, about in equal amounts. Emissions of CO2 by human activities, including fossil fuel burning, cement production, and gas flaring, amount to about 27 billion tonnes per year (30 billion tons) [ ( Marland, et al., 2006) - The reference gives the amount of released carbon (C), rather than CO2, through 2003.]. Human activities release more than 130 times the amount of CO2 emitted by volcanoes--the equivalent of more than 8,000 additional volcanoes like Kilauea (Kilauea emits about 3.3 million tonnes/year)! (Gerlach et. al., 2002)

Granted this is just about CO2, but I wouldn't be suprised if the same principle applies to other pollution.

Ballpark numbers here; by similar reasoning, since the industrial revolution humans have put out no more than 26,000 years worth of all volcanoes' emissions (say 200 years worth of 130x emissions). Therefore (obviously hypothetically) if we were to cease emitting any CO2 at all, today, the effects of all the CO2 ever produced by humans would become largely irrelevant in just tens of millennia, which is a mere instant in geological timescales!

I think in the scheme of things, no matter how bad things get the planet won't even notice us. However the question remains what life will be left to see it when it does finally return to normal.

> During the dinosaur age it was a lot hotter [0] and there were really extraordinary organisms.

1. there were also no humans, we evolved during a relatively dry and cold period and for the most part that's what we (and our current globe-spanning civilisation) are adapted for. That's also very convenient as heat and humidity are parasite havens.

2. the second issue is rate of change, globe-spanning temperature changes generally happen on geological timescale not generational ones, and in the latter case they usually triggered massive extinctions.

Neither of these is beneficial to us as a species.

Interesting... We need more oxygen than reptiles because we are 4 to 6 times less efficient in turning food to energy [0]

[0]http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2005/09/breathing-easier-jura...

As the sun gets older, it becomes more and more luminous [0], so concentrations of CO2 that didn't cause a runaway greenhouse process in the past may do so in the future, because we're getting more sunlight. While this effect is not really noticeable when looking at recent history, once you start going back millions or billions of years it starts to become significant.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Solar_evolution_%28Englis...

I wish some billionaire would start a chain of carbon neutral gas stations. I wouldn't mind paying more for gas if I knew it was carbon neutral. There are several ways the gas could be carbon neutral, either through production (solar/wind into fuel creation) or offsets (plant trees or carbon sequestration). Instead of slowly trying to change our transportation infrastructure to EV, which will take decades, this could have immediate impact now.

That gas station would be empty 95% of the time because it wouldn't succeed.

Most people don't want to spend any extra money on things that they won't directly benefit from.

I think organics food shows this isn't true. These gas stations would first target the affluent liberal markets. The marketing could be, don't feel bad about buying that luxury BMW gas guzzler, come to Neutral gas station. The station should feel high end, like the Apple store of gas stations.

This is how organic food started with Whole Foods. And the same strategy could work here.

Organic food is successful because a significant number of people believe it is healthier to eat than non-organic foods. The environmental impact is mostly not the reason. (Whether it is true that organic foods are healthier may be debatable, though for some foods the evidence is pretty good that it is.)

It won't work to use that angle for gas. Pure environmental plays are harder to find. There are people who pay more for renewable generated electricity, so that's a good parallel. I don't know what percentage, however, or if it'd be enough to support a chain of expensive gas stations.

This was true years ago, but I think times are different now. Theres a feeling of near panic among many as the effects of climate change become more obvious and the new Trump environmental policies. I think theres strong desire to do something and this could tap into that.

Also by being high end, theres opportunity to be very different. These stations shouldn't even look like traditional stations. They could provide services that appeal to affluent markets and provide good profit margin. This will be necessary at first because raising gas price alone won't be enough to cover costs.

I'm not sure that this is a fair comparison.

Everyone that I know that eats organic does it because they believe the food is better for their health.

I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the idea. I personally buy from companies like https://us.whogivesacrap.org/ and seek out and pay a premium for sustainably produced food. In a city such as SF or Seattle where many people are wealthy and eco-concious I could see this working. I'm unsure if it would scale though.

I suspect that the population of every country is too price sensitive for this to make a dent. Take for example ethically produced clothing, food, etc. While they are big industries they can barely hold a candle to their less-ethical counterparts.

From what I see, relying on good intentions doesn't quite seem get us to where we need to go.

The cool startup thing here is gas delivery a.k.a. "the Uber of gas stations". It seems like they could add this as a service, since they need something as a reason to exist.

(this is a submarine comment, I don't want Yoshi to go out of business or I'll have to inflate my own tires again)

Or, well, you could buy carbon credits…

Quick 'back of the envelope' (literally) calculations:

Toyota Camry [0] Dual VVT-i engine gets 7.9L/100km and 183gm/km emissions. That roughly works out as 2.3kg CO2 per 1L petrol.

Therefore, a tonne of CO2 is produced for every ~430L petrol. Petrol is around AUD $1.40/L, so about AUD $600 of petrol.

Carbon credits [1] are worth about $14 euros per tonne of CO2, which is say AUD $19.

Therefore 'carbon neutral' petrol adds about AUD$20 to AUD$600 worth of fuel, or about 3-4%.

Sound about right? I could stomach that, considering the fuels price goes up and down all the time anyway...

[0] http://www.toyota.com.au/camry/features/economy-and-environm...

[1] http://www.goldstandard.org/blog-item/carbon-pricing-what-ca...

EDIT: formatting...

This is a lot lower than I expected. I wish governments would just add this as a tax directly. But seems almost impossible in the current political climate.

Your comment sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole. I was confused about how burning 1L of fuel, which weighs ~1kg, could possibly produce ~2.3kg of CO2.

(This page confirms Toyota's number: http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=307&t=11 )

The answer, which took me far too long to realize, is that the oxygen pulled from the air makes up the bulk of the mass of the CO2. Oxygen has an atomic mass of ~16 to Carbon's ~12, which means that 1kg of pure carbon can be combined with oxygen to produce ~3.7kg of CO2.

So yes, your calculations sound about right. Contrary to my first impression they do not violate the law of conservation of mass.

Yeah, I did a double take when I saw the number as well, then realized there's an O2 in CO2..

This is what confuses me, if it only costs 10% more to fix the problem, why the hell is it still a problem?

Because politicians choose the spend the money elsewhere since, so far, it doesn't give enough votes.

Exactly! It's maddening.

You can start paying off your CO2 right now. This is a side project of mine: https://earthboost.org

Correct me if i'm wrong, but i don't think that's how carbon credits work? Paying 10% more for gas doesn't magically reduce the CO2 emitted. I would expect that at some point, someone has to actually not emit CO2 for this to work.

The carbon credit _is_ the (market-based) mechanism by which someone else has to not emit, or sequester, the CO2. [0]

Of course, it relies on there actually being a cap on carbon in the first place...

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_credit#How_buying_carbo...

I think even a startup could do this. Could work with existing stations to promote themselves as being completely eco-friendly. They would add a small cost to each gallon of fuel (as andrewwhartion mentioned it should only be ~3-4%) and that cost would go to offsetting the emissions. The startup could charge another 1% or a lump fee and put the work into making banners / promotional material to advertise their eco-friendliness, and also handle the PR. In an eco-conscious city just the local PR could bump business enough to make it worth it.

I think there's something in this...

The person behind the cash register could even ask, "Would you like to make your 'gas/petrol/fuel' today carbon-neutral for an extra $2.45?".

I can see that working with very little capital. It gets sold the same way as the Snickers bars next to the checkout.

A lot of gas stations here ask "Do you want a car wash for $x.xx" directly on the gas pump after you slide your card. If gas stations just added "Do you want carbon neutral for $x.xx" I think many would push yes in the right markets and a reasonable $x.xx value.

Even if it would succeed and a significant people would be willing to pay more, without regulation you cannot know that it is really carbon neutral instead of the billionaire owner pocketing the difference. And once you get around to regulations, a carbon tax is a much more sensible proposal.

Oceans? We can't even keep our own drinking water safe.

I don't think it's off base to say that within out lifetime the oceans will be completely destroyed. So many mass-die offs of ocean life lately.

They die, we die. It's as simple as that.

Yeah, that's a pretty good bet :(

They'll be very different, certainly. But not "completely destroyed". There may well be nothing very good to eat there, however. And less oxygen.

within out lifetime the oceans will be completely destroyed

A bit of an exaggeration, no? There have been several mass extinction events in the past and yet the world exists today.

I'm sure the world will recover just fine in a few hundred million years.

It didn't work out very well for the dinosaurs, did it?

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