peacetreefrog
Joined 11 years ago
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Comment · 5 years ago
So the only misleading thing is "keep 99% of what you make", it's really "96.1% of what you make - 30 cents" or "keep 99% of what you make after payment processor fees".
Still cool, though obviously depends on volume. I use sendowl which is as cheap as $9 a month + Stripe fees (2.9% + 30 cents).
I used to use gumroad, but had issues. I think they've gotten a bit complacent (see https://medium.com/@atrigol/gumroad-review-things-they-need-...) so prob room in the space. Good luck!
Comment · 7 years ago
All else equal, being in an area susceptible to climate change related flooding lowers value about 7% on average according to some research:
https://www.axios.com/sea-level-rise-costing-billions-in-hom...
Comment · 7 years ago
Full table of contents: https://ltcwff-toc.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/ltcwff_toc.pdf
Comment · 7 years ago
I think this is seriously naive.
Comment · 7 years ago
Does anyone else view this as good news? I had heard speculation that the large insect die offs were due to climate change, but this seems much more treatable.
Comment · 7 years ago
The profit is all based on lumber sales too. If profits really were that high it seems like capital would flow in until there were so many of these trees that prices would go down (though I'd imagine they're a small part of the global lumber market), especially if you can only use their wood for a limited number of things.
On the other hand, if they really do such a great job storing carbon, seems like there is potential for them to make money on the fact people are willing to pay to offset their emissions.
Comment · 7 years ago
Agreed. Though it's tough to square the fact that bad things happen sometimes with desire to do something. The Onion actually had a good video on this a few years ago:
https://politics.theonion.com/truck-accident-that-killed-raf...
Comment · 7 years ago
The problem with that is there are a lot of transaction costs to individuals selling their personal emissions.
Like the comment one higher up mentioned, one way to get around that and do effectively the same thing would be to split the revenue among citizens. This is what a bunch of economists have called for doing: https://www.econstatement.org/
Comment · 7 years ago
I don't think it's a straw man. Look at the two examples I cited.
This is the first thing that comes up when you google 'green new deal':
"A Green New Deal is a big, bold transformation of the economy to tackle the twin crises of inequality and climate change. It would mobilize vast public resources to help us transition from an economy built on exploitation and fossil fuels to one driven by dignified work and clean energy."
https://www.sierraclub.org/trade/what-green-new-deal
And here's AOC's chief of staff on the green new deal: "“Do you guys think of it as a climate thing?” Chakrabarti continued. “Because we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing.” "
Second is Jay Inslee, the democratic running for president who has made fighting climate change the centerpiece of his campaign.
https://www.jayinslee.com/climate-mission
Look at his four points. Point three is "fighting for environmental justice & economic inclusion". Two of the other points are subsidies, one for clean energy, the other for a jobs program. The last one -- getting rid of subsidies for fossil fuel industries -- is a good idea. Control f'ing for the word tax (as in carbon tax) gives no results. Neither does cap, nor trade.
Comment · 7 years ago
The government is already is regulating carbon. California has a cap and trade program, for example, and this court case in 2007 forced the EPA "to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases (GHGs) as pollutants."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts_v._Environmental...
Comment · 7 years ago
Well, depends what you mean by "at fault". I agree it's better to believe in global warming than deny it exists, but I agree with Cochrane that many of the attempts at at fixing it so far are basically "worthless value-signaling gestures".
Cochrane thinks (not sure I agree with him) that the onus right now is more on the traditional left than the right.
"...climate policy advocates have gone far beyond a technocratic idea of simply, well, reducing carbon. 'And nuclear energy' is usually noticeably absent. Carbon capture technologies, equally good at reducing carbon are usually noticeably absent. Other agendas like 'climate justice' creep in -- worthy or not, anything else that creeps in means less carbon reduction per dollar. A carbon tax reduces carbon any way that reduces carbon, which is really good at, well, reducing carbon, and not getting distracted with other agendas. That is a strong reason why carbon taxes, and especially such taxes in return for less regulation are resisted on the left."
Whether you agree re: who is at fault, given that most people on HN are prob on the "do something about climate change" end of the spectrum, if you are personally skeptical of a carbon tax vs something like the green new deal or Jay Inslee's climate change plan, I'd encourage you to look into it more.
Cochrane's blog post and and also this would be good places to start:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/01/17/this-is-n...
Comment · 7 years ago
We need a carbon tax stat IMO. Economist John Cochrane had a good blog post about this recently (I actually posted to HN a few days ago but it got buried):
https://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2019/05/ip-on-carbon-tax....
From the end:
"Climate policy was headed to this kind of bipartisan technocratic resolution in the 1990s before it became a tool of partisan warfare. The challenge, from both sides, is to remove the political baggage that climate policy has accumulated."
He then makes that appeal to both sides:
"To my climate-skeptic friends: Given that the government is going to regulate carbon, this is the way to do it with least damage. To my green-warrior friends, if the government is actually going to reduce carbon, not just subsidize cronies and engage in worthless value-signaling gestures, a trade of carbon taxes for absurdly costly regulations and subsidies is the only way to get anywhere."
Comment · 7 years ago
From the article:
"To my climate-skeptic friends: Given that the government is going to regulate carbon, this is the way to do it with least damage. To my green-warrior friends, if the government is actually going to reduce carbon, not just subsidize cronies and engage in worthless value-signaling gestures, a trade of carbon taxes for absurdly costly regulations and subsidies is the only way to get anywhere."