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Comment by echelon | Hacker News Reader

And it has produced a system superior to several engineers working full time for several years.

Seems like a fair carbon trade.

Assuming you're purchasing from someone with infinite carbon credits and you're spending it in an environment with infinite ability to re-sink the carbon. Sure.

Are you applying that same rigor to every action people undertake daily?

To a more and lesser degree depending on the action, I try to apply "that rigor" to myself, at least?

And yes, I think the world would be better off if more people considered how their decisions impact others, if that's what you're getting at, but it's unrealistic to expect everyone to care about other people - and of course entirely impossible to account for ALL variables.

But is it a trade? Feels additive. Assuming same engineers will continue spending their carbon budget elsewhere ...

> Seems like a fair carbon trade.

How do you come up with a ratio that you consider a fair trade?

I'm really not sure how I'd personally set a metric to decide it. I could go with the stat that one barrel of oil is equivalent to 25,000 hours of human labor. That means each barrel is worth 12.5 years of labor at 40 hours per week. That seems outrageous though - off hand I don't know how many barrels would be used during the flight but it would have to be replacing way more than several engineers working for several years.

> That seems outrageous though

There's a good reason oil is so hard to give up. [6.1 GJ worth of crude oil](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrel_of_oil_equivalent) costs about $70 USD.

Barrel of oil is currently $70 which is 10 person-hours at minimum wage.

I guess you could get number like that if you are comparing the energy output. But that is a weird way to do it since we don't use people for energy.

Only if it's actually used.... hard to imagine this has much use to begin with

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