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Lifestyle changes can make a large difference, but the changes that make the most difference are also the hardest to implement (driving less, flying less, A/C and heating, etc.)

I try to do whatever lifestyle changes I can, but I also use Project Wren (https://projectwren.com/) to offset the remainder of my carbon footprint!


Money talks, if companies can make billions of dollars from individual $10-20 subscriptions, I don't see why we can't do it for climate change/deforestation!

I personally use Project Wren (https://projectwren.com/) to offset my own footprint and a bit more!


We can all do our part! Even though it is hard to actively contribute to fighting climate change every day, by becoming carbon neutral, we can grow a community to make a difference!

The average American has a carbon footprint that can be offset with a $20 per month subscription. We need more money to flow into fighting climate change!

I personally use Project Wren to offset my carbon footprint specifically through a tree planting projects!

https://projectwren.com/


Does ESO own any stock in this company?

>The average American has a carbon footprint that can be offset with a $20 per month subscription

You have a source on that?


The average American has a 20-ton / year carbon footprint. Offsetting 20 tons per year has a cost that ranges depending on what service you use. I've seen estimates of $6-10/ton - $20/month is $12/ton.

Edit: for the average american footprint, you can easily find the stat that the US emitted 5.268 GtCO2 in 2018. There are 327.16 million people in the US. From that I get more like 16 tons/year per person, so 20 is out of date. Of course, we have to get to zero with sequestration on top of that.


If we were thinking big picture, would this mean that the US gov't could basically spend $72 billion a year to zero out the carbon contribution of America?

Cheaper than the Iraq war....


Not really, because there's an implied capacity for offsetting carbon. That's what it costs now, but as more people participate, the cost will undoubtedly go up.


I don't think it's that straightforward. Stuff like planting trees should have the cost/ton go down over time due to scale (there's a land question but there's a _lot_ of federally owned land). A lot of other stuff could work similarly.

Mass production is a thing that brings costs down, so some of the carbon offset programs could take advantage of similar effects.

You're definitely right that some of these projects aren't infinitely scalable though. There are only so many gas stoves used in northern Uganda to be replaced..


The costs may go up as tree planting is more limited, but the more money in the ecosystem will allow new innovations to be discovered!


Offsetting carbon is not removing carbon.

For example, you could "offset" the effect of buying a daily latte on your household budget by just continuing to buy them while your partner promises to skip their own daily latte. Despite the offset, your bank balance would be lower than if you had just stopped buying them.

There is no known way to remove carbon at a scale that would make a difference and a cost people would accept. As almost all carbon from extracted fossil fuels is now in the atmosphere and ocean, it would amount to running our fossil fuel extraction in reverse.


Just looking at one of their sample projects "Clean cooking fuel for refugees"

It says

> Briquettes replace wood burning, a heavy polluting fuel source

> This initative is projected to provide 4,000 refugee households with clean briquettes, saving over 16,000 tons of emissions annually.

Let's do some back-of-the-envelope calculation. 16K ton per 4K refugees means 4t per person per year. I couldn't find data on briquettes efficiency vs wood but let's be generous and say it's twice as efficient. Then the emission before the reduction would be 8t per person per year.

So they are telling me that an average Uganda refugee, from cooking alone, emits almost as much as an average Brit [0]

edit: what am I missing?

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


I doubt you're missing anything. "Offsetting" projects are based on hypothetical calculations of how much would be emitted without the project. This is the easiest part to fudge. And if they didn't fudge it, then people would pick cheaper projects or just not buy them at all.

What happens, for example, if refugees decide to keep using wood as well as the free briquettes? It could result in higher emissions (Jevons paradox).


Here's a comparison project by Cooling Effect, which was recommended to me by reasonable skeptical, saavy people at my work: https://www.cooleffect.org/content/project/affordable-cookst...

My guess is this is still highly optimistic, but the project claims are 50% emissions reduction from cooking, which is at least possible.


Wood is considered heavily polluting because the smoke is harmful and it’s generally undergoing incomplete combustion. It’s CO2 footprint is as you guessed a non issue.

https://www.lung.org/our-initiatives/healthy-air/indoor/indo...


Fund on going litigation to fight climate change and the damage it is and will do to our economy, free market, and future. There are several nonprofits leading this. One is youCAN. That’s youth climate action now. I am starting a non profit to expand on that idea and fund as much litigation and legislation as possible. Voting isn’t the only venue for citizens to protest and protect their rights.


More info? What’s your role in it?


Trail of Bits (a security consulting firm) recently subscribed to an offset program that offsets all of the carbon from their employees!

https://twitter.com/trailofbits/status/1155840018797256711


I had an incomplete checkout process with Wren.

Just signed up for 200% (I suspect the estimate is on the low side as I don't know the impact of producing a lot of the things I own).

Cheers for the reminder!


I've been posting about this a lot, but check out Project Wren! (https://projectwren.com/)

It costs me $40 a month to offset my own carbon footprint, but I take a lot more flights than the average person.


Great, didn't know about that. Subscribed on the spot and sharing it around, thanks for posting.


We need lots more people like you! :)


Do you know if their projects are audited by independent 3rd party?


Individuals matter too!

Netflix made had $5.8B in revenue from small $10-20 subscription users!

Today, for $20 a month you can offset your own carbon footprint! This matters because the more resources that goes into fighting climate change allows innovation. Even by generating more demand for carbon credits and offsetting, new businesses can thrive and grow by fighting climate change!

I've been super obsessed with https://projectwren.com (YC S19) for these exact reason!


It’s a great project but they could be more clear about that 20% cut they take and why it’s double what they partners take. How does it scale? 20% makes sense when you are dealing with, say, 100m of donations, but not so great when it’s 1B. At 1B they’d be taking 200m for what? Hiring the best talent in the world, to do what exactly? I don’t know, I wish them well and hopefully they get more clear about their cut and lower that over time. I think if you are really going to make an impact you must be targeting few billions of donations and 20% is just unreasonable.


I like it, but why do I have to give my email for emission calculation? It's off-putting, I don't want even more spam. And I will tell them where do I live and how, will they package it with my email and sell it to ad companies as a handy profile?

Sorry to be paranoid, but most startups (uber, airbnb, paypal, not to mention facebook ...) are evil and exploitative.


Wren co-founder here — we ask for your email so we can send you a report on your footprint (if you choose) or come back to the onboarding flow later. We're spinning the calculator out into an open resource soon though!

Finally, we just started two months ago and have not sold user information to ad companies nor do we ever plan to. That sounds like an evil and unnecessary way to go about not accomplishing our mission.


Just got my first report from Project Wren! Loved it so much I copied and pasted it here so I can share it:

https://www.notion.so/chrislu/Project-Wren-August-17th-Updat...


Way less than $20 a month in a lot of the world too. Americans have a footprint twice as high as Brits, even.


Cars and air-con are the main offenders there, right?


And air travel


The founders of Project Wren (https://projectwren.com/) went from building HR Software to building software to combat climate change.

We need profitable enterprises focused on this large global problem! I think the tides are starting to shift and would love to see the smartest minds of our generation focused on this issue!


You know, I would love for an option that just asked how old you are and just let you pay to offset your expected life's worth of tree replanting (this might just be the closest thing I've ever seen).


That's quite a hard figure to come up with I'd think, though there's no problem with overshooting of course.

My personal emissions going forward are likely to be way lower than previous years simply due to awareness.


Hi there, at the ESO Fund we can get you liquidity without a full transfer! Feel free to reach out at https://www.esofund.com


I don't want to get into some funky forward contract and would prefer to do it with the consent of my board. But if the problem persist I will likely be interested in the future.


Completely agree! There is more and more liquidity these days for later stage startups! Not only are people paying up to get in, but sometimes they're paying a premium to what the last VCs paid.


This is the main dilemma for startup employees across the board! The ideal situation is not leaving the company until after an IPO or M&A after which your options/shares will be liquid. The purpose of the options is to keep you at the company by locking you into "golden handcuffs" and raises the cost of changing companies.

If the company is successful, the money you will make can be life changing. If the company fails, then you lose most if not all of your investment.

However, in the last few years, many solutions have appeared to address this binary situation. I work at the ESO Fund and we try to provide a middle ground. We provide money to exercise and any potential taxes in exchange for a piece of the upside and we do this on a completely non-recourse basis (meaning you don't have to pay us back if the company fails). Our deals are structured to give you the majority of the upside without having to invest your own personal money!

Feel free to reach out if you have any more questions!


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