YC Office Hours for Startups Tackling Climate Issues(blog.ycombinator.com) |
YC Office Hours for Startups Tackling Climate Issues(blog.ycombinator.com) |
For example, one startup is focused at the intersection of energy suppliers and consumers, trying to create win-win situations that match supply (complex due to wind/solar/etc variations) and demand. This is intentionally vague, sorry.
Could someone at YC give a slightly longer explanation of the startups they encourage to apply for this coaching session?
Conserve land, one acre at a time.
All revenue right now goes right to our Land Trust partner. This is a nonprofit.
1) When did you start, and how long does it take you to sell an acre?
2) How do you plan on "releasing" more regions? Is the next region going to be (drumroll) the adjacent 160-acre square? Do they want you to complete one square before opening up the next? Does anyone actually keep track of which acre belongs to whom? How difficult is it to get more land trusts on board?
3) I'm looking to offset my emissions, so my key metric is $/t – how much does it cost to sequester a ton of CO₂ that otherwise would have stayed in the air? Any rough estimates?
1 minute pitch
4 minutes descriptions of problems
10 minutes of back and forth?
Interesting constraints!
This is a human behavior problem. Consume less; ie growth at all costs is not a long term strategy for the planet. Don't define your happiness with things.
I was reviewing the US tariff lists and was thinking, what if all these items were just completely unavailable forever? I couldn't find any examples in the list of products I absolutely must have to thrive. Think of all the carbon saved (and landfill, and ocean plastic, etc) in producing all this stuff.
Maybe algae in the Sahara will be a silver bullet, but I'm not holding my breath.
I would instead spend resources educating and supporting farmers on sustainable agro, support a transition from a consumer-driven economy to one that is sustainable (also probably education). Promote/support sustainable, local plant-based diets. Etc. I'm happy to invest in scalable solutions in these areas!
We don't deal with climate change, but we have a product to enable non-profits and political campaigns to run GIANT volunteer networks. I'm not sure if that fits their criteria, but if they want to create a mass movement that movement needs tools, right?
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2018/10/helion-energy-got-fund...
Came here to say exactly this. In fact if there are any articles about that, I'd appreciate if someone would post them here.
No startup is going to solve climate change. The scale of the problem is simply too large. You need public policy to internalize the externalities of carbon emissions.
I have a hard enough time figuring out what a reasonable thing for me to do is. Deconstruction is always the easy part. One thing we can be certain of at this stage is that 'startup' culture with its emphasis on catastrophic global entropy increase (ie. so-called 'economic growth') is a road to nowhere good.
http://oecdobserver.org/news/fullstory.php/aid/3681/An_emerg...
How realistic do you think it is that people that have just escaped poverty will give up their new lifestyle? Technology is the only solution. It really baffles me that HN is a place where people think technology is the answer to all problems... except for climate change.
For example, in many parts of South East Asia people avoid heating and air conditioning. It's considered unhealthy to over manage your environment in that way. Where I live, in Japan, I've always thought it was really unfortunate that western clothes became popular -- for most of the south western portions of the country it really is a under performing choice. If, when Japan was transitioning from a poor country to a rich country, an emphasis was made to prefer native clothes which are better suited to the climate, it would have made a significant difference in how people acted.
There will always be a subset of the population that are going to want the American utopia of a detached, climate controlled bungallo full the the brim with furniture and gadgets, but it doesn't need to be the goal of the entire population -- even if they want a comfortable and rich lifestyle. Appealing to the existing culture is a good way to get people to appreciate a different way of living.
Population explosion is badly overlooked when looking at climate/environmental issues.
I sincerely hope you are right and there is some wonderful tech solution to this. Meanwhile I am not buying land 90m from current sea levels.
Super boring low-tech thing like sending out flyers & sharing videos of animal welfare in industrial farming turns out to be hugely efficient in terms of CO2 reduction per dollar.
https://animalcharityevaluators.org/charity-review/the-human...
https://animalcharityevaluators.org/blog/top-animal-charitie...
If everyone did that, the biggest problems would be solved. So that’s a reasonable thing for you to do.
Don’t fall for the learned helplessness encouraged by fossil fuel companies.
Any solution to a problem that starts 'If everyone did ...' is the deadest of expired ducks.
Global ecosystem collapse is a systems issue of vast complexity. While we need at a minimum to (1) take down capitalism and (2) explore social and 'economic' (scare quotes intended) alternatives, no-one really knows how to do these things. They're certainly far beyond my capacities to contemplate. This has little to do with 'fossil fuel companies'.
There is no need for a startup to deploy EV chargers at homes, condos, apartments, and public facilities. This requires community involvement instead, as there is little if any profit to be realized from the activity. But this is crucial for EV uptake. Someone has to do the legwork (I am working on automation for this, but alas, there are only so many hours in a day).
The tech is already proven. It’s all up to public policy now to nudge people in the right direction (renewables, EVs, carbon offsets for anything else where you absolutely cannot avoid CO2 emissions).