Alibaba executive draws scorn for proposed individual carbon tracker | Hacker News Reader

Alibaba executive draws scorn for proposed individual carbon tracker

marketwatch.com

12 pointsdane-pgp9 comments

There was the Technocracy Movement[1] which had (among many ideas) a proposal to use energy-cost as a general currency. Go to the supermarket and pay for your milk and eggs by charging 80kWh to your card.

Just tracking carbon footprint sounds at first blush a little shallow & infeasible, but it's also very close to what to me sounds like an absurd but also informative & useful & not-so-judgemental way to help society better understand the world, to inform ourselves realistically of our choices.

Crimson & vermillion, on and on!

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technocracy_movement

Poor idea because energy generation environmental impact varies wildly, and also environment is impacted by far more factors than just energy generation. Do your milking cows' methane emissions count as energy generated? Does your land clearing for crops count?

If you somehow try to factor these things in then your "energy" currency is no longer tied to energy so you might just as well call it a dollar.

It's easy to criticize I agree. But knowing how many kWh went into growing a cow is still a huge improvement. This is the real flow, describes something genuine & truthful. Your throwaway criticism suggests anything not actively hurting us isnt worth regarding or adding to human cognizance, and there I think we quickly depart.

Whether we look at net intake (energy) or net cost (pollution, of ehich co2 is but one harm), I think there's a virtue here about seeing the world. Honestly even with it's faults, I think energy usage is a far more general universal concept.

Sad to see even the presentation of such an interesting kdea get downvoted quickly. This isnt a perfect idea, it's wildly impractical, but I absolutely totally think it's worth putting in front of people, entering into the set of worlds they might consider, if not accept. It's a very interesting notion, still has a resonance now that it did then: there are universal physical truths about us that we could try to understand & gauge our society by.

Im at -2 in under an hour. Mercy this feels so cheap & shitty, close minded. An idea doesnt hsve to be perfect to be worth thinking about. People 100 years ago were actively trying tk rethink how the world could comprehend itself: this is a fascinsting historical note, but no, downvote my interesting perspective out of existence. Shame on these downvoters.

> It's easy to criticize I agree. But knowing how many kWh went into growing a cow is still a huge improvement.

About zero, if it was raised on pasture on land that was already cleared.

I don't see that as an improvement.

> This is the real flow, describes something genuine & truthful. Your throwaway criticism suggests anything not actively hurting us isnt worth regarding or adding to human cognizance, and there I think we quickly depart.

My criticism does not suggest any such thing.

Ask how many farmers do not a single thing for their pasture fed cows. The pasture takes maintenance, the cows take tending & care & health services, then they are transported to a slaughter house, butchered, & packaged. These all have costs, energy costs. Just making the fences to hold them had energy costs: not big ones, but measurable ones.

> My criticism does not suggest any such thing.

It rather ran roughshod over considering energy & didnt recognize any worth that I could see.... yes it frigging did suggest inputs were irrelevant. Callously & with prejudice.

I really dont get you agenda of disregard here. It's weirdly in denial, snubbing rudely. I dont think this energy is the ultimate way of viewing things, but it has value, it'a worth regarding. But you are playing this like a cheap game of Battleship, focused on blowing up a thing not without worth. Not without worth today, and certainly certainly not without worth as an interesting historical artifact of people actively working to expand humankind's self understanding. Why all the TNT?

It's a crap metric, end of story. You're the one dreaming up these baseless "agendas", I have no idea what you're on about there.

It's not crap. It's informative & interesting & useful to think of the energy flows embodied in our material world.

I mean for currency. Utter stupidity.

Understanding energy usage and all other costs (human and environmental) is great, I have no problem with that obviously.

> “We’re developing, through technology, an ability for consumers to measure their whole carbon footprint,” said J. Michael Evans, president of Alibaba Group USA, on a panel on responsible consumption. “What does that mean? Where they are traveling. How they are traveling. What are they eating. What they are consuming on the platform.”

The temptation for governments to mandate something like this is too great, especially if big online/hardware platforms implement it as an "optional" feature to help concerned citizens (and amass more data about users, and keep them buying compatible hardware).

If Apple said that the next iPhone was going to track the CO2 emissions of products you buy through your Apple Wallet, and the energy used by your HomeKit devices, and your Apple Car, wouldn't loyal users embrace this? It's really hard to argue against it while it remains optional and securely implemented by a trusted company like Apple.

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