[zapita]

I think we (the tech and business community) need to face the uncomfortable reality: that the world needs us to be better citizens more than it needs us to be genius entrepreneurs.

If everyone on this site simply 1) exercised their right to vote fully, 2) invested enough research time to make sure their vote helps fight global heating, in even a tiny way, and 3) made one change per month, no matter how small, in their individual routine in a way that diminishes their contribution to global heating...

... That would contribute more to saving the world than all our “world-saving” startups combined.

But that would require admitting that we’re not as special as we think we are, which is hard.

[zaroth]

What makes you think this? Can you give even ballpark numbers for how many tones of CO2 your #1/2/3 would save over ten years?

Compared to a visionary engineering team raising let’s say $100 million to push forward new methods of sequestration?

YC has specifically called for startups in this field. Startups like SKH are pushing to get sequestration under $100 per tonne — compared to US per capita average of 20 tones, of which 8.5 tones is considered “innate” just for living in the US...

So while the absolute maximum personal impact an individual can have is around 10 tones, cost effective sequestration is the path forward to pricing and taxing carbon.

Once we have a reasonable sequestration cost, we can charge everyone and everything for their own emissions and use that money to actually negate it.

At current rates it would be ~$3,000 per capita which is still politically untenable. But at $300 per capital it becomes trivial. Somewhere in the middle in there it becomes economically and politically possible to actually eliminate the entire carbon emissions of the US, without even having to ask anyone to change their footprint.

So the question is what’s more important to you? Moralistically preaching to everyone how they should be living their lives, or actually reaching zero net emissions?

For example, you don’t need to eliminate international travel in order to eliminate the carbon footprint of international travel.

[zapita]

Your reply is actually a perfect illustration of the problem.

Sure, we need to ramp up carbon capture capabilities, and we need to do it fast. That is a great challenge for the tech industry to tackle.

However.

Carbon capture is not a silver bullet. At best, it is a short-term fix which can buy us time to actually fix the root cause of global heating. To state the obvious: the root cause is unsustainable extraction and ignition of fossil fuels. Carbon capture does nothing to address that root cause! In fact, it may end up making things worse in the long run, if we insist on over-selling it as a silver bullet - like you're doing right now.

Did you know that when you build more freeways to alleviate traffic congestion, you actually make traffic worse? And did you know that after decades of scaling up "plastic capture" capabilities in the form of consumer recycling, we have basically nothing to show for it? There's no evidence that it has made a dent in the production of new plastic. In fact plastic production has accelerated: we've produced as much plastic globally in the last 13 years than in the 54 years before that.

Building more freeways, over-selling plastic recycling, and over-selling carbon capture are all examples of the same flawed reasoning. They are short-term patches to fundamentally unsustainable systems, and when we allow them to become substitutes to an actual solution, they actually make our problem worse down the line.

Which brings me to my criticism of the tech industry's priorities. Collectively, we are one of wealthiest and most influential groups of people on the planet. Our resources are immense, therefore our responsibility to allocate our resources wisely is also immense. And we are failing miserably in that responsibility, because although we are investing plenty of resources in short-term fixes like carbon capture, our investment in fixing the real structural problem (again: unsustainable extraction and ignition of fossil fuels) are basically ZERO.

The reason we're failing is simple: carbon capture can be solved with technology and venture capital. Those are things we understand, and conveniently they allow us to keep doing what we like to do while telling ourselves we are saving the world. On the other hand, solving the root cause of global heating requires dismantling the fossil fuel industrial complex. The biggest obstacle to doing that is political corruption, which no amount of technology or venture capital can solve. The way we fight corruption is by becoming better citizens. That requires things like: voting; researching issues and candidates thoroughly; protesting; calling our representatives; showing up at town hall meetings; informing our friends and family about important political issues; getting other people to vote; etc. Unfortunately, most techies do none of those things. Political apathy is the norm. Even worse, remember that the tech industry played a direct role in Brexit and Trump's election, both of which are catastrophic setbacks in the fight against global heating.

I am not "moralistically preaching" as you call it. I am simply describing a pragmatic strategy to solving global heating. Unfortunately it's neither fun not profitable to make the effort to be a better citizen, so techies just don't bother. This makes us collectively part of the problem rather than the solution, and I think that's a shame.

PS: for the sake of completeness, here are other catastrophic consequences of fossil fuel emissions which carbon capture won't solve:

- rampant plastic pollution (remember, plastic comes from oil)

- mercury poisoning of the entire oceanic food chain (did you know that most of the mercury accumulating in the ocean comes from the fumes of coal plants?)

- the rise of fascist regimes in the US and Europe, bankrolled in great part by the Koch brothers in the US and Putin's oligarchs in Russia - in both case that is oil money

- the rise of violent Salafist groups such as Al-Qaeda, ISIS and Boko Haram, bankrolled by Saudi Arabia - also oil money.

- countless oil spills;

I could go on.