[gustaf]

This is Gustaf from YC. I wrote the first Carbon Removal RFS.

Planting tree is actually a great carbon removal technology. Unfortunately most forest owners in the world don't know or don't have incentive to care the about the carbon impact the forest have on the climate. Biggest reason forests are taken down is to grow cattle for beef. If you are working on a startup to reverse this we'd like to fund it too

[bbojan]

Grassland, if properly managed, can sequester more carbon than a forest. This is related to the (unintuitive) fact that grasses are more efficient producers of organic matter than trees.

Joel Salatin has done some great work related to this and collected decades worth of data.

So the irony is that we could grow more beef and pull carbon out of the air at the same time, only if we cared. But we don't, it's easier to slash and burn then to also take the environment into consideration...

[wdewind]

> So the irony is that we could grow more beef and pull carbon out of the air at the same time, only if we cared.

I want this desperately to be true as someone who loves meat but everything I've read tells me it's not. There is definitely a nice symbiotic relationship that exists between cows grazing and grasslands but it is significantly more expensive to raise animals this way, and you can raise significantly fewer of them per sq ft.

The main issue with cows is methane, not carbon (edit: carbon dioxide*), anyway.

[DTrejo]

Salatin’s mob grazing creates soil.

It is cheaper to raise them this way because you don’t need to buy corn feed.

The cows digest grass well. They do not digest corn well, which means corn fed cows produce methane and get sick, and don’t build the soil (sequestering carbon).

Definitely worth watching some YouTube videos and reading about it, it’s pretty fun and interesting.

[wdewind]

The problem with mob grazing (and really any kind of similar system) is that you cannot support nearly as many animals per sq ft. in comparison to more industrialized farming.

Salatin's solution is to shift a major portion of the work force/economy into making sustainable food. It sounds amazing from a utopian standpoint but is a total fantasy.

[strainer]

Mob grazing does not need more work, and it reportedly needs no fertilizer and less land, and it was noticed years ago - this is how it is clearly fantasy at this stage. The strategy would have transformed existing beef and dairy economics within years of discovery.

[49para]

Won't the rise of automation result in a lot of people without jobs ? They could start working on sustainable food.

Sounds like a win / win.

[vanderZwan]

> The main issue with cows is methane, not carbon

Although objectively it makes the most sense if we all eat less meat or even go vegan (in terms of bang-for-the-buck), from what I understand the methane problem is mostly a result of them not being fed a healthy diet.

[cjrd]

Cows are ruminants, so their production of methane is a necessary component of the fermentation that takes place in their digestive track.

Also, somewhat surprisingly, "free range grass fed diets" lead to more methane production then cows fed grain diets (factory farmed cows).

See https://www.fcrn.org.uk/sites/default/files/project-files/fc...

[strainer]

Grassfed does not necessarily lead to more methane production, it depends on the mix of grass and secondary vegetation, on the grain mix being compared to, and on potential supplements.

https://prairiesoilsandcrops.ca/articles/volume-1-3-print.pd...

[notpg]

Just reading the article you provided and "Feeding high grain diets to cattle unequivocally lowers the formation of CH4 in the rumen." seems to disagree with what you're saying?

[cjrd]

Ah, you're right, it is a nuanced question. Perhaps more importantly: as mentioned in the (admittedly large) publication I cited, the rearing time for grassfed cattle is about 3x longer than factory farmed cattle, so the net methane output is considerably larger.

[zinclozenge]

I might be pedantic, but methane is a carbon atom and 4 hydrogen atoms. I assume you meant carbon dioxide.

[wdewind]

This is HN, the one place you don't need to apologize for pedantry. Right: I meant carbon dioxide. Made the edit :)

[cagenut]

no the main issue with cows is land-use (the thread topic here), methane is just another way they're really terrible. its a hell of a one-two punch.

[strainer]

Grassland does not tend to develop soil, so if employed in feeding cattle, the cattle is where the carbon is "sequestered" to - into and through them, out the rear end. If the grass is cut and harvested (at some expense) instead of fed to cattle, then we get a lot of carbon negative hay to do something with. Bury it maybe (to sequester) or biofuels (to release again).

With traditional timber plantations we get the carbon in a load of timber mostly. Build with some of it, pulp and burn the rest. Timber plantations tend not to build soil either.

With relatively unheard of silviculture - the detailed management of mixed forest, the optimum efficiency of carbon absorption can be arranged with select and native symbiotic species, while producing wood and foods and building soil mass. In addition to economic (and atmospheric) services advanced management of mixed forestry and groves can tolerate and support ancient plant and animal species - for future generations - which have been critically devastated by the persistent strategy of individuating production goals.

We don't need to get any smarter at all, we need to get wiser. There is plenty enough grassland now, its time to grow trees.

[dereke]

From everything I've researched the opposite is true. Properly managing grasslands (which used to happen naturally with large herds) makes for health grasses which develop root systems, create soil and sequester carbon.

Poorly managed grasslands that are under grazed leads to soil degradation. The answer seems to be intensive grazing followed by rest periods to allow grasses to use nutrients and grow.

More links in my post here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18287434

[strainer]

I made a reply to your post on that subject of potentially transformational management of grasslands.

On this ungainly subject of grassland vs mixed forest here, I'll just remind - two hundred years ago about 60% of the earth surface was covered in mature and native forest. The figure is less than 30% today. Most of the worlds fertile crops are grown on deforested land, on the soil which native forests developed due to ecological diversity and lack of erosion. Most of the grasslands which are used for grazing, don't have soil to support demanding crops.

https://www.britannica.com/science/deforestation

[bskinny129]

I'm working on a way to bring dollars to carbon removal, whether as simple as planting trees or investing in these more advanced upcoming technologies. It is an app with a personal pledge to balance the negative impact of your own driving and flying with a small payment. Cheap at just a couple dollars a week, with the potential to reach a significant scale through companies. In fact, I look forward to hearing back from YC later today!

If anyone is interested in keeping in the loop on progress: https://www.producthunt.com/upcoming/pledge-balance

[adamsea]

Is your app eventually meant to turn a profit, and if so how? Or, are you doing this on a nonprofit basis and planning to keep it as such?

[bskinny129]

I believe a business model helps align incentives and increases potential scale. Certainly things can evolve, but the plan is no cut from users and charge businesses a markup to balance employee commute and flights. Hopefully can make it in the businesses self-interest where they see a return on their small investment in terms of employee satisfaction and retention.

[adamsea]

I certainly agree a business model can do those things, and sometimes does.

I could see companies such as Patagonia, who have a strong reputation for prioritizing sustainability, potentially being interested in a service like that.

It seems tricky though to align the interests of your users, your customers (businesses, the ones who will actually be paying you) and the environment.

Which is not to doubt your intent, but is why I am skeptical of market-based approaches to solve a problem which is of the type (a problem of the commons) that governments can be good at (if they choose to be) and businesses struggle with.

[bskinny129]

It does seem tricky. A worthy adversary even.

Look 10 years out in the future though and I think it is easy to imagine 1) many more people care about this 2) the urgency they feel is increased. Can we start with the Patagonias of the world (there are many others) and build some traction? Can we make it something that young employees want and bring transparency to which companies participate? If it can give a slight edge to McKinsey over Bain for example, the cost is trivial.

[Update regarding above: no YC interview, which is understandable based on where things currently stand]

[gustaf]

This is great. We need a verified system where know exactly where each dollar is spend and how many CO2 tons are saved per dollar spent

[bskinny129]

For now money will be passed along to the best-in-class organizations doing hands-on carbon removal projects - I believe there are several excellent non-profits with the right efficiency and transparency. Yet even though these great organizations exist and plenty of people care about the environment, hardly any money ends up on their hands. I think there is great grass-roots potential to change this and it is equally as important as marginally improving the efficiency of carbon removal tech.

[thinkling]

Sounds a bit like what Nori plans to do.

http://rameznaam.com/2018/09/10/yes-blockchain-can-help-us-s...

[bskinny129]

I'll have to check them out, thanks for sharing. I did hear of another blockchain carbon project, but this one seems more promising at first glance.

[mediumdeviation]

Does https://www.goldstandard.org/ not do that already?

[antt]

I've read through the prospectus and seems like it's only for US based companies.

I'm in Australia and the geology of the Tasmania/South Victoria region is the best in the world for carbon capture using trees. Specifically it's the native habitat of the Tasmanian blue gum, the worlds fastest growing tree, and here it grows between 20-100% faster than anywhere else.

Is there any option for having non-US startups funded given that ego-engineering can't be done out of the Bay Area alone? I and the other co-founders have no interest in moving since we are already in the best place for what we are doing.

[plierhead]

I'm in New Zealand and trees grow here like weeds. A hectare of pine trees reaches maturity in 25 years and holds 200 odd tons of carbon. Once mature, those trees can be harvested and the carbon locked away in furniture, buildings, etc. As far as I know, it doesn't matter where on the planet the carbon is being sequestered, so a global view will likely be more effective.

[bwreilly]

We at DroneSeed are using swarms of unmanned aircraft for mass forest/rangeland restoration projects - monitoring, planting, invasive species mitigation, etc. The mission of the company is to help combat climate change by substantially reducing the cost of afforestation/reforestation.

Happy to talk about it any time: ben at droneseed.com

[tvanantwerp]

I pictured DJI drones dropping seed bombs, but taking a look it seems a lot more impressive than that. Very cool--hope this takes off!

[ISL]

If you'd like to fund trees, one could start buying land and start protecting trees.

Spending that money on intensive lobbying and forest advocacy in rapidly-deforesting countries could have an impact, too.

The trick, of course, is that neither of these techniques compound for the individual nor a startup. They are pure charity for the planet.

[samstave]

Actually, my idea would be the following:

1. Automate tree/crop planting

2. Reform regulations stipulating that planting of trees/crops/plants should be required on any and all uninhabited lands, as a matter of "imminent domain" regardless of the land owner. Perhaps even as a tax incentive to land owners.

3. The development of a maintenance and management policy and system around all that is planted

4. In conjunction with the RFS for flooding deserts, develop a multi-stage water transfer to desert desalinization ponds, then to be used in irrigation of the tree planting efforts.

We already have autonomous farming combines with excellent ability to harvest crops and plant seed. They should be put to use at scale in panting trees.

Further, we could make an effort to employ the vast amounts of humans with little opportunity to be productive to build, plant and deploy a massive effort such as this.

We dont need to try to do everything with robots, when we have millions and millions of humans.

If we are so progressive and smart, maybe learning how to manage a labor force in the millions to accomplish a great work such as terraforming a desert is someting we should attempt again.

[aoner]

RE: 1. Automate tree/crop planting:

https://www.biocarbonengineering.com/ These guys use drones to shoot tree seeds in the ground.

Also regarding terraforming a dessert, I think one of the biggest problems with is the number of water needed in the area, but I do think that this will be a really interesting part of the solution. Maybe the increase of land prices due to the decrease of arable land might make such ventures more profitable. There's a great ted talk about reversing desertification: https://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_worl...

[thinkling]

Around here, tree farms replant by hiring people who plant hundreds to thousands trees per day per person and are paid for piece-work, a fraction of a dollar (~$0.20?) per treelet planted.

Given that you need to do this once every 25-40 years (maturity cycle of the tree), is doing it with drones really that big a win?

[aoner]

I'm also not sure how much of a big win the drones are. Proper forest management is probably way more important. So protecting against illegal logging and making sure that whenever trees are almost dying to take them out so that they don't rot and replant a new one.

[PeterisP]

Do you feel that #2 is a plausible goal that can be realistically achieved within a decade? I'm not really seeing any political will to do something like this, and without buy-in and cooperation from those who actually can make such regulations (and, effectively, authorize massive expenditures to make this happen) the other points don't really matter.

[dereke]

You are right that there is no political will right now. We need to make it happen.

Historically non violent direct action has been successful in changing politics (see womens suffrage, civil rights movement). This is the primary goal of the Extinction Rebellion http://extinctionrebellion.org

[52-6F-62]

Also is this a suggestion that a company that did just this would be accepted and funded?

That's an interesting option, but I wonder how a company might sustain itself doing this.

Lease land to eco-friendly activities like zipline adventures or something?

Also sounds like a good reason for expansion of National Parks services.

[francisofascii]

So does anyone know why this isn't happening more? Surely there are plenty of super wealthy tech titans, Hollywood stars, etc. that care about climate change. They could buy up rural land that is suitable for forestry and start planting trees, or prevent deforestation. Even small time donors could make an impact. Land in the US is cheap, right? What am I missing?

[PeterisP]

Land isn't that cheap compared to the (not that large) effect, especially if we want that effect to be meaningful in the short term.

Buying land and planting trees there will cost something like $2000 per acre and retain something like one ton of CO2 per acre per year (an order of magnitude estimate - depending on details both the cost and CO2 effect can be very different).

Industrial carbon capture at power plants can do that for something like 70$ per ton. That's much cheaper than forestry, but that's still not good enough. ycombinator is obviously looking for technologies that scale better than these existing approaches, something that might achieve large scale carbon removal at maybe $10/ton or less, at which stage the option "just pay a lot of money to reverse the effect of our emissions" might be plausibly considered affordable to our society.

[strainer]

>Industrial carbon capture at power plants can do that for something like 70$ per ton.

And then you have a lot of captured carbon dioxide on your hands - next big cost is the storage/conversion.

IPCC summary on cost of forest sequestration :

> Estimates of the private costs of sequestration range from about US$0.10-US$100/tC, which are modest compared with many of the energy alternatives (see Table 3.9 and Figure 4.9). Additionally, it should be noted that most forest projects have positive non-market benefits, thus increasing their social worth

http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg3/index.php?idp=171#fig...

[ed_balls]

Why do you want to buy the land? Raise the money for seedling, get volunteers/robots to plant them. Pay people to maintain trees on land (which should require 0 effort). You can come up with some clever designs to make it a tourist attraction and make some extra cash. Plenty of room for improvements.

Let say you can have 100 000 trees per square km. If 40 trees gives you 1 ton of carbon per year then spending $25 000 gives you $10/ton.

[PeterisP]

Well, because to the first approximation pretty much all land is used - any land thats suitable to be a forest but is not already a forest is only that way because it's used for grazing or farming, otherwise it would overgrow naturally (though not as efficiently as with planting). If you want to increase the amount of woodland, you have to decrease the amount of pastures or farmland, so you have to either buy that land from the previous owner (because they won't be able to graze or plant there anymore) or take it from them by force.

[ed_balls]

I pretty sure that are that 10 mln km^2 around the word that is not use (Canada, Alaska, Syberia and patches of land around the world)

[andersha]

It is happening.

The founders of Patagonia and The North Face brands did start conservacion patagonia together. [1]

It is one amazing project. [2]

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservaci%C3%B3n_Patag%C3%B3n... 2. http://www.conservacionpatagonica.org/aboutus_oh.htm

[schiffern]

>The trick, of course, is that neither of these techniques compound for the individual nor a startup. They are pure charity for the planet.

"Doesn't concentrate wealth exponentially; BZZT rejected!"

At some point, we apparently forgot that wealth/power inequality itself massively contributes to environmental problems.

* If you have no political power, you can't defend yourself and your land from pollution.

* If a large portion of the society has no political power, a large portion of the society cannot defend themselves and their land from pollution.

* In a society with extreme wealth, the price mechanism can't "kick in" to protect increasingly-scarce renewable resources (ie saving a species from extinction). Donella Meadows gives a much better explanation than I can, using fisheries as an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMmChiLZZHg&t=18m48s

[schiffern]

Better timecode link (the relevant comments are here in Part 2, but the whole thing is worth watching): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuIoego-xVc&t=10m30s

[abledon]

we need a black mirror-esque social credit score system where based on the individuals revenue, and what corporation they work for they have a 'tree quota' they need to fulfill. this could be hours volunteered at a global tree planting foundation, $$ donated to public works companies who plant the trees. I suppose if someone only made a small amount of $ and hid the rest behind their corporation , corporations would also have to be responsible in the system and donate $ to plant trees. website would be something like tree.global ... we need some way to tie all the world (or atleast continents) together under one government, a .global domain name or something.

EDIT: after reading other comments on how trees arent the greatest solution, replace trees with the best option and tie it to a continent wide / global wide black mirror credit score system.

[Pfhreak]

I'm seriously considering doing this myself. I've got some money set aside, and a smallish group (~20) people who are interested in contributing time, smaller amounts, etc. I'm no tech billionaire, but there's definitely areas where I could buy a few dozen acres of land.

I've been researching what's involved in reforesting, and it looks like a ton of work and a non-trivial cost. And maybe not the most efficient dollar / CO2 ratio, but also something that has the nice side effect of having a living forest around. (And also the side effect of providing exercise, access to the outdoors, etc.)

[buzzy_hacker]

Right. And that charity is https://www.coolearth.org/. They don't buy land but they protect trees.

[nixonpjoshua1]

Another major issue is the removal of mangrove ecosystems which are great at long term deposition of carbon (mostly driven by shrimp farming).

Our company is working on these issues by trying to reduce demand for meat and seafood by creating alternatives to it, but I think the problem is so large it needs to be tackled from multiple angles. As you term it both Phase I and Phase II type solutions.

What worries me is that the Phase II type solutions are going to be mostly a political problem at least much more than they are technical problems, and political problems are much harder to fix than technical problems where the solutions can be market driven rather than based on international consensus. I think with enough creativity most Phase I type solutions can be market driven and be accomplished without achieving consensus.

[joe_the_user]

Well,

The other thing with trees is that they aren't permanent carbon sinks in the way that coal underground is.

Wood will eventually rot or burn and release it's carbon.

Human beings have taken carbon in the form of hydrocarbons underground and released is into the C02 - O2 cycle in the air. The main way to solve this would seem to be putting it back into the ground. So, reverse coal-mining? Turning wood into charcoal and burying? These seem like necessary counter-parts to simply growing trees.

[thinkling]

I think you're overstating the problem with carbon released from decaying wood.

Trees newly planted now will net-absorb carbon for the next 50-100 years, exactly the time period when we need to bring the carbon balance under control until we have our energy used cleaned up and other technologies developed. When the newly planted forest matures, trees fall and rot, but new growth takes their place. So it doesn't release a large amount of carbon, but enters a steady state roughly carbon-neutral.

[throwaway5752]

That's called bio-char, and is referenced in the submitted link here.

[Cshelton]

Is that really the biggest reason for forest being removed?

Are there issues with raising cattle on land with a trees spaced maybe every 10 feet or so? Does it have to do with herding the cattle? Feeding the cattle? Those I feel can be solved with technology, specifically IoT/Drones/Autonomous Bots.

It seems to me, if every livestock pasture in the world has trees every 10 feet, maybe less, it could have a pretty big impact. Combine the Apple orchard with the cattle grazing land. Use technology to efficiently operate both.

Edit: And speaking of cattle. I wonder if we can literally strap something onto the back of a cow that would be able to capture methane, burn the bio-mass, and collect everything to be retrieved later on and used/buried.

[dharma1]

I don't think you need fart bags, cows fed seaweed emit significantly less methane -https://e360.yale.edu/features/how-eating-seaweed-can-help-c....

Cattle is one main reason, second one is clearing forest for industrial agriculture like soybean and palm oil plantations. Third one is logging for wood products.

Essentially they are all because of overpopulation and massively increased demand for these products.

[seveneightn9ne]

Don't forget that the main use for the soybeans is cattle feed.

[dakna]

Combining trees and livestock has been done for centuries and is called Silvopasture:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silvopasture

[seveneightn9ne]

It's the feed for the cattle that takes up the most space, and that is directly replacing rainforests.

[adamsea]

Gustaf, without being too facetious, I think a startup to incentivize landowners to use forest land for carbon removal instead of beef would be called "donating to a politician's election campaign." : ). The reason I make the joke is to ask, is looking at technical/business solutions without directly addressing the social and political reasons why global warming has gone on basically unchecked like missing the forest for the trees?

[gustaf]

I agree that political action is incredibly important. Carbon tax, carbon incentives etc. I don't believe we need to change our political system in order to stop climate change. And if we had to that would make it far more difficult to do.

Even if countries implemented carbon tax and carbon incentives like many have it doesn't change that we innovation. Modern cheap verification systems, Marketplace's like Nori.com

[kumarski]

This is Kumar from YCS2012.

I really really wish YC would bring on a polymer, nuclear, petroleum, or materials engineer to help wrangle on these thesis-es on all things related to energy. [I'm more on the textiles side of polymers, but I'm here if you need me.]

Trees are not a great carbon removal technology, grasslands are much better as they aren't impacted by fires and droughts.

Grasslands sequester carbon underground whereas woody trees store it in leaves and woody biomass.

What you're saying is actually questionable in a non-stable climate which is what humanity has today.

I think it's really foolish to allow carbon pollution credits to be backed by trees instead of grasslands.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/dec/01/trees-ma...

Also, bark beetles aside from droughts and fires are pretty onerous to tree populations.

[dharma1]

What do you think about perennial grains that sequester carbon underground, like Kernza?

https://www.greenbiz.com/article/could-perennial-grains-be-n...

[Tharkun]

From what I understand, it can sequester carbon because its roots run pretty deep. But then what? Won't the soil become saturated with carbon? Or isn't that an issue?

[dharma1]

That's right, and you won't have the carbon emissions that happen right now with annual grains from tillage/erosion/too much fertiliser.

Soil has a carbon budget but I'm not sure saturation is an issue - that's basically how grasslands work today

[gdubs]

In many ways it’s the soil itself:

https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/soil-carbo...

[schiffern]

>most forest owners in the world don't know or don't have incentive to care

So why limit yourself to existing forests?

Instead of flooding deserts (using energy-intensive/land-intensive/wealth concentrating desalinization), we can re-green those same deserts[1], which restarts the "atmospheric river" that brings water to the interiors of continents. Isotopic analysis has revealed that trees powers the water cycle (by recycling rainfall that would otherwise flow off into the ocean) and causes 80% of Earth's terrestrial rainfall.[2] Compared to desalination this is far less costly (downside being, it's harder for Nestle et al. to profit off it).

Yes Virginia, rain literally comes from trees! This partly explains why deforestation leads to desertification.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xcZS7arcgk

[2] https://www.nature.com/articles/nature11983

[baxtr]

Have a look at “Mossy Earth”. I can connect you with the founder if needed.

[red-tea]

Stopping our reliance on animal products is the next big change for humanity. People will look back on these times like we look back on times of slavery and tyranny. Either that or we die.