[ryanmercer]

>But there's probably no business there.

Because God forbid we try and preserve the vast majority of life on earth instead of pursuing generating millions of dollars of profit every month.

The vast majority of human beings haven't put 1 minute of thought into global warming, in fact it wouldn't surprise me if there were billions of human beings walking around today that have never even heard of global warming or climate change, aside from noticing each year getting hotter and hotter and weather getting a little more extreme.

We don't need startups taking a 20% vig via a subscription service for a feel-good "I did my part by giving money" company. We need to present the facts, as unbiased as possible, to the masses and get people to start questioning the topic. We need people to start going "oh, wow, we did that?" we need them to start thinking "well how can I minimize my impact myself".

More than a third of the world's population lives on less than $2 a day [1]. Do you think that 2.5 billion people can afford to scrape together even $2 a month to offset the CO2 from their cooking?

The median annual household income worldwide is $9,733,[2], do you think that families can afford to pay $10-20 a head worldwide? Do you think that 1/3 of the world's population can realistically afford that? Do you think by the time that Wren backs out 20%, then the non-profits/NGOs/companies they turn around and give the money to backs out their operating costs, that that amount of money (probably 50% or less of the original contribution) will make even a 10% reduction in last year's CO2 emissions and that it will not only be able to keep pace with the increase, but also continue to increase to the point of getting us not just carbon neutral, but removing 10-2 gigatons more than we produce each year to try and restore us to levels of even the 1980s in any reasonable amount of time?

I don't. I think this company is just going to be away for those individuals with a little disposable income, that believe in climate change and feel guilty about driving their car and flying everywhere for vacations, to buy themselves a little 'feel good' or a little peace of mind. Most will probably think they're really making a difference and that all will be fine.

Even if Wren manages to generate 5 billion dollars a month, and ends passing 4.95 billion down the chain, it's unlikely to even result in sequestering 10% of last year's levels annually. Seriously, run the numbers yourself, everyone that's going to downvote this comment like you are my others, RUN THE NUMBERS please. You'll see that this isn't going to be the solution, nor is it likely to lead to one. It is the wrong approach to the problem as is.

This is Silicon Valley being clueless and/or overly optimistic as usual with these sorts of markets/challenges, just like YC wanting to turn half of the Sahara into shallow algal pools (which would result in the rainforest losing massive amounts of fertilization and cause a potentially catastrophic change in global weather patterns, not to mention require more electricity than the plant currently produces).

[1] 2012 https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-17312819

[2] 2013 https://news.gallup.com/poll/166211/worldwide-median-househo...

[gwn7]

I... agree with you. Everything you say is making sense. Thank you for the insights.

It's just that I couldn't help but feel that these guys are among the "good guys", and telling them to "cease operations immediately" is a bit harsh, for just being not good enough. They are probably not doing any harm.

> I think this company is just going to be away for those individuals with a little disposable income, that believe in climate change and feel guilty about driving their car and flying everywhere for vacations, to buy themselves a little 'feel good' or a little peace of mind.

On the other hand, maybe this is harm. Those individuals who buy themselves a little "feel good" may believe that they are actually doing everything they can, and that they really are offsetting their carbon footprint so what they are doing will be sufficient. This can prevent them from realizing the real nature of the threat. This I don't like very much.

> This is Silicon Valley being clueless and/or overly optimistic as usual with these sorts of markets/challenges

Haha. Agreed.

> We need to present the facts, as unbiased as possible, to the masses and get people to start questioning the topic. We need people to start going "oh, wow, we did that?" we need them to start thinking "well how can I minimize my impact myself".

So how do you think we can do this? Masses won't listen to people like you who are talking too much about numbers and then doing this in a very pedantic way (as you did in your first comment). Even if you have the facts.

Or, maybe even arming masses with unbiased facts won't be enough. Maybe it's only people like Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk who can save us. What do you think?

[ryanmercer]

>So how do you think we can do this? Masses won't listen to people like you who are talking too much about numbers and then doing this in a very pedantic way (as you did in your first comment). Even if you have the facts.

The giving pledge has more than a trillion dollars pledged as of right now, certainly at least one of those individuals or couples has interest in climate change. With an incredibly small amount of that trillion dollars of pledges we could gather data and educate people.

- Ask a healthy sampling of random people if they know what global warming is, do they believe in it, have they seen signs of it, is it affecting their life (talk to farmers, ranchers, amusement park operators and owners of tourist destinations, wildfire firefighters, etc as well as random people).

Then find out what misconceptions there are, what fears there are, what falsehoods people believe.

- Talk to experts: climatologists, entomologists, financial market experts, marine and wildlife, biologists, agricultural sciences types. Find out what effects are being seen right now, ge the data from all the fields, get video interviews with them saying who they are - what they do - what they see happening - why it concerns them - if the changes continue what are the probable outcomes in the next 5/10/15 years. Start a campaign, edit this stuff and start putting it on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram as short clips.

You do this to build awareness. You create plenty of resources that people can use to educate themselves and you drive interest by raising awareness. The only way we are EVER going to tackle climate change, other than just struggling to adapt to the changes, is by educating people and getting them personally interested.

Go ask 50 random people you know "So, what do you think about global warming", you're probably going to be surprised when several flat out think it's made up and others are along the lines of "I don't know, it might be true, but I can't do anything about it".

We're not going to make changes by paying to protect Amazon rainforest. We're going to make changes by convincing people they really don't need to take their 4th international vacation in as many years, nor do they need their 3rd iPhone in 5 years, that their year and a half old MacBook is perfectly fine and they don't need the newest model just because it now has ultra hologrpahic flurm instead of super hologrpahic flurm because all they do is watch YouTube and write emails with the damn thing.

People can make small changes that add up to significant changes when you get widespread adoption.

People will illegally harvest lumber as long as there are trees, there are people literally stealing entire BEACHES [1][2], lumber (especially exotic hardwoods) sell for way more money than sand. But what if we can convince people to make some small changes:

- Do you like meat? Eat chicken instead of beef, it's an order of magnitude better per pound of meat as far as greenhouse gas emissions, not to mention land use

- 71F is a wonderful temperature for that AC but is 72F so bad?

- So, you want to fly a bunch of founders out to the Bay Area for in-person interviews for your tech accelerator batch? Seriously, can't you just use skype? Sure it's slightly annoying with the delay but it'll save a couple of tons of CO2 per person.

- You live alone, do you really need 4 lights on in the kitchen and your bedroom when you've been in the living room for the past 6 hours? And why is your tv and soundbar on, you've had headphones on listening to classical music while you stare at your laptop screen playing GorkaMorka 27 or trying to finish some code.

You have to educate the masses if you want to make change. Just because you, or me, or that guy over there recognize climate change at varying levels, does NOT mean that the majority of people do.

And you know what happens when you start to get the masses interested? You actually stand a chance out getting legislation passed that can begin to put pressure on companies. Lobbyists carry a lot of weight, but if you can sway enough voters to acknowledge climate change is an issue, then you stand a much better chance of putting pressure one existing politicians, or removing them during voting cycles and installing politicians that do care and start to create a legal framework to force change. Change in community planning, change in tax incentives, change in legal requirements, make it illegal for HOAs to tell homeowners they can't have PV panels 'because they hurt property values and ruin visual appeal'.

You know encouraging people to eat locally grown food, instead of eating exotic fruit like, bananas and coffee and oranges, year-round that get shipped from halfway around the world will have more impact than giving 20$ a month to 'protect the amazon'. Yes, we should protect rainforests because of the incredible biodiversity, but ehhhh a subscription service to wash the guilt from your conscience (not unlike the Medieval Indulgence system) just is not a realistic solution, at any meaningful level anyway.

[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/07/13/628894815/epis...

[2] https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?stor...

[gwn7]

Thank you.

[shawndrost]

I understand your reservations about this being done by a for-profit.

I don't understand your opposition to the idea of individuals contributing to carbon offset projects. It seems like the reservations you've expressed (it's not a whole solution, it's not feasible for people earning less than $2 per day, it might have too much of a "feel good" effect, etc) are equally true of many ideas you'd probably like, including the ideas you put forward yourself.

I liked this part of your comment: "RUN THE NUMBERS please". I did. Illuminating! My back-of-napkin:

  Global CO2 emissions were 10b tons (10 Gigatonnes) in 2014 (https://www.co2.earth/global-co2-emissions)

  $4.5B per month * 12mo = ~$50 billion per year

  Carbon offset costs vary wildly. That's the big Q. You will have to do your own research on this, but to me, $100 per ton seems conservative, and $10 seems very generous.

  If Wren collects $5B per month, and offsets cost $100 per ton, they would offset 5% of 2014-level annual emissions. (Probably less than our annual increase.) 

  If offsets cost $10 per ton, it's 50% -- more meaningful!

[ryanmercer]

> don't understand your opposition to the idea of individuals contributing to carbon offset projects.

My opposition is that for every 1$ you give Wren, they pocket 20 cents and then hand 80 cents off to another organization (of their choosing) with, as far as I can tell from their site, zero information on how your money is being applied, who exactly they are giving it to, if that organization is for or non-profit and how much they are spending on overhead before actually doing something with the money, etc. Right now there are vague mentions of stopping illegal logging, and that's it. Doesn't say what company, what organizations, what countries, how or who.

What they do document well, is their roadmap... how they want to spend your money internally, not directly to some sort of carbon sequestration efforts.

They want to:

- make it easy to unsubscribe from wren

- increase site performance internationally

- add sharing features

- add how to change your subscription to their FAQ

- handle declined card errors

Great, but what are you doing with the other 80% of the money someone gives you?