
Google says its carbon footprint is now zero - blauditore
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54141899
======
ohthehugemanate
There's a really good explanation of different loopholes in calculating carbon
emissions in the Microsoft carbon target announcement from last year[1].

Eg do you count secondary services your employees use, like food services or
emissions from their commute? Do you count partner services, like shipping
providers for physical product? These, along with your direct emissions, are
categorized into three "scopes" of emissions. Do you include purchased offsets
against emissions, and at what rate? This is what most companies (including
MS, since 2012) use to be "carbon neutral". Companies are selective about
which scopes they include, and they pay for the total in offsets.

The point of the blog lost is to be clear (and holier-than-thou) about MS's
announced goal: to _remove_ more carbon than they produce in all three scopes
each year by 2030 ("net negative"), and to remove all the carbon Microsoft has
ever produced in all three scopes from the atmosphere by 2050. Actual carbon
removal, not offsets.

I have not read this article so I have no idea what google is or isn't
claiming here. But I learned a lot from the MS blog post so I thought I'd
share.

[1] [https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2020/01/16/microsoft-
will-b...](https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2020/01/16/microsoft-will-be-
carbon-negative-by-2030/)

~~~
actuator
> emissions from their commute

Isn't stuff like this kind of out of their hand unless the state itself tries
to fix this.

~~~
dkarl
Companies can help a lot by locating their offices in places that enable less
carbon intensive commuting, lobbying local government, supporting initiatives
that promote density, and supporting local transit initiatives (example: [0]).
When businesses speak up and say, local business needs workers to be able to
commute without a car, our competitiveness will suffer without it and we will
fall behind, that speaks to a large number of voters who don't respond to
environmental appeals.

[0] [https://www.kxan.com/news/downtown-austin-business-
leaders-s...](https://www.kxan.com/news/downtown-austin-business-leaders-say-
project-connect-is-a-critical-need/)

~~~
syshum
>>supporting initiatives that promote density

This is not going to help you with "speaks to a large number of voters who
don't respond to environmental appeals"

There is a MASSIVE over lab in people that do don't respond to (government
regulation based) environmental appeals AND have no desire to live in densely
populated cities.

Speaking as one of those people, the idea of living in an area of high
population density is a non-starter for me, my current area is about 2,000
people per square mile that that is FAR FAR too dense for me. living in
Seattle or LA with a Population density of 4x time is something nightmares are
made of, and NYC at about 13x that is just a total night terror....

~~~
epistasis
That's fine, you keep doing you. Just done stop other people from living the
way they want to.

~~~
syshum
There is one group politically that wants to prevent people from living they
way they want, and it is not Rural people

~~~
epistasis
Not sure what "rural" has to do with this, because nearly all land in the US
is rural and it's super easy to find any sort of rural life one wants, in
addition to it being super cheap.

However, there is a massive undersupply of dense living in the US, because it
has been legislated out of existence, not because people don't want it.

And I would point out that many "rural" towns have fantastic dense living in
their core, that allow people to walk for daily errands, etc.

The real enemy of density is not rural vs. urban, because these do not tough
each other at all. The people who prevent density are the suburban enclaves
that, through heavy and excessive regulation, prevent people from building
anything except for single family residential sprawl for miles upon miles,
necessitating a car for something as simple as getting a pint of cream.

Which is the way that many people want to live, which is great for them, and
they should be allowed to do that! But we need to stop letting them say to
others: "I don't want to live in density, so you shouldn't have the very
option of it because the mere existence threatens me."

I've been fighting for smart density in my town for quite a while, and no
rural person would ever oppose this, because they are not in town! And I think
they realize that the more people in town, the fewer crowding into their rural
life.

------
rcMgD2BwE72F
This is like rich countries moving factories to third-world countries where
industry emits more CO2. They pretend to be responsible for less and less
greenhouse gases even though they consume more physical goods, with larger
carbon footprint. Worst, they feel fine flying and buying SUV because their
not that dirty compared to people in undeveloped countries whose carbon
footprint keeps increasing.

~~~
Aunche
They aren't displacing factories to third world countries. They're displacing
dirty power with cleaner power. Obviously this won't be sustainable forever,
but it's a good start.

~~~
djsumdog
But a ton of the "clean" power isn't clean. Solar needs to have standby fossil
plants that keep at idle or else you get brownouts. Those high end molten salt
solar plans take natural gas to startup. Most "wood chip" plants burn the same
fast growing trees used by paper mills.

CO2 is a stupid thing to focus on. There are so many other forms of pollution
that are so much worse. Factory cities in China that have lakes of toxic
sludge waste. The massive amount of plastic particles in the ocean. Colossal
e-waste from electronics only designed to last two years.

Real, meaningful changes that will stop environmental devastation require
reduction of consumption. Unless Google finds a way to reduce their data
center footprints, the CO2 numbers are most likely just cooked books;
displacing CO2 with other environmental disaster.

We need to consume less things.

~~~
shadowgovt
> Solar needs to have standby fossil plants that keep at idle or else you get
> brownouts

That's strictly cleaner than running the region on fossil plants only

> Natural gas to startup

That's strictly cleaner than running the region on natural gas only

>CO2 is a stupid thing to focus on. There are so many other forms of pollution
that are so much worse. Factory cities in China that have lakes of toxic
sludge waste.

Lakes of toxic sludge are bad, but they're a localized problem. Atomspheric
CO2 balance threatens to crash the global ecology for everything larger than
bacteria. Of the things you've listed, the risk factor for killing everyone is
CO2 --> ocean plastic --> e-waste --> toxic sludge lakes.

> We need to consume less things

That'd be cool, but unfortunately, have you met humans? We've been trying the
"Consume less things" approach my entire life; it doesn't take. We need the
consumption to be more efficient and less environmentally impactful.

~~~
throwaway8941
I understand your argument, but honestly, as someone living in a heavily
polluted area, I couldn't care less about the CO₂ problem. When you have the
immediate concern of people dying 15 years earlier than they might have, when
your throat burns 300 days in a year, and you often can't see much farther
than 400 meters, I would be very happy if we could just switch everything coal
powered to natural gas.

~~~
shadowgovt
As someone who also lives in a heavily polluted area, I agree, but I can also
move.

Nobody can move away from the consequences of CO2 saturation. There's no
second planet to move to.

------
namdnay
I'm always suspicious about carbon offsets. From what I've seen buying flights
for example, the price seems surprisingly low. Either being carbon neutral is
not as economy-killing as some say, or the true price is much higher. Does
anyone have more expertise on this?

~~~
ForHackernews
Because so few people are interested in offsets right now, there's a huge
amount of "low-hanging fruit" options for cheap things humanity can do to
offset carbon emissions. For example, look at some of the projects here:
[https://www.goldstandard.org/take-action/offset-your-
emissio...](https://www.goldstandard.org/take-action/offset-your-emissions)

Many of them just involve getting very poor people access to clean water (so
they don't have to burn hydrocarbons to boil the water) or cleaner-burning
cooking gases. Prices are as low as 10-15 USD per tonne of CO2.

If we ever make a serious attempt to decarbonize the entire economy, we will
run out of cheap/easy options and be forced to make harder, more expensive
tradeoffs.

~~~
extropy
Not buying the access to clean water = less burning of hydrocarbon.

The poor people by definition are resource strapped and will use any means of
energy available, just for different purpose.

On the cynical side: clean water -> less mortality -> more population -> more
carbon use to sustain said population.

~~~
srtjstjsj
It's pretty well established that lower mortality leads to less reproduction
and lower overall population. When mortar is high, proof reliability over
correct with extra "cushion" children.

Wealth is a far larger source of pollution than life.

~~~
toomuchtodo
> Wealth is a far larger source of pollution than life.

It's both. Wealth drives down the birth rate (as does empowerment and higher
education of women [1]), but it also drives up the rate of pollution [2]. You
need "Clean Wealth" (high quality of life with low or zero CO2 emissions,
pollution, etc) if you want lower birth rates (which we do, we're on track to
hit 10 billion people by the end of the century) _and_ less pollution.

[1] [https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate#what-explains-
the-...](https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate#what-explains-the-change-
in-the-number-of-children-women-have)

[2]
[https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/co2?tab=chart&xScale=li...](https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/co2?tab=chart&xScale=linear&yScale=linear&stackMode=absolute&endpointsOnly=0&year=latest&time=earliest..latest&country=China~United%20States~India~United%20Kingdom~World&region=World&Gas%20=CO%E2%82%82&Accounting%20=Production-
based&Fuel%20=Total&Count%20=Per%20capita&Relative%20to%20world%20total%20=)

------
roenxi
This is quite impressive, but it is also somewhat meaningless. I suppose I'd
draw an analogy to a cake shop boasting that it had achieved net-no industrial
accidents over its existence - a great record, but also not really a
particular stretch to achieve.

Carbon emissions aren't about servers. They are about, in order of priority:

* How do we feed people cheaply without fossil fuels (both as fertiliser & for crop transport)?

* How do we extract minerals cheaply (especially aluminium) without fossil fuels?

* How do we maintain the cheap logistics network that gets us stuff without fossil fuels?

The first two are non-negotiable, the 3rd is quite important. If those 3
problems were solved then fossil fuels would just go away quietly. Google
isn't involved in any of those things; it is part of the 'these carbon
emissions are incidental' category of emissions that we can reasonably get rid
of.

But, again, good on them for setting clear goals and achieving them.

~~~
YetAnotherNick
Yes, I agree that the title should be "Google data centers achieves zero
carbon footprint", but still it is not zero effort to achieve it. I would
imagine data centers to use non trivial power to run.

~~~
hobofan
Wondering if that also applies to Alphabet as a whole or only Google. I find
it especially interesting due to everyone screaming "but muh CO2 footprint",
every time big ML projects are announced by them (e.g. AlphaGo) that use
enormous resources for training.

------
donalhunt
Google blog article: [https://blog.google/outreach-
initiatives/sustainability/our-...](https://blog.google/outreach-
initiatives/sustainability/our-third-decade-climate-action-realizing-carbon-
free-future/)

------
actuator
This has been very commendable from Google, since they started working towards
it.

Sure, there have been environmental impact from this as others have pointed
out, but since they were one of the earliest movers on these things, we can
expect them to run into issues which hopefully they will work towards fixing
for everyone. Also, we do need to compare the impact with the impact of what
it replaces to keep things in perspective.

I am glad that more companies have joined them on this, since it looks like it
will be very hard to convince some governments to course correct on these
issues.

------
hammock
This story is in reaction to the Amazon TV ad campaign that just launched
pledging that Amazon will be carbon-neutral by 2040 and they're "not sure how
we'll get there, but we will."

Obviously two tech companies with drastically different carbon footprints,
considering Google doesn't own a global multimodal logistics fleet.

~~~
umanwizard
> not sure how we'll get there, but we will.

This reminds me of Bezos’s announcement that Amazon would be making deliveries
by drone by 2018.

~~~
adrianmonk
What I love about that announcement is that it came right during Christmas
shopping season. Hey everybody, we have nothing concrete to announce, but
while we have your attention, remember that Prime is a great way to buy
holiday gifts for people!

------
matthewheath
Offsets are helpful, but are not the solution. At best, they're a stepping
stone.

The only sustainable solution is reduction in usage. I'm not sure how feasible
that is, or how to achieve it necessarily, but that's the only sustainable
basis to proceed on.

~~~
Loughla
>I'm not sure how feasible that is

This is actually why I 100% believe we will not be able to change any amount
of global warming, and if anything will make it worse as more and more
countries become industrialized.

The only way to reduce usage is to change our lifestyles. Less consumption,
less travel, less of the 'modern conveniences' people in wealthy counties have
become accustomed to.

Maybe I'm too cynical, but I genuinely believe humans are incapable, en masse,
of that type of sacrifice - the tragedy of the commons and whatnot.

The only time something will change is when everything crashes down around us
because of major disruption, famine, migration, and other life-altering
events. Only then will we change, but not by choice - only because we will
have exhausted all other options to keep our soft lives the same.

~~~
abyssin
In our situation, optimism is a moral duty. I understand the cynical attitude,
because I have it at times. But I also think we can't just say there's nothing
to do. I'm afraid that would strengthen the tendency of many people to
downplay what's happening, and ignore the truth. Even in the face of disaster,
I want to keep valuing truth, and I want to be surrounded by people who value
truth.

------
perfunctory
> But the claim to have "offset" all of Google's historical carbon "debt"
> needs scrutiny.

> The company tells me its offsets so far have focused mainly on capturing
> natural gas where it's escaping from pig farms and landfill sites. But
> arguably governments should be ensuring this happens anyway.

Go figure.

------
hannob
This article misses the elephant in the room: The emissions created by the use
of a companies product.

Google, like all large cloud providers, has lately heavily invested in
collaborations with the oil industry: [https://gizmodo.com/how-google-
microsoft-and-big-tech-are-au...](https://gizmodo.com/how-google-microsoft-
and-big-tech-are-automating-the-1832790799)

Their whole emission calculation just ignores that factor.

------
raffraffraff
Microsoft is the winner in this PR battle: "When it comes to carbon,
neutrality is not enough," said Microsoft president Brad Smith.

Fucking right.

But how are you going to reverse it? It has never been done. The technology
doesn't exist, except as ideas or sometimes prototypes. It doesn't scale.

With greenhouse emissions you can't put the genie back into the bottle. It
took a very green earth with no industry on it _billions_ of years to lock up
the carbon that we've released over the last few centuries. If all this talk
of carbon offset was worth anything, atmospheric CO2 and methane would be
reducing. It's not. It's still accelerating. Putting money into carbon offset
programs doesn't suck your flight's CO2 out of the atmosphere, or somehow
remove the methane produced by the herd of cows that produced every steak
you've ever eaten. It's not any different to paying the church to absolve you
of sin. One could argue that the Catholic church did _some_ good with the
money (maybe?) but the main effect of buying indulgences is that _you_ feel
better about your sins. Californians still watered their lands during droughts
because they felt that they somehow earned the right: "I paid for that water"

Sorry. I'm just entirely pessimistic about this. As a kid I used to think that
people were so stupid back in the 1600s-1800s, for causing extinctions left
and right. The unfortunate Dodo, Tasmanian Tiger, Great Auk, Passenger pigeon.
The generations that inhabited earth within our living memory have done far
worse. We are now seeing some of the dreaded "feedback loops" we were warned
about: Methane release from melting ice, decreased summer ice coverage
reducing reflected solar energy.

Mass extinctions will be the new normal. We'll start to see more of those
weird "hundred of thousands of birds mysteriously dead" posts.

The only thing that made a dent in our emissions was covid-19. I'm starting to
wonder if it wasn't part of some "benevolent" 12 Monkeys plot. (Kidding! That
was humans being fucking _stoooooopid_ too)

------
boogies
But at what cost? Alphabet pressures local governments to let them drain
aquifers to cool their machines¹, and powers them using vast swaths of
bulldozed former habitats of endangered desert tortoises and focused beams of
light that literally burn alive thousands of birds:

 _Workers at a state-of-the-art solar plant in the Mojave Desert have a name
for birds that fly through the plant’s concentrated sun rays — “streamers,”
for the smoke plume that comes from birds that ignite in midair.

Federal wildlife investigators who visited the BrightSource Energy plant last
year and watched as birds burned and fell, reporting an average of one
“streamer” every two minutes, are urging California officials to halt the
operator’s application to build a still-bigger version._².

1: [https://www.postandcourier.com/news/google-s-
controversial-g...](https://www.postandcourier.com/news/google-s-
controversial-groundwater-withdrawal-sparks-question-of-who-
owns/article_bed9179c-1baa-11e7-983e-03d6b33a01e7.html)

2: [https://www.sbsun.com/2014/08/18/emerging-solar-plants-in-
mo...](https://www.sbsun.com/2014/08/18/emerging-solar-plants-in-mojave-
desert-scorch-birds-in-mid-air/)

"Once built, U.S. government biologists found the plant's superheated mirrors
were killing birds. In April, biologists working for the state estimated that
3,500 birds died at Ivanpah in the span of a year, many of them burned alive
while flying through a part of the solar installment where air temperatures
can reach 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit." — [https://www.wsj.com/articles/high-
tech-solar-projects-fail-t...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/high-tech-solar-
projects-fail-to-deliver-1434138485)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanpah_Solar_Power_Facility#B...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanpah_Solar_Power_Facility#Birds)

~~~
Filligree
As opposed to the billions of animals, and millions of people, who die every
year due to air pollution and radiation from coal ash?

I'll _take_ those costs.

~~~
gre
There is a more expensive solution where neither birds nor humans have to die.
How do we get to that instead?

~~~
read_if_gay_
Like what? Build a giant fence around it?

Why the hell would you even care that much about 3,500 fucking _birds_? There
are FAR better uses for taxpayer money than figuring out how to save a
vanishingly small number of them, when we kill them in the billions for dinner
anyway.

The plant still seems to be a decent step forward, and nothing ever is going
to be perfect. If we're going to go down that road, then we're completely
paralyzing ourselves, because no matter your solution, some construction
worker will step on a rat, and now we need to go figure out the more expensive
solution where no rats have to die.

You're playing an impossible game.

~~~
boogies
Like nuclear.

Why the heck would you care about soda fizz and not about the 2.9 billion wind
and solar deaths contributing to the 29% loss of the entire country’s birds?
(Or the endangered species being killed, or the human deaths?)

[https://townhall.com/columnists/katiekieffer/2019/09/23/29-b...](https://townhall.com/columnists/katiekieffer/2019/09/23/29-billion-
bird-deaths-linked-to-solar-wind-n2553475)

~~~
read_if_gay_
I'm all for nuclear, but I'll also acknowledge that solar is a good step
forward, even if it ( _gasp!_ ) kills birds.

And that 29% claim is very dishonest of you. That's how much the bird
population declined _overall_ , _since 1950_ (!), and says _nothing_ about how
many birds are anually killed by solar, at all. (You've updated your post
since, to a statement that again basically says nothing.)

------
kzrdude
I'd like to know more, if they do more than just their electricity
consumption.

Do they include in their carbon footprint their whole energy consumption (from
heating to fuel for company cars)?

Do they include other resource consumption from wares and goods, including the
production of all the servers they use?

------
larvaetron
The "graying out comments I don't like" effect on HN is getting really bad
lately.

------
teekert
Meanwhile I'm also completely CO2 neutral with my ICE car: [0] why is this
even a problem? for 1ct per liter we are CO2 neutral, Google and everybody is
doing it. And yet...

[0] [https://nltimes.nl/2019/04/08/shell-charge-customers-
extra-c...](https://nltimes.nl/2019/04/08/shell-charge-customers-extra-
co2-neutral-refueling)

~~~
hwillis
You absolutely are not. Shell is doing the cheapest possible thing; planting
trees. It is NOT permanent and not sustainable. As soon as someone decides to
cut down those trees, that CO2 goes right back into the air. Shell is also
estimating the offset at $5/ton, which is an order of magnitude lower than
expected:
[https://www.fs.fed.us/pnw/pubs/pnw_gtr888.pdf](https://www.fs.fed.us/pnw/pubs/pnw_gtr888.pdf)

Planting trees simply will _not_ work. Cumulative anthropogenic GHG emissions
are >410 gigatonnes of carbon with 10 gigatonnes worth of GHG released each
year. There's 550 ~gigatonnes of carbon in all living creatures, with about
450 Gt in plants, most of that terrestrial. Even if we went back to pre-human
levels of forestation it would not cancel out all the CO2 we have already
emitted.

~~~
teekert
Thanx you, I was hoping for this reaction. Shell's tactics feel completely
wrong, and so they are. How can they get away with this?

------
wazoox
Carbon "offsets" give a nice, reassuring feeling. But what actually counts for
the planet is actual, raw emissions, how much of the dirty stuff you're
throwing out. "Emitting than planting some trees that will hopefully fix back
the carbon in 40 years" isn't the same at all as "not emitting".

Sorry, but this is greenwashing.

------
polote
I don't understand how that can be possible. Is Google planting trees to
remove carbon from the air ?

I mean there are hundreds of google employees who take the plane everyday and
therefore emit carbon, how this carbon emission is removed ?

~~~
Arnt
The former, more or less, except different.

The very short version is: They calculated the total carbon emission of the
company's activity to date, then paid someone to capture that amount of
carbon.

There are two subtle points: Google's past is finite, so there is a total
amount of carbon that has been emitted. Planting trees etc. doesn't work
(forever) against open-ended ongoing activities, but a specific amount of CO₂
is a different matter. It's possible to buy enough land, plant trees on it and
keep ownership of the land.

Of course one can discuss how to calculate a company's emissions. I find it
quite laudable that they even tried.

~~~
robjan
They bought carbon offsets which are more focused on preventing / reducing
carbon from being generated. It's basically saying "if I stop x amount of
carbon from being emitted somewhere in the world, it's as good as -ve carbon
on the balance sheet".

~~~
polote
so basically company A says it built one solar panel for company B to use.

Company A says it reduced its carbon emission and company B says it reduced
also his. So we have reduced emission by a factor of 2 solar panels by using
only one? seems smart!

~~~
robjan
More like Company A buys carbon credits which are invested in a company / NGO
who provide replacements for (as an example) 30 year old tractors in the
developing world. The polluting vehicles have been removed so therefore there
is a reduction in carbon. Since Company A continues to produce carbon the net
carbon is now 0.

------
LostTrackHowM
I wish we would subside biochar in agriculture the same way we did ethanol. Or
include it in carbon trading. Or both. And fertilise the open ocean deserts
with iron while we're at it.

I kinda feel like it's try anything time.

------
amai
Google is now into pig farming to reduce CO2 emissions?

"The company tells me its offsets so far have focused mainly on capturing
natural gas where it's escaping from pig farms and landfill sites."

------
Maximus9000
[Deleted]

~~~
mjlm
Currently, they buy carbon offsets to be net-neutral. The goal is to buy
carbon-neutral energy in the first place.

------
jibolso
Just thinking out loud, but does it count if I've just bought loads of Carbon
credits?

------
qubex
Doesn’t “all-time _cumulated_ carbon footprint” make a bit more sense?

------
mensetmanusman
Do they include carbon cost of the entire supply chain of their servers?

------
m1117
Even the employees don't produce carbon by driving non-tesla cars to work

------
jurgenaut23
How about the carbon footprint of their users while using their services?

~~~
interrupt_
They don't have control over that. They can only ensure the energy required to
run the services are offset.

~~~
hhjj
Well if they wouldn't be constantly trying to phone home data and use more
static technologies they would reduce users footprint. Although you are right
they can't really prevent their users to (ab)use its services (especially if
they want to preserve privacy).

------
pmlnr
GREENWASHING.

------
johnhenry
Kinda feels like google is an end-product of the industrial revolution. So, if
we take the rest of that into account...

------
PeterStuer
Cimate acconting is much like tax accounting. You find a loophole, then
magically slush all your profits through it.

I don't want to be too harsh on Google as at the very least they project they
care if not more. The sad reality is that once 'compensation' was on the
books, this led to the worst ecological whitewashing imaginable.

Right now Europe is being deforested at an unprecedented rate because the
timber and coal industry managed to get their extremely polluting wood burning
practices declared 'carbon neutral' and 'renewable'. Then they went all in on
pro-fines for Eu countries not meeting renewable deadlines, forcing them to
allow strip mining of the few forests Europe has left.

In 'renewable' Excel spreadsheets all is dandy. In the real world we are
looking at ecological genocide.

------
fxtentacle
... by installing fart filters for pigs.

I kid you not: "The company tells me its offsets so far have focused mainly on
capturing natural gas where it's escaping from pig farms and landfill sites."

~~~
thepete2
I bet Google is really glad there are reckless, cheaply preventable
greenhouse-gas emissions like that. And thank god no one has regulated it yet.

Otherwise you'd have to look at your OWN emissions, who wants to do that?

~~~
qubex
Smells a bit rich, doesn’t it? ;)

------
jariel
This is ridiculous propaganda. 'Carbon offsets' are rubbish unless they are
literally pulling CO2 out of the air.

------
paulcole
This sure sounds good in a press release and there are certainly worse things
to do. But Google’s environmental impact is _massive_. They can only “offset”
so much of that impact.

------
noxer
There is no carbon-free energy just because you don't burn stuff doesn't mean
no carbon is released at some point.

------
tjpnz
>"We'll do things like pairing wind and solar power sources together and
increasing our use of battery storage," he said.

Is Google accounting for the environmental destruction that goes into making
those solar panels.

~~~
unpolloloco
It's right in the title...CARBON footprint is 0. That said, it's becoming more
and more clear that wind/solar are less damaging than coal on a non-carbon
basis as well. Nothing we do has zero impact...the goal is to minimize it. The
only way to have zero impact is to wipe out the human species (and even then
there will be some impact!!).

------
jansan
Google could reduce carbon emissions quite a bit by making Chrome's stupid
"Software Reporter Tool" consume less CPU power on millions of computers. This
almost undocumented program could easily be the most energy consuming software
worldwide.

------
the_gastropod
I have mixed feelings about this. It’s wonderful that Google is making
progress on their emissions. But I wonder if their business model is at all
compatible with a 0 carbon world. Their entire raison d’être is to convince
people to buy things they don’t need. They even have a very targeted flight
purchasing service.

This type of behavior we’ve grown accustomed to—of unbridled consumerism and
excess—seems like it’s gotta be dialed back if we’re to make any meaningful
progress on greenhouse gas emissions as a planet.

~~~
delegate
I'm sad that people are down voting this, we should start to be honest about
it if we want to find solutions to the problem that the world faces.

Through their ad business model, Google (and others like it, you know them)
are enabling commerce at a scale never seen before. Remove the Internet and
the world's economy would collapse..

Quick and dirty search - world GDP has grown 420% since 1970, before computers
became mainstream.

How much of that is due to computers, the Internet and advertising, I don't
know, but I suspect these are major factors.

Through their reach, these companies could have a huge impact, but they do
nothing about it except use renewable energy in their data centers.. too
little impact imo.

------
jokoon
So all their employees don't eat meat, don't use thermal cars? What about the
concrete of their buildings? Another flagrant example of greenwashing. It's
useless to pretend one entity has a low carbon footprint because carbon is
systemic.

For example google as a business is only viable if smartphones are getting
produced.

Why can't anybody understand and accept the fact that oil is an awesome source
of energy? It's exactly like telling people to stop drinking sodas because it
will kill them.

The problem here is that sodas drinkers will give diabetes to everybody. That
cannot go on.

------
growlist
Here's a wild, crazy, dangerous idea for discussion: how about we start
curtailing globalism, and encourage people to live less carbon intensive lives
by building economies based around what's available nearby?

~~~
parasubvert
Lots of reasons?

A) We’ve globally lowered poverty to its lowest levels in history through
trade. Pretty much every government And populace on earth would be against
this policy except the absolute richest blocs (eg. The EU, elements of the
USA).

B) Globalism has already been pretty curtailed by populism the past 20 years.
But this includes the good parts of globalism, like coordinated carbon
reductions.

C) Carbon reduction is necessarily a global coordinated solution - going local
does not necessarily reduce carbon emissions, ie. oil rich nations can just
locally use and trade their energy and the world isn’t any better off unless
there are global treaties for trade and carbon.

D) arguably curtailing globalism would condemn a whole lot of the world into
poverty or mass migration due to lack of local resource, which is almost as
bad a remedy as the mass migrations that will be required later this century
due to carbon emissions.

~~~
growlist
> mass migrations that will be required later this century due to carbon
> emissions.

...only if we choose not to do something about controlling fertility. But in
the end I strongly suspect we'll all be travelling about a lot less. Which is
fine with me. Globalism is all about destroying diversity and culture, which
is an awful future.

~~~
parasubvert
I’m not so sure that’s what globalism is about?

I mean, entertainment and media is a small part of the global economy dollar-
wise even if it has lots of influence, local content laws as protectionism
don’t harm a lot. the Japanese (Among others, say China or India) have done a
pretty good job of adopting other cultures and various products without losing
their uniqueness.

Travel I think is a short term (2-3 year) pause.

------
citizenpaul
Ok this is hacker news supposedly educated logical people. Surely some of you
have to be able to see this is all a huge joke that detracts from actual
meaningful change? They can literally buy "carbon credits" and magically they
no longer pollute?

There is no way you can "offset" dumping pollution in the air. Either you do
it or you don't.

~~~
jefftk
_> There is no way you can "offset" dumping pollution in the air. Either you
do it or you don't._

At the extreme, how would you consider direct carbon capture
([https://www.jefftk.com/keith2018.pdf](https://www.jefftk.com/keith2018.pdf)
etc) from the air?

------
angel_j
This is a wealth privilege, setting an example others cannot follow unless the
whole economy is changed. It does nothing to address the externalization of
pollution as a norm of the free market, for which all are complicit. It's just
like sending plastic to a poor country and giving them a little cash to make
it their problem.

------
08-15
This is an outright lie.

Google's carbon footprint is still positive, but their net greenhouse gas
footprint is negative now, according to some particular accounting scheme
which posits that 1 ton of methane is equivalent to 34 tons of carbon dioxide.

Carbon dioxide and methane are not equal, and arguably not even equivalent,
since methane's impact is short term compared to that of carbon dioxide.
That's why the equivalence ratio depends on the time horizon chosen. (100
years is customary, but if Google assumed 20 years, that makes the numbers
balance even more cheaply.) So if the headline said "greenhouse gas
footprint", it would be technically correct, but misleading. The way it's
written, it's a lie.

