
Donating $1B to help accelerate land and ocean conservation - yazr
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/31/opinion/earth-biodiversity-conservation-billion-dollars.html
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joejohnson
Cool. If we had a working tax code, we wouldn't need billionaires' charity and
could actually regulate carbon in the atmosphere instead of these sort of
band-aids and PR stunts.

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threeseed
It really shows the hypocrisy of the business community and pro-business
politicians around the world.

You have a solution for climate change which is a price on carbon i.e. a pure
market driven mechanism.

But in this case they universally hate it and instead prefer the government
hand out subsidies and bonuses.

~~~
philipkglass
The problem isn't the business community in general so much as _specific_
businesses. In Washington State we're voting on an initiative to put a price
on emissions. It's supported by Microsoft, REI, Ben and Jerry's, and a bunch
of smaller businesses and business alliances. Its business opposition is one
generic business organization (Association of Washington Business) plus the
Western States Petroleum Association.

The problem is "concentrated pain, diffuse benefits." Putting a price on
emissions is an existential threat to businesses based on fossil fuel
extraction or combustion. It's a nice-to-have for businesses that provide
alternatives to fossil energy, like solar installers. For most other
businesses it's not a key issue either way. This is similar to how _most_
American businesses would be happy-to-indifferent about the existence of
municipal broadband services, but private providers of broadband services
fiercely oppose that option.

[https://ballotpedia.org/Washington_Initiative_1631,_Carbon_E...](https://ballotpedia.org/Washington_Initiative_1631,_Carbon_Emissions_Fee_Measure_\(2018\))

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yazr
This is by Hansjörg Wyss the founder of biotech company Synthes. His focus is
on nature conservation.

But i do feel this is treating the symptoms rather than the disease e.g.
excessive population growth, extraction rather than recycling, free
externalities.

The US, EU & Japan are still on an urbanizing uptrend, and nature areas (e.g.
forests) actually growing.

~~~
zackbloom
I think the disease is actually political systems which dramatically misalign
the well-being of the rich and the rest of us. If you fix that, everything
else will fix itself through much more long-term political decision making.

~~~
TeMPOraL
You have to align well-being of "the rest of us" for us, against the will of
most of us, though. Say "carbon tax" out loud, and most regular people will
shout you down, because it'll make their gas prices go up.

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nnforall
> the idea that wild lands and waters are best conserved not in private hands,
> locked behind gates, but as public national parks, wildlife refuges and
> marine reserves, forever open for everyone to experience and explore.

This has not been my experience. I happen to live in a area that has seen a
handful of new sequestrations in the last 20 years--3 or so in the last 5
years. The result has been to lock the public out. Locations that my family
have enjoyed for decades are now off limits.

This is distinct from the military land grabs in Nevada. But it's interesting
to see the contrast. After evicting families from their own land to expand Air
Force testing grounds, the government has decided they still don't have enough
control of Nevada public lands. So they are annexing[0] more than 270,000
acres of wildlife refuge for military use. That's right, "forever open for
everyone to experience and explore."

[0] [https://www.reviewjournal.com/news/military/air-force-
finali...](https://www.reviewjournal.com/news/military/air-force-finalizes-
plan-to-take-big-bite-of-nevada-wildlife-refuge/)

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RickJWagner
$1B? This guy gets my respect. He's putting his money where his mouth is.

Talking heads like Matt Damon (who rents luxury yachts for solo use and flies
jets across the ocean for convenience) earn my total contempt.

For a guy like me, hearing about Mr. Wyss's efforts move the needle. My thanks
go to him.

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senectus1
there are some interesting articles about modern philanthropy and how many
billionaires are finding it harder to give their money away than it is to make
the money in the first place.

says a lot about how broken our society is.

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claydavisss
Is the environment being ruined because environmental advocacy groups or
research institutions are starved for cash?

It really seems the only answer is consuming less...which is free.

$100 billion in donated wealth won't matter if people won't consume less.

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rinchik
“If people won’t consume less” - people will never consume less. With current
population growth picture of the future becomes even more colorful.

And in some under-developed countries an average birth rate was 7 children per
woman not so long ago. And we are currently de-funding Planned Parenthood.
Awesome move! And due to the “selfish-gene”, human-farming is the life goal of
almost every single individual. Is it sustainable? We can argue.

Kudos to Musk for looking at the Mars.

Maybe not so during our lifetime but shit will hit the fan realatively soon
here on Earth.

~~~
rinchik
and I will dutifully accept emotional down-votes (as it is perfectly and
naturally average to want to have a cake and eat it too, in relation to my
sustainability question), as well as constructive criticism.

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throwaway10bil
Excessive population growth runs straight into the third rail of today's
culture war: privilege.

Africa and Islamic cultures are projected to be the Lions share of pop growth
the next 30 years.

Western culture pretty much guarantees curbing population growth is a non
starter.

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andybak
Not entirely clear what you're saying. Could you elaborate?

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adventured
First I'll note that I'm not agreeing with what they're saying.

They're saying that in today's Western culture, it's impossible to make an
argument for controlling global population expansion because of where that
expansion is occuring. Places such as sub-sahara Africa, the Middle East,
India. Muslim countries, black countries, for example. That for Western
culture today, the view that the wealthy first world is privileged (and should
act a certain way accordingly), makes it impossible to confront excessive
population growth in less privileged parts of the world, because of guilt,
political correctness, or similar.

