
Microsoft’s quest to go ‘carbon negative’ inspires $1B fund - frankdenbow
https://www.greenbiz.com/article/microsofts-quest-go-carbon-negative-inspires-1b-fund
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p0nce
In countries where VAT tax exist, the whole chain of value pay a fraction of
the added value they produce. It works with a differential between the VAT you
bought vs the VAR you charged.

Why wouldn't we don't adopt a similar system for carbon? The fiscal framework
would be very similar. This way a company wouldn't have to know how much
carbon have been produced by its suppliers; it only need to count its own.

~~~
usrusr
A far more streamlined implementation would be to simply apply a fee at
resource extraction time on everything combustible taken out of the ground. It
would do a little collateral taxation on carbon that ends up as unburnt
plastics, but that's not necessarily a bad thing (if you want maximum
accuracy, pay some back for non-degradable carbon upon reaching a landfill,
the only form of sequestering that is used at scale)

Unfortunately I can't imagine how diplomacy could achieve something like that,
given the extremely uneven distribution of resource extraction industries.
Despite that it wouldn't even hurt the big oil nations, considering that they
would not have a lot of difficulties passing on the cost to their buyers
(assuming full global enforcement). The biggest logical opponents would not be
oil/gas states like Saudi Arabia or Russia but those whose only domestic
geological energy sources is carbon-inefficient coal.

(Edit: cleared up some illegible grammar and editing clutter)

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kazagistar
Every flat tax is fraught with issues. Now a huge number of people who can
barely afford transportation simply can't anymore. So much has been spent
subsidizing roads and by proxy suburbs over 70 years, and any plan will have
to involve helping people trapped by those ciecumstances, or they will
overturn those plans democratically.

In short, some people can afford to pay for climate change fixes, and some
can't. Any solution will simply have to be progressive and have a fair, equal
_burden_ on everyone.

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leoedin
If the goal is to reduce emissions, then a tax on emissions is the only
solution. Anything else is too open to avoidance (just look at corporate tax
avoidance).

Maybe there's other ways to make it better for the people who can't afford it
- a tax free allowance they can claim back or similar.

I'm still not sure if this is feasible across borders though. How can you stop
carbon tax havens?

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aaronblohowiak
Tariffs.

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mkane848
And yet, still makes political donations to those that deny climate change and
work against Green interests

[https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/1217882650515517440](https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/1217882650515517440)

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mr-ron
Microsoft the company makes donations? Or the employees of Microsoft?

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98codes
Neither, the PAC. The PAC members consist of employees and stockholders.

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freeone3000
The company also exists of employees and shareholders. The PAC is administered
by the corporation, has meetings on corporate grounds, is contributed to by
the corporation, and has its contribution list published by the corporation.
In anything other than a legal sense, the corporation runs the PAC.

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tito
Awesome! What have people seen from the performance of these types of
corporate venture capital funds? I'm guessing a lot of it will go towards
carbon neutral, but I'm most excited about the carbon removal pieces like
Direct air capture, carbon to value, and underground carbon storage.

If you had $1B for carbon negative tech, where would you invest it?

~~~
olau
Start a biochar plant burning biomass for energy but leaving the charcoal as a
long-lasting soil improvement and carbon storage product.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biochar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biochar)

Sell the biochar to homeowners:

[http://www.ultrakulture.com/wp-
content/uploads/2015/10/4-Ter...](http://www.ultrakulture.com/wp-
content/uploads/2015/10/4-Terra-Preta-biochar-soils-of-the-
Amazon-1024x768.jpg)

I have no idea about the economics, though, maybe it's just not feasible
without subsidies.

Edit: Why? Because the technique is simple, biomass is relatively cheap, you
get electricity and heat you can sell in a cold climate, and that terra preta
example makes me envious, as someone interested in gardening. If the char was
cheap enough, I would want to buy lots of it myself. Helping the planet and
helping my own plants.

I think you need a large scale plant to keep costs down. There are large scale
biomass power plants where I live, but they specialize in burning everything,
so some investment is needed.

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josefresco
I have a client in the biochar industry. They manufacturer "machines" or
furnaces to produce biochar, as well as sell it directly.
[https://newenglandbiochar.com](https://newenglandbiochar.com)

Using biochar in your garden, on your lawn etc. is a great way to sequester
some carbon at a small scale.

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mikelyons
One of the most important aspects IMO is the attitude they take:

> _" While we at Microsoft have worked hard to be 'carbon neutral' since 2012,
> our recent work has led us to conclude that this is an area where we’re far
> better served by humility than pride," wrote Smith in the blog. "And we
> believe this is true not only for ourselves, but for every business and
> organization on the planet."_

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llampx
Does anyone know the name or ticker of the fund?

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Havoc
It's highly likely to be a private equity fund. i.e. You can't invest

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cwxm
Is there an easy way for companies or individuals to offset (or more than
offset) their carbon footprint?

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ticmasta
You can significantly change your lifestyle and decision making process that
will lead to behaviours that reduce your footprint.

... or were you looking for an answer like "buy some carbon offsets"?

I really don't want to pick on the parent comment, but the question seems like
"Is there an easy way to effect meaningful, systematic change?"

I hear a lot of people talking about this and related issues but the things
they propose are just not going to get it done. No one wants to stop
traveling, drive less, eat local produce all winter, give up a globalized
supply chain and their current lifestyle; meanwhile the frog is being slowly
boiled alive...

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hirsin
I discussed this with a coworker the other day - buying carbon offsets is a
good way of pricing convenience vs urge to do good in the environment.

He drives to work every day, because taking the bus is a hassle/takes time,
etc. What's the value to him of taking the bus? Helping the environment in
some unspecified way. If he pays for carbon offsets for his driving, he can
now say "hey, taking the bus saves me $x/month, I think that's (not) worth
it".

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zacharyaustin11
Love to see adoption of living building challenge even if it is their least
rigorous certification.

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khawkins
It's disappointing to see colossal amounts of money like this isn't used to
address demonstrable human suffering happening all over the world right now.
Microsoft could take this money, set up shop in Haiti, and develop over the
course of a generation a tech sector in a country whose main export is
t-shirts. They might even eventually make enough return to reinvest in other
areas and bring the rest of the world up to first world standards.

Instead, this money is going to pool in upper class first world green
economies as they use it to buy expensive electric cars, install expensive
solar panels, and fund expensive climate change activists. That their efforts
might slightly reduce the number of hurricanes in a hundred years is little
consolation to the thousands of lives lost every decade in that country to
natural disasters and disease, otherwise be preventable if the population
wasn't living in shanty towns.

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Maximus9000
Could you have said the same thing about going to space many decades ago? Yet,
with hindsight, we can see going to space had a huge return on investment.

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zxcmx
Yes, the "nothing is worth doing while there are poor people anywhere in the
world" argument.

We can work on environmental issues _and_ poverty.

