[omosubi]

I agree that we're all kind of watching ourselves die a slow death, but at least they're putting their money where their mouth is. What do you think a reasonable thing for them to do is? Even if yc divested from every company they have a stake in and donated it to climate efforts, would that make a dent?

[toomuchtodo]

Fund lobbying and political campaigns for candidates who support climate change mitigation efforts. YC will have no impact unless they get governments (with resources orders of magnitude greater than that of YC) set in the right direction.

No startup is going to solve climate change. The scale of the problem is simply too large. You need public policy to internalize the externalities of carbon emissions.

[__s]

Successful ventures in this field make for more convincing lobbying

[toomuchtodo]

Then get out there and support Tesla and your local wind turbine/PV solar installer/commercial developer. Those are who are driving out fossil fuel and petroleum use at scale (BYD is arguably doing quite a bit of that with electric busses, but as a Chinese company, that’ll be a harder hill to climb in the current political climate). You must destroy demand for CO2 producing activities, and renewables and EVs do just that.

There is no need for a startup to deploy EV chargers at homes, condos, apartments, and public facilities. This requires community involvement instead, as there is little if any profit to be realized from the activity. But this is crucial for EV uptake. Someone has to do the legwork (I am working on automation for this, but alas, there are only so many hours in a day).

The tech is already proven. It’s all up to public policy now to nudge people in the right direction (renewables, EVs, carbon offsets for anything else where you absolutely cannot avoid CO2 emissions).

[crispinb]

> What do you think a reasonable thing for them to do is?

I have a hard enough time figuring out what a reasonable thing for me to do is. Deconstruction is always the easy part. One thing we can be certain of at this stage is that 'startup' culture with its emphasis on catastrophic global entropy increase (ie. so-called 'economic growth') is a road to nowhere good.

[tlb]

You can go carbon-neutral yourself. It’s not cheap, but it keeps getting cheaper over time. Then eliminate meat from your diet and reduce your plastic waste.

If everyone did that, the biggest problems would be solved. So that’s a reasonable thing for you to do.

Don’t fall for the learned helplessness encouraged by fossil fuel companies.

[crispinb]

> If everyone did that, the biggest problems would be solved

Any solution to a problem that starts 'If everyone did ...' is the deadest of expired ducks.

Global ecosystem collapse is a systems issue of vast complexity. While we need at a minimum to (1) take down capitalism and (2) explore social and 'economic' (scare quotes intended) alternatives, no-one really knows how to do these things. They're certainly far beyond my capacities to contemplate. This has little to do with 'fossil fuel companies'.