Microsoft’s quest to go ‘carbon negative’ inspires $1B fund
greenbiz.com
greenbiz.com
Why wouldn't we don't adopt a similar system for carbon? The fiscal framework would be very similar. This way a company wouldn't have to know how much carbon have been produced by its suppliers; it only need to count its own.
However, I am afraid it is not a question of implementation, but of dealing with vested interests.
What makes you think they need to allow a carbon tax for that? They seem to be doing fairly well at lowering those how they want to without any concessions?
The wikipedia article says this:
> A carbon tax is also an indirect tax—a tax on a transaction—as opposed to a direct tax, which taxes income. A carbon tax is called a price instrument, since it sets a price for carbon dioxide emissions.[22] In economic theory, pollution is considered a negative externality, a negative effect on a third party not directly involved in a transaction, and is a type of market failure.
That sounds close to what you describe.
Unfortunately I can't imagine how diplomacy could achieve something like that, given the extremely uneven distribution of resource extraction industries. Despite that it wouldn't even hurt the big oil nations, considering that they would not have a lot of difficulties passing on the cost to their buyers (assuming full global enforcement). The biggest logical opponents would not be oil/gas states like Saudi Arabia or Russia but those whose only domestic geological energy sources is carbon-inefficient coal.
(Edit: cleared up some illegible grammar and editing clutter)
Still adding a large carbon tax directly at the source gives us pretty much the best bang-for-the-buck. It would have to be combined with deforestation taxes too otherwise you'll see countries like Brazil go into overdrive to export "green fuel".
You can still tax resource extraction industries in your country and importers of energy resources (if country of origin has lower carbon tax than your country).
This is already done for income tax. You are taxed on your foreign income but you can deduce the tax you already paid to foreign country.
This could impact your exports but with the money from carbon tax you could lessen the tax burden on manufacturers of your exports or even finance them directly.
In short, some people can afford to pay for climate change fixes, and some can't. Any solution will simply have to be progressive and have a fair, equal burden on everyone.
Maybe there's other ways to make it better for the people who can't afford it - a tax free allowance they can claim back or similar.
I'm still not sure if this is feasible across borders though. How can you stop carbon tax havens?
Carbon tax will not solve climate change, it'll only be another money grab.
It's a very progressive tax and will be extremely effective. Which is why the neo-Republicans have fought against it (despite it originally being an old-Republicans idea).
anything the government gets their greasy hands on instantly becomes the most inefficient and cost overrun thing on the face of the earth. Hasn't their track record proven it by far and large?
We need combustibles to become more expensive (because markets don't act well if the true cost is hidden) and government is actually the only entity that can do that, that has a chance of not bleeding us dry and creating bloodsucking monstrosity in the process.
The day-to-day stuff is generally more efficient: that's why the US's private healthcare system is extremely expensive when compared to the UK's public healthcare system (evan at times when the latter was properly funded).
I founded a start-up in Europe, and most of my accounting costs are recovering VAT on business expenses. There's an argument that VAT is an efficient tax because businesses basically have to self administer it, but my take is that the cost is hidden because the burden is pushed onto business.
Compare this to the UK, where there's massive sets of exclusions and several different rates in force. Takeaway vs dine-in food, digital vs physical books, ... a total mess.
https://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/lookup2.php?cycle=2020&strI...
47% Dem 53% Rep split.
https://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/pacgot.php?cmte=C00227546&c...
It was a very bizarre and independent function. After employee frustration, they suspended the PAC
https://www.geekwire.com/2019/internal-email-microsoft-suspe...
I may not be able to come up with the perfect solution myself, but I'm sure there is a way to maintain regular people's ability to organize and even donate politically without having greedy corporate interests take over such entities. Politicians should work to find that solution and ban everything else.
There is just so much wrong with the U.S. electoral system, it's hard to even know where to start. Money in politics, the FPTP system (which also helped the pro-Brexit party in UK win the most seats again, despite the majority of votes going to anti-Brexit parties), electoral college, antiquated caucus system in primaries, all the technical obstacles that two parties have set against independents and third-parties to ensure they never have a real shot and that the real status-quo is maintained (permanent war, helping their wealthy friends, spying on everyone, keeping citizens in the dark about the real issues, etc).
Americans have been reticent to downsize the military for the benefit of everyone else on the planet, but we might just get around to it for our own benefit in reducing emissions.
Feels a bit like you might be throwing out the baby with the bath water.
So employees donate money to a fund that they then don’t have a say in and for reasons that might be as unrelated as wanting to get good seats for a talk by Phil Knight.
This independent org then donates across party lines to issues that the manager believes are aligned with corporate interests that may also conflict with other corporate interests such as green initiatives and LGBTQ issues since a republican senator might be for rural broadband access but not gay marriage.
There was also an internal movement to try and starve the PAC by not donating to it.
And TBC, throwing a wrench in this even more, from a pure money perspective we’re talking about tens - hundreds of thousands vs. 1 billion.
Really, my point is that, like any large organization, a manichean view of things is not sufficiently nuanced and does a disservice to the complexity intrinsic with large groups of people.
If you had $1B for carbon negative tech, where would you invest it?
Are you going to make planters again? I hope so! Even if you aren't, I'm curious what the price was for them.
I was just showing off the planter at a party in SF yesterday, it's such an icon.
I write a weekly newsletter on carbon removal, check it out here: http://bit.ly/tito-carbon
Renewable energy and electric transport.
Trying to pull carbon out of the atmosphere is like trying to pull salt out of water. It is far easier and less costly to avoid putting the salt there in the first place.
I'm not saying we shouldn't be invested in carbon extraction, but so long as we have large carbon emissions then the most efficient place for money to go is towards eliminating those. Cleanup should be secondary.
Sure, for most of the carbon we emit, it's easier to stop emitting it. But not all. We won't reach neutrality by cutting emissions alone.
Besides, we will need to take carbon out of the air to fix the climate after we stop breaking it.
What I'm saying is that there is a lot of low hanging fruit to pluck. A 1 billion dollar solar plant could generate revenue to fund research while cutting emissions. A 1 billion dollar solar plant wouldn't eliminate all carbon output, not by a long shot.
It's a real action that could be done in less than a few years.
Until we get to a point where more solar doesn't decrease carbon output, more solar is the way to go.
The same way, we can't wait for the generation problem to be solved before we start exploring the solutions for capture. We have to do everything all the time; just not with the same intensity.
But most of the time, people separate them to get the salt, not the water.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biochar
Sell the biochar to homeowners:
http://www.ultrakulture.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/4-Ter...
I have no idea about the economics, though, maybe it's just not feasible without subsidies.
Edit: Why? Because the technique is simple, biomass is relatively cheap, you get electricity and heat you can sell in a cold climate, and that terra preta example makes me envious, as someone interested in gardening. If the char was cheap enough, I would want to buy lots of it myself. Helping the planet and helping my own plants.
I think you need a large scale plant to keep costs down. There are large scale biomass power plants where I live, but they specialize in burning everything, so some investment is needed.
Using biochar in your garden, on your lawn etc. is a great way to sequester some carbon at a small scale.
Biochar as a soil amendment is not a reliable means to increase yields. Depending on the produce and the soil, it decreases yields. Sometimes, it seem to have no effect, at all. So far, the most reliable results have been observed in tropical areas. People there don't have the money to invest in farm land, yet.
Refining syn-oil is hard, because its quality is low -- comparable to bunker oil. Tar is one of the few products that can be made out of it, successfully.
Therefore, burying both seem to be the best option. After all, there should be quite a few depleted oil fields and coal mines in the world, so space is not a problem.
they can grow nanotubes with simple electrolysis, and the only inputs are electricity and co2. They've got a version that works in a gas plant's exhaust, and a version that's completely solar. It's still early - like, hand-assembled by grad students early - but I cannot imagine that this is not going to be revolutionary
(sorry for multireplies but this concept is just so exciting to me)
"Live it, or live with it!"
> "While we at Microsoft have worked hard to be 'carbon neutral' since 2012, our recent work has led us to conclude that this is an area where we’re far better served by humility than pride," wrote Smith in the blog. "And we believe this is true not only for ourselves, but for every business and organization on the planet."
Really the only verifiable solution to carbon output is going to be reductions in net production.
... or were you looking for an answer like "buy some carbon offsets"?
I really don't want to pick on the parent comment, but the question seems like "Is there an easy way to effect meaningful, systematic change?"
I hear a lot of people talking about this and related issues but the things they propose are just not going to get it done. No one wants to stop traveling, drive less, eat local produce all winter, give up a globalized supply chain and their current lifestyle; meanwhile the frog is being slowly boiled alive...
It's incredible how hard it is to motivate people to change their behaviors even just a little. Even just tiny things like convincing people to grab a real glass from the cabinet to get water instead of a single-use plastic cup on top of the water cooler at work seem impossible.
He drives to work every day, because taking the bus is a hassle/takes time, etc. What's the value to him of taking the bus? Helping the environment in some unspecified way. If he pays for carbon offsets for his driving, he can now say "hey, taking the bus saves me $x/month, I think that's (not) worth it".
Instead, this money is going to pool in upper class first world green economies as they use it to buy expensive electric cars, install expensive solar panels, and fund expensive climate change activists. That their efforts might slightly reduce the number of hurricanes in a hundred years is little consolation to the thousands of lives lost every decade in that country to natural disasters and disease, otherwise be preventable if the population wasn't living in shanty towns.
Economic growth will then follow if there is a semi skilled population.
After the earthquake in Haiti billions poured in but much of it disappeared into corrupt hands.
But, who knows, maybe corporations could run a country better than corrupt politicians —at least as it transforms.
Source?
And if nobody does anything, in a generation the main export will be refugees.
Solar energy (and you left out, crucially, storage) still isn't feasible for the worlds poor yet, though it is the obvious solution to the problem.
My biggest issue with advancements in solar power + storage is that because so much R&D is happening out West, everyone builds for grid tie use cases.
Can't help but think we'd be much further along if we assumed the current grid didn't exist at all (which might as well be true for the worlds poor)
We can work on environmental issues and poverty.
The cost of solar is now about half what they spent.
Studies indicate that dealing with the effects of climate change is going to be far more expensive than averting it in the first place. This "expense" is an illusion.
> little consolation to the thousands of lives lost every decade in that country to natural disasters and disease
Climate change is also going to cause tremendous human misery in the form of floods, fires, increased temperatures, harvest failures, and so on. Places like Haiti are going to be the worst hit.