Interview with David Heinemeier Hansson on climate change | Hacker News Reader

Interview with David Heinemeier Hansson on climate change

myclimatejourney.co

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Last year was the first year I owned (and regularly used) a car, which made me think about mitigating my carbon footprint a little bit more seriously than paying the 'carbon tax' on my flights.

Like David says the offset projects all seem kind of snake-oil'y, so I looked for something that actually changes something in the world for the better. So far, building green infrastructure seems attractive, but I fear that in the end it just makes energy a little bit cheaper for people, and the real CO2 impact that happens in the transport and agriculture sectors doesn't really get solved.

I also was attracted to planting trees, since there's a very concrete impact there, that can't really be cheated against (unless people burn them down of course). So I started calculating how many trees to plant and it turns out that there's a lot of misleading info.

For example, in ideal conditions a tree might accumulate 20kg of CO2 in 40 years. My car did 16000km at about 1/14, on gasoline so that's 2742kg of CO2. So some website will tell me to plant 140 trees to compensate over 40 years, to compensate what I did in 1 year, assuming all those trees survive.

But they don't, only 55% lives, so I should plant 280 trees to be a bit more sure I really am compensating. And then it'll be compensated in 2060, which is useless because climate is changing now, not in 40 years. So it's better to compensate up front, so say I want to make sure I've made an impact by 2025, I should plant 8 times as many trees, so that's 2240 trees, and that's just assuming they grow linearly, which they probably don't do. And that they are planted in the tropics, which they probably aren't, and even if they were there's a risk they would be burned down for agriculture within the decade anyway.

And that's just me with an under average commute driving a mediocre car.

Does anyone have a better solution for offsetting carbon? Maybe we should pool money together and buy someone that's driving a range rover a tesla..

>For example, in ideal conditions a tree might accumulate 20kg of CO2 in 40 years.

Are you sure it is not 20kg of CO2 every year for 40 years? After all, dry wood is half carbon approximately.

Woops you're totally right, so that's shaves off a lot. I found a resource that says a young tree captures about 5kg per year. The 20kg per year figure is for a 10 year old tree. That brings it down to having to plant about 110 trees every year for 5 years.

There is no way to offset carbon currently, the programmes that try to handle carbon recapture are in infancy or snake oil or just do not work.

The best we could do is to scrape the car and go high efficiency electric. And switch to public transport where applicable, bulk deliveries rather than couriers for transport. Local products to limit total transport too.

Ultimately, we will have to devise a plan for food production and water availability to continue on hotter planet, and making the conditions comfortable without contributing to the problem. (passive air conditioning, building design etc.)

The climate change debate is confused because a lot of people mix it with their own tangential and irrelevant issues. For example, broader environmental issues like plastic trash. If you're throwing carbon in a landfill and it doesn't decompose, it's not climate change. You may hate it, but it doesn't cause climate change, because that carbon went from being on the ground to being in the ground. And I'm not picking on the left and the green new deal crowed (where climate change is now a jobs, Healthcare and racial reconciliation issue as well). If you read right wing stuff, you'll notice the growing popularity of a sort of green fascism. Ie, people you didn't like immigrants before now have arguments telling us how you can't solve climate change without restricting immigration :rolleyes:

At the end of the day I see two inseparable requirements to solve it: new technologies which let us keep our standard of living without emitting carbon, and a cultural change to accept and desire low carbon substitutes. For example, EVs let you move around without emitting carbon, but they can't take off until people's attitudes towards ICE vehicles change to associate them with dirtyness. Or synthetic meat. It's very important that vegans put the idea that meat is not great, but they are going against super powerful millenia old traditions and so very good substitutes need to be available to help people overcome that.

Once you start running through the sources of carbon pollution and apply this, you get a pretty good idea of how to tackle the problem.

> If you're throwing carbon in a landfill and it doesn't decompose, it's not climate change.

If it goes in landfill, it's not being reused or recycled to prevent more carbon from being produced to make something new. Some recycling processes are fairly energy intensive so the carbon savings are not always significant but recycling still reduces demand to extract more raw materials.

Stunning and brave

Sounds like he endorses Bernie

DHH, co-founder of Basecamp, and Jason Jacobs, co-founder of RunKeeper and host of the "My Climate Journey" podcast, have a deep conversation about climate change, their own personal views on it, and taking the metaphorical "red pill," as it relates to the crisis.

You can find past episodes on the My Climate Journey website as well as request an invite to the Slack group, where discussions on the topic are taking place among technologists, experts and entrepreneurs: https://www.myclimatejourney.co/

DHH is misusing the term “red pill” here. He’s saying he’s accepted an inevitable negative outcome, not that he’s been exposed to a hidden truth. The term he’s looking for is “black pill.”

To be fair, glancing at the usages of red/blue pill in the script, they are using the term in an intuitive way; minus connotations as of late. Culture (some might argue a subset of culture, be it large or small) has just further defined and added connotations to the different kinds of "pillings." In a general sense, I would agree with you.

Nice username. You made a throwaway just to post this?

Facing climate change fills you with dread . . . until you act. Then you see all the reasons not to act as self-serving rationalization. When you find the joy, community, and connection of acting on your environmental values.

When you realize that stopping all this polluting activity improves your life, you want to do more. People will comment that what one person does doesn't matter and other self-serving rationalization, but they miss that it improves your life.

I talk about this in my TEDx talks http://joshuaspodek.com/my-second-tedx-talk-what-everyone-ge... and will treat it more in the one I'm giving this weekend, as well as my podcast, but the bottom line is that the more you act the more you'll stop navel gazing and the excuses not to act will melt away.

Avoiding packaged food led for me to avoiding flying, which led to a podcast, which led me to work with some of the world's most renowned and influential people (more to come!) http://joshuaspodek.com/podcast, which led to a practice of environmental leadership executive training, where I train corporate executives in the specific leadership skills relevant to the environment, which leads to cultural change (and, for the executives: promotions, higher morale, attracting talent, and so on, which happens when you meet the demand everyone else is ignoring).

I'm attracted to the idea that acting makes you feel better. But how do you take part in the economy, for instance, without adding to the catastrophe? How do you socialize without emitting carbon? I feel like I'd have to join some sort of cult if I were to both take care of my material and socializing needs, and live a carbon neutral lifestyle.

And then again, would I feel satisfied with a carbon neutral lifestyle? When there's a fire burning, is it enough to tell yourself you're not adding fuel to the fire? Shouldn't you take part in throwing water?

For a long time it felt good showing virtue. Right now panic is kicking in again and I have no idea how to handle it.

You can't fix this alone. You can't even lead by example and get results, because a sustainable lifestyle in terms of climate change essentially has you living under a bridge if you account for your share of infrastructure. Personal responsibility is just not going to be the solution, so we need to look elsewhere.

I need to clarify here that I agree with GP that taking personal action is empowering and can lead you down a virtuous path. I just think that the goal needs to be changing society, not changing your own life. So if you want to make a difference, you have to be part of society. You have to take part in the economy, even if that means you will personally directly contribute more to the problem than you would if you went full hermit in the woods. There's no simple solution, but if there is one at all, it has to involve a lot of people working together.

GP back again. I did a podcast episode on the point of personal action and the difference from influencing others, which I also do: https://shows.acast.com/leadership-and-the-environment/episo...

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