We are burning incredible amounts of coal 40 years after we started talking about climate change. I believe around 40% of global electricity is from coal.
We keep waiting for the windmills and batteries to solve the problem, while kicking the can down the road
The amount of energy we use is expected to increase in 30 years. The percentage of that from coal is expected to go down. Great, right?
No, we are basically on a path to burn the same amount of coal in the future (but a larger percentage of our energy will come from other sources).
I’m not a doomer but we aren’t taking this issue seriously at all. The policy solutions exist but the political power isn’t there. I’m starting to think our best chance is a technological leap in carbon capture.
When I was a kid, I remember my uncle introduced me to a guy he worked for who had made his initial fortune way back. It turns out that he bought a company that sold inner tubes for car tires, and when the automakers first moved to tubeless tires, the business owner wanted to sell. So, my uncle's friend bought him out cheap, and then targeted all the buyers of the new cars with tubeless tires. Apparently, the new car buyers didn't trust the tubeless tires yet, and the first place then went was to my uncle's friend to get tubes for their tubeless tires.
The lesson here is that change is hard, and as humans, we aren't very good at it. My guess is that humanity will be kicking the can down the road for quite awhile.
"If it's from Stanford, pretty much whatever you want."
That not true at all. The name of the university can only get you so far. For example, if you have a climate-related degree, can you really compete with Stanford CS majors for a SDE job? Or with ME majors for a product design position?
IMO if you get into Stanford and can pay for the degree, it would be a waste to spend it in a major like that unless you're really passionate and have very specific goals.
"So, basically, investment banking or data science"
Well, those are definitely not "whatever you want".
It actually does make more sense to pursue a physics degree with an emphasis on fluid dynamics (atmospheric and oceanic circulation being of great interest to future climate forecasts), or a chemistry degree with an emphasis on analytical measurement and kinetics (global elemental cycling, particulate dynamics, oceanic and atmospheric chemistry all being similarly important), or a biology degree with an emphasis on ecology and biochemistry (changing species distribution, methane biochemistry etc.).
This all goes under the rubric of 'planetary sciences' of which 'earth system science' is a sort of special case. Also means you could work at NASA on Jupiter's moons etc.
Most people pursuing a degree in physics would be more interested in core physics problems (quantum computing, particle physics, cosmology, etc.) than in climate change. Perhaps it is more difficult to motivate physics majors to turn to climate science than to teach climate scientists physics (since only a subset of physics is needed, mostly fluid dynamics). Otherwise, universities would have climate science in a physics department.
In grad school I pursued (at the time it was considered experimental) a minor in "Sustainability Management". This was like 10 years ago and there was nowhere near the amount of stuff happening in the space then as there is now - it was basically "how do we get corporations to reduce their emissions? LOL good luck" and "how do large scale renewable energy projects make it? Only gonna happen with government help". I was a little disappointed with it at the time but I'm really happy that the field has awoken and that tech is getting involved - I would love to see how "higher" education in that space has changed.
> What do your do with a degree in climatology?
I write code, ironically. I'm in the camp that believes degrees aren't _totally_ about what you learn but more about advancing your reasoning and thinking skills and learning how to interact with people (not to say you don't learn anything in school, you definitely do but IMHO it largely depends on what you study).
Is investing in a university endowment the best way to put $1.1B to work combating climate change? How about investing in companies developing clean energy technologies?
> Is investing in a university endowment the best way to put $1.1B to work combating climate change? How about investing in companies developing clean energy technologies?
Why is investing in research at a university less valuable than investing in research in the private sector? HN might have a bias toward the latter, effectively that people should invest more in the HN population.
I am concerned about the incredible concentration of money and resources into a few academic institutions. Obviously Stanford is an incredible school, but I am not sure Stanford will do more with $1B than 10 2nd tier schools would do with $100M each.
I haven't checked the numbers lately, so I could be wrong by now. But while I was a student there and for some years after (administrators / (students + researchers + educators)) got worse at a rapid pace. It's hard for me to imagine that Stanford is the best marginal bang for more bucks.
In order to have an economy of scale, first you need scale. But Stanford does not stand out in terms of the size of its faculty or enrollment, certainly not to the degree it does in terms of money. In fact, Stanford has fewer tenured faculty members (832) than UC Davis (1,126):
There are diseconomies of scale too. My experience is mostly of UK higher education, but my feeling is that most universities are a bit too large for their governing structures, and are poorly run as a result.
Upvoted because I agree but it's not always this cut and dry. I can't speak for climate research (I imagine it's mostly computer sims so maybe a building is a waste), but for bio research lab space is nearly as important as personnel.
The waste is they hire architects to build elaborate buildings with plenty of affectations that make universities and donors feel important, but that often put functionality far behind form. While the inside of lab space is quite functional and "luxury" in lab space goes is actually lab equipment, sq. ft, and having a window that looks out on something pleasant. Much less impressive looking buildings could be built which facilitated far more science.
Universities have degenerated somewhat into being professional sports teams and professional fundraisers.
"Attracting top talent" is nonsense, universities are already full of people so desperate for positions they work nearly for free.
If I had a billion dollars I'd build a university out the best equipment, the cheapest buildings, and a minimum wage for anyone doing academic work of $100k and see how far that got me.
>But the “brand” game has won vs the execution game, esp. in higher Ed.
I can remember seeing this in action at Stanford. Companies will fall over themselves and pay anything to have their name associated with absolutely anything that has the name Stanford on it. And the students know this, so they play the game. Every student group, organization, club, etc. no matter how small or meaningless is heavily sponsored by relevant corporate donors as a result.
I worked in the Broad building at Caltech (Eli Broad), and I watched for 2 years as they demoed the parking lot outside my office to build the 200 million dollar Chen neuroscience building. It is a complete and total waste of money, and I say that cognizant of arguments like 'attracting talent'...etc. At one point we calculated the number of neuroscience postdocs we could hire for that money and easily came to the conclusion that we could have pulled off a Manhattan project of neuroscience with that kind of money. It's pathetic that donors delude themselves into thinking that projects like this do ANY good.
wait, is the 200 million just for the building, or for the entire facility (new equipment, etc)? Building a new facility in itself seems a worthwhile enterprise - though as a postdoc myself I'd rather have pay bumps for the postdocs :)
I believe at least 170 million was slated initially for construction costs, which may have run over. I don't know how much was for new equipment, but I can't imagine it was a significant fraction (and likely it was an additional expense over those numbers).
170+ million for a BUILDING?! That doesn't make sense to me at all - as someone who spends his waking hours in research laboratories in a newish building of comparable size to the Chen building, I can't see where the money would go.
Well....for starters there is the monkey tunnel that leads from Broad to the Chen building because....you guessed it....the vivarium was in the basement (and still is) of Broad. Many neuroscience labs were in Broad (a VERY nice building in and of itself).
I chuckled when they demolished the nearby Mead undergrad chem lab to make way for another such building, then I realized that the department graduating 5 undergrads a year might have something to do with it. I already missed the sculpture where the bagpipe guy used to play that got taken out for some ChemE building.
> easily came to the conclusion that we could have pulled off a Manhattan project of neuroscience with that kind of money.
In general I wish people spent more time looking at alternatives when these huge projects are proposed. For instance, it drives me nuts thinking of all the alternatives when I see making bids to pay billions for the Olympics. That's the kind of money that could turn the whole area into a science Mecca in several different, with a whole host of positive downstream effects locally.
Donor behavior such as this comes down to human psychology and neuroscience.
* Tribalism: Humans like people who "are like them", it's easier to relate. Thus, IME, Stanford grads prefer other Stanford-branded people. Or at least crême de la creme Ivy. Especially compared to the plebs and the proles.
* Vanity: Donors find it appealing that the structure will be around for a long time, prominently and proudly emblazoned with the donor's own name. Yes, external validation does feel good. Especially among certain (insecure) types. A truly altruistic and self-assured person makes donations anonymously.
Empire building is a popular pastime among the human species, especially those with power. The rest of us settle for something like Civ, SimCity, or sand castles.
People should invest local. I just handed a check to our sons martial arts center. It is used for scholarships for kids that can't afford monthly dues. Every dollar is treasured.
Yea but it won’t raise your prestige, I mean giving charity to Stanford, one of the top schools in the world, shows everyone how baller you are, and maybe the next 20 generations of Doerrs will get guaranteed admission too
>First off, most of this funding will go to a building. The rest will go mostly to an endowment.
Academic institutions are also tax-exempt, therefore don't pay any tax on the profits of any endowment or real-estate investment gains. The rise of the ivy-league schools becoming glorified tax-free holding companies, with education side-gigs, corresponds with the bloat in academic administration.
> Stanford's vast holdings. Stanford, Silicon Valley's largest property owner, controls more than 5,000 acres in Palo Alto and unincorporated Santa Clara County. On that land are the university's sprawling campus, a shopping center, tech offices, apartment buildings and entire residential neighborhoods.
> The value of Stanford’s empire is larger than those of Google, Apple and Intel combined.
Isn't there a tax deduction aspect to a lot of these donations?
Anyways, 100 more Nature-level articles about climate change is not going to change the situation if there is no political will (or if it seesaws every 4-8 years at best).
It probably would have been much better to plant $1B worth of trees, or buy $1B of the Brazilian Rain Forest. But for similar reasons that Robert Moses loved bridges and hated tunnels, putting your name on a building at Stanford wins.
There are some loopholes with donations, mostly regarding difficult-to-value benefits and also around donating dificult-to-value things rather than cash, stocks, and/or bonds.
But, if you donate $1.1 billion to an eligible charity (and claim to have gotten nothing in return), then the US government basically pretends that you never made that money, and your tax bill goes down by roughly your marginal tax rate times the size of the donation. There are limits and caveats, but in general, it's a pretty fair treatment. I'm pretty sure big donors generally under-report the value of having their name on a building, etc. However, I believe it's nearly impossible to wind up with more money in your pocket post-tax by donating cash instead of keeping the cash. (I'm not an accountant. This isn't tax advice.)
I'm not saying you in particular are claiming people are donating cash out of greed, but the way I hear some people talk about tax write-offs is very misleading. It seems many Americans believe that donating $1.1 billion in cash can result in a $1.1 billion reduction in tax owed (assuming a marginal tax rate under 100%). Presumably, someone that wealthy gets their marginal tax rate down around the long-term capital gains rate, so they're probably getting about $165 million in tax reduction in exchange for that $1.1 billion donation. (Again, I'm not an accountant. This isn't tax advice.)
(Now, one could buy $1 million in art, get it appraised for $4 million, and if your marginal tax rate is under 25%, get more than $1 million knocked off your tax bill. Like I said, there are some loopholes in valuation, but not for cash and marketable securities.)
That being said, it would be nice to see something where getting your name on a building or an event in your honor would come with some automatic accounting assumption that the value of the publicity is worth at least 25% of the donation. If you want the full write-off, take your name off the building.
> But, if you donate $1.1 billion to an eligible charity (and claim to have gotten nothing in return), then the US government basically pretends that you never made that money, and your tax bill goes down by roughly your marginal tax rate times the size of the donation. There are limits and caveats, but in general, it's a pretty fair treatment.
I think it's highly unfair in that it shifts decisions on social spending from the democratically made decisions of the people to a few wealthy individuals.
The US government gets $0.16B less that it can control in social spending. But in return, a regulated non-profit institution gets $1.1B more in its budget. That's a pretty good tradeoff for the social good.
For an alternative way of looking at things - almost any economist would tell you that it is wise to tax negative externalities and subsidize positive externalities. This is one of the most foundational insights from microeconomics. And charitable giving is the closest to an ideal positive externality that you will find. Person spends money to a cause because it makes him feel good to do so. That transaction ends up helping other 3rd parties as well. Textbook positive externality.
> The US government gets $0.16B less that it can control in social spending. But in return, a regulated non-profit institution gets $1.1B more in its budget.
There's no reason to think the non-profit accomplishes anything or doesn't accomplish negative things. And there is an opportunity cost to the non-profit getting that money rather than, for example, schools.
> There's no reason to think the non-profit accomplishes anything or doesn't accomplish negative things
You could say the exact same thing about how the federal government spends its money.
> And there is an opportunity cost to the non-profit getting that money rather than, for example, schools.
There's also an opportunity cost to the government getting that money, rather than, for example, educational non-profits.
Overall, do I think the federal government would do more good with the same amount of money? Probably. But would the federal government do more good with $0.16B, as opposed to the non-profit sector with $1.1B? I highly doubt it.
> it shifts decisions on social spending from the democratically made decisions of the people to a few wealthy individuals.
To the degree that it's possible to amass wealth in this country without having to coerce people (a la crony capitalism), the money from those few wealthy individuals are a time-delayed, indirect sum of the democratically-made decisions of the people to spend their hard-earned dollars on the products and services those wealth individuals have offered.
Philosophically, it's not all that different from the people's will being indirectly expressed via their elected representatives in government.
There are circumstances where you cant get your name on a building from a donation, there are circumstances that circumvent that requirement. There are circumstances where there is no tax deduction because the donation already occurred from another non profit.
These wealthy people are going to run circles around the the general understanding for another 100 years. Bite the bullet and pay a nonprofit lawyer to understand whats possible.
There are things you can do with asset valuations it just isnt that relevant
To be clear, you're asserting that by donating $1.1 billion in cash, they're likely getting more than that sum multiplied by their marginal tax rate in tax reduction?
However, rich people set up their own 501(c)(3) organizations to which they are boards of to get free flights, hotels, meals, etc from. Basically, instead of spending that money directly, they "spend" it via donations to their 501c3, and their 501c3 sends them on trips
they donate to their own 501c3, and that 501c3 can donate to the next thing that makes the actual headlines. But the important thing for the conversations had here is that their own 501c3 can also invest and grow money. It can have lots and lots of capital firepower. When it uses that, there is no tax deduction for the owner. And in an article or headline, there is no information to extrapolate whether they were motivated by a tax deduction. thats my main point.
From my perspective, People are so desperate to find an issue with a large money movement that it is clouding their ability to understand what to even look at whether there is an abuse, advantage or not.
The flaw with this logic is assuming the money came from their personal balance sheet this year, as opposed to growing in a tax deferred or tax exempt account for decades already
Even Mackenzie Bezos’ donations are not giving her current year tax deductions (some additional ones could, its just not what she's been doing and she's been doing a lot and her methods are very common)
the understanding of what ultrawealthy are doing and why is very far from reality. I think its not productive to grasp for a tax/financial ulterior motive
There's an old Malcolm Gladwell podcast where he interviews (and attempts to skewer) then President of Stanford University John L. Hennessy precisely on the topic of Stanford continuing to solicit donations and increase its ambitions despite having a very large amount of money. I actually think Gladwell's arguments are mostly ridiculous, especially his "accusation" that Hennessy is a "strong link" thinker. But the topic and the interview are interesting.
I think it's important to divide elite schools into undergrad and research.
During undergrad, the benefits are plenty. Brand name, excellent on-campus recruitment, bright and/or highly driven peer students, valuable networking opportunities, challenging coursework if you want it.
But with that said, taking Calc 1 at most elite schools isn't too different from taking calc 1 at some random school way down the (ranking) list. The syllabus will be the same, quality of your lecturer could go either way. At the undergrad level, there's really not much as far as "cutting edge" goes - after all, you're there to learn the fundamentals.
I'd say that it is at the research level that you'll start to see real payoffs. Mostly because these schools tend to attract top talent in the different fields, and have the funds to pay for them. And there's a pipeline between elite academia, and elite private (industry) research groups.
Yes, even 10M for 100 Univ's and make Stanford one of them and then give more to which ever Univ makes most progress to the cause. One would think he would know how to hedge his money across since he is a VC.
Well, there are 300 million of us. With $3 each, we could do what this guy did. So, fine, I'll have a friend give $5 on my behalf to a 2nd tier school. Your turn.
Is that true though? There's the idea of the 10x programmer, and from looking at academia, such thing as a 10x researcher as well.
In biology, the median 100th-ranked university professor is making incredibly incremental contributions (like applying a well known technique to the 300th gene). The average top university professor is making groundbreaking achievements.
I almost view it as the opposite -- if you gave the Watson and Crick lab (back in its heyday) $100, much more real impactful science would result compared to giving 100 me-too scientists $1.
A good programmer doesn’t take suck their talent from other programmers around them. Giving so much to a handful of establishments sucks up the best researchers and projects
With hindsight, yes. It is difficult to predict which field/researcher may become the 10x and which may not. Even an expert panel may have difficulty in judging the prospect of completely novel research. Giving funds only to 10x researchers is akin to investing in stocks that only go up; it sounds appealing, but in reality, how could a funder like NIH or NSF tell who is the 10x?
This comparison is misleading, because it is based on a wrong perspective of how research works:
In programming, if everyone would "just" be good enough, everyone could the elusive 10x programmer.
In research, even if everyone would be the equivalent of the 10x programmer, there is simply often a lot of "boring" work to be done, such as what you dismissed as incredibly incremental contribution, to prepare the foundation for the next breakthrough.
That means that "10x researchers" could, for various reasons including luck, end up in the 100th percentile because they have chosen a field that is not yet ready for a breakthrough (think, e.g. ML researchers slogging through the AI winter, wo didn't stick with ML until hardware became fast enough).
Being the person making the groundbraking achievements means standing "on the shoulder of giants" as someone said a few centuries ago.
I wouldn't be surprised if today there are more "10x researchers" out there than there are breakthroughs waiting to be made.
The most encouraging signal on climate to me is that the “money” seems to finally be waking up.
ESG policies - backed by data monitoring requirements to combat greenwashing from sovereign wealth funds are real, arduous, and creating business and capital incentives with environmental alignment.
Early stage climate tech funds - of which their are many today where there were few even a few years ago - are giving a new generation of entrepreneurs something to focus on beyond monetization efforts.
And of course both company and billionaire branding is shifting to the importance of climate, carbon neutral solutions.
I take this all much less as a sign of altruism but of market efficiency - a shift towards making “saving the planet”profitable is the only model I believe will ever move the needle.
So to that end I applaud this effort - Just signaling viability of a career in the space is a great step in the right direction
ESG scoring agreed is a work in progress currently gameable with greenwashing strategies (carbon credits)
What I am referencing is ESG for fundraising at institutional level which is the money that actually drives the world
Major pensions are prioritizing selecting managers with legit, objectively good esg policies and road maps with hard and enforceable targets that are tied to compensation
ESG stands apart from the various agencies that provide a score. Just because they do a bad job, it doesn't mean ESG is a joke, it just means the scores are a joke.
As it stands stakeholder capitalism is a scam perpetrated by the professional-managerial class on everyone else.
ESG offers a viable career path for people who don't actually like finance but want the money it pays. Plus, you get to tell yourself you're Making the world a better place. What's not to like?
An interesting fact in this vein is that by some estimates 14% of all venture capital is going towards climate tech [0]. Its a pretty broad category and really a hard number to pin down but it is still encouraging. They define "climate tech" as something that:
1. Directly mitigate or remove emissions
2. Help us to adapt to the impacts of climate change
Tell me you care more about your legacy than actually helping the world without telling me you care more about your legacy than actually helping the world.
A lot of people feel that the fact a single human can amass so much money is part of the problem. It incentivizes people to maximize profit and money over all else, sucking up all available cash they possibly can with little regard to how it's generated and what damage they do in the process. Profits are privatized while losses are socialized. Meaning when they start paying their profits back into the public good, are we talking about a net positive gain for society here, or is it just a form of restitution to atone for the damage they caused?
Very tenuous that this specific donation will do that. Most likely it will be used for a building (which requires concrete, a major CO2 contributor), and the rest will go to the university's endowment where it will sit.
They don't even have a nuclear engineering department! They might as well endow a theology seminary; it's the same category of problem-solving.
This is mainly prestige signalling, isn't it? He's a Silicon Valley oligarch, and this is the elite Silicon Valley school. If there's some additional, meritocratic factor specific to Stanford, for this type of billion-dollar gift... what is it?
edit: Perhaps it's synergies with their Natural Gas Initiative [0].
- "The NGI Industrial Affiliate Program offers three levels of membership:"
- "Sustaining Member ($250,000 per year), Corporate Member ($75,000 per year), and Basic Member ($35,000 per year, available to non Fortune 500 companies)"
99% of climate change effort is social signaling, the other 1% is engineers and scientists working on more efficient, cleaner technologies.
What I see here is lots of money for talks, articles, conferences, and “awareness.”
Climate conferences are always held in nice places that you have to fly to. They’d do more for the environment by taking that money and paying people to pick up trash on the side of the highway. Of course, that’s why “climate” is the problem nowadays and not “the environment.” The former is a problem for other people to solve, the latter is a problem you can do something about yourself but requires getting off the couch.
> 99% of climate change effort is social signaling, the other 1% is engineers and scientists working on more efficient, cleaner technologies.
China, India, Russia, Indonesia, Brazil, and Iran combined produce about four times the GHG emissions of the US (and nearly half of all world emissions). Move forward in time 30 years and add in countries with large populations like Pakistan, and it's clear that making alternatives to fossil fuels cheaper is a big deal for climate change. That's not to say the US political situation is of trivial importance, but it's not accurate to say we should ignore everything else.
Why could any of those countries not make the same argument, saying all other countries + the US pollute a lot more than them therefore thats not really their business ?
Not sure if you replied to the wrong person, but that's certainly not anything I said. I was responding to someone that wrote "99% of climate change effort is social signaling, the other 1% is engineers and scientists working on more efficient, cleaner technologies". If you make green technology cheaper, then those technologies will be adopted in the countries I listed. And the most effective way to reduce them in those countries is to make green alternatives cheaper. You're not going to accomplish much if you focus exclusively on reducing US GHG emissions.
If someone is willing to talk about nuclear as option. I know their serious and have done some basic research and maybe willing to negotiate viable solutions.
Most everyone else is either ignorantly repeating what they are told, or trying to make money off them.
> China, India, Russia, Indonesia, Brazil, and Iran combined produce about four times GHG emissions of the US
And? These countries combined have ten times the population of US and still only emit four times that of US. The per capita emissions of West are staggeringly high. Not to forget the west has already developed while these are all developing countries who will pollute more due to their growth phase. The responsibility of dealing with climate change primarily lies with the west only.
I'm not telling you not to hold these beliefs. I fully understand that some people do not believe GHG emissions or climate change are a problem. As a matter of "what the data says", most emissions do not come from the US, and with realistic projections for the next 30 years, a much smaller percentage will come from the US. You're absolutely free to hold the belief that China, India, and other countries should not have to do anything to curtail their emissions.
Thats simply not true. Engineering 'solutions' to climate change like more efficient or cleaner technologies, or things like direct air capture are also social signaling, although more veiled and perhaps self delusional. These solutions are the equivalent of building more lanes on a highway instead of going with public transportation solutions. If anything many of these technologies may end up making climate change demonstrably worse through increased consumption.
The only real solution to climate change is to decrease the rate of consumption and the overall size of the human population. 'Technical' solutions to climate change aren't. They'll simply increase our bandwidth for pollution.
The answers to climate change aren't technical, they're social. Society needs to become comfortable with the idea that doing less, being less productive and less consumptive, are fine. UBI, socialized healthcare, a guarantee of a basic social safety net so people can be very unproductive and still live safe, reasonably comfortable lives is what we need to solve climate change.
Colleges should offer a Bachelor of Science in Social Engineering. It would consist of spending four years writing “social engineering does not work” on a blackboard over and over.
I think there’s room for debate about what “social engineering” means. I’m talking specifically about hoping to solve a problem by convincing people to do something they don’t want to do, whether that’s exercise and lose weight or turn down the heat and put on a sweater to fight climate change.
You can educate people and provide them with low cost, high benefit options. But you can’t change human nature or brow beat people into having different priorities than they do.
> I’m talking specifically about hoping to solve a problem by convincing people to do something they don’t want to do
Ironically, the social engineering project most impactful to global warming exists to give people what they (think they) want, not to force them to do something they don't want to do. They're called suburbs. We made a whole range of living arrangements flat-out illegal, because (most) people express a preference for low-density living. A social engineering project of historical proportions. You're right; we should eliminate it.
People should be allowed to build whatever kind of housing they want to build on property they own and we should eliminate the social engineering scheme that restricts developers to single-family homes in most areas.
Donations are made because of relationships. The donor likely has a relationship with Stanford or leaders at Stanford and has had many conversations with them about what he might donate money for. This is what they came up with.
And, yes, donations are often vanity projects. He will likely get his name on a building, maybe an honorary degree. His name is now forever tied to Stanford.
Stanford's last major foray into this area was "The Global Climate and Energy Project"... a major sponsor was ExxonMobil. As you might guess, that didn't really do much in the way of producing renewable energy alternatives to fossil fuels... more like a green PR initiative. Somehow I don't think oil companies are thrilled about everyone driving EVs and seeing their market share collapse.
I rather doubt this one will be any better. A better option would just be to put $1 billion into a company dedicated to catching up to China on mass-scale monocrystalline PV wafer production for durable, high-efficiency PV panels for both rooftop solar and large-scale installations. Unfortunately neither California's natural gas industry nor the investor-owned utilities are thrilled about that either. Rooftop cuts directly into utility revenue, and replacing natural gas power plants with solar + storage plants makes Sempra and friends very sad.
The United States is more of a petro-state than most people realize, and a rapid transition to renewables (i.e. 3% reduction in fossil fuel production per year, matched by an equivalent increase in renewable energy production per year) is too much economic disruption to contemplate, it seems - although that is what is needed if you wanted to address the climate problem. American academics are not going to do anything on their own about this, as they don't control the funding.
1) In 2021, the United States imported about 8.47 million barrels per day (b/d) of petroleum from 73 countries. (EIA)
2) In 2021, the United States exported about 8.63 million b/d of petroleum to 176 countries and 4 U.S. territories.
The reasons you can't just say, halt exports and halt imports and be 'energy independent' are varied: there's regional demand (oil produced in the Dakotas can't easily get to Los Angeles, etc.) and there's the fact that refineries are built to distill specific grades of crude, you can't just mix-and-match.
Nevertheless, the fact that Obama & Biden, with Republican support, lifted the 1970s era ban on crude oil exports from the USA in 2015 is certainly a major factor in the gas price inflation, a fact neither party nor industry likes to see discussed in the corporate media.
Real 'energy independence' would come from using sunlight and wind, which cannot be embargoed or manipulated by OPEC etc, as the primary energy source.
“Energy independence” just means that energy does not give other nations significant leverage over us.
Isolated self-sufficiency is one way to achieve that, but so is a balanced book of imports and production.
The U.S. today is more energy independent than in the past. To be specific, OPEC cannot do to the U.S. today what it did in the 1970s because they have far less pricing power. As they cut supply to raise prices, domestic fracking projects go back into the black and we increase supply.
I fully support transitioning to renewable energy sources, but it’s not necessary for energy independence. That is one of the least compelling reasons to change.
Doesn't petro-state imply heavy economic dependence on energy sources for government tax revenue? I don't think that's the case in America and if it were we'd see far more federal involvement in the sector even with state run companies and far fewer tax breaks for the industry.
It's an interesting question. Saudi
Arabia alone owns at least USD100bn of US Treasury debt (before custodial holdings via tax havens) [0]. Other Petro states own more
The petrodollar system is based on international trade in oil being denominated in USD. This finances the US deficit (in lieu of taxes) when oil exporters use dollar revenues to buy Treasuries
Not a traditional Petro state... Concepts like fiscal breakeven prices aren't in play. But some shades of gray perhaps
> A better option would just be to put $1 billion into a company dedicated to catching up to China on mass-scale monocrystalline PV wafer production for durable, high-efficiency PV panels for both rooftop solar and large-scale installations.
I'm with you on increasing domestic PV production at scale, but residential rooftop solar is not where you are going to get the most impact in terms of increased renewable generation. Residential rooftop LCOE is always 2-4x the cost of utility scale solar because of the sheer variety of roof types, more inverters per panel, and much higher per-watt soft costs (marketing, site analysis, permitting, etc).
Rooftop solar is good for reducing individual customer bills in many places though. In CA my PV array, which cost about $12k, reduces my annual electric bill by $1700/year, thanks to the rooftop solar-friendly net-metering system. If net metering incentives were reduced, the value proposition in pure $ would go down. These days, the main incentive to get solar PV in CA appears to be:
- Adding it to lower bills before net-metering is phased out (as has been proposed)
- Generating power for an EV
- Pairing with battery backup for power outage preparation
What Gate has done also seems largely a tax avoidance scheme that supports his BioTech and other investments. If you have a foundation which does investments and invest yourself I am sure there are really well worked out ways of avoiding capital gains tax indefinitely, while not giving up control on where any of your money really goes.
sure, it's mildly better than hoarding the money in his investment profile, and is the tiniest step in the right direction for the moral responsibility of billionaires, but nothing about this is effective by any measure against the timescale and enormity of the problem of global warming
did you know that the *entire* nsf budget for the year is only around $8 billion?
'Mr. Doerr joins a growing list of ultrawealthy men donating huge sums of money to the fight against global warming. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos said in 2020 said he was committing $10 billion of his own money to a new initiative he called the Bezos Earth Fund, and last year detailed how some of the money would be spent.
Mr. Bloomberg, the former New York mayor, said in 2019 he would spend $500 million to help close coal-fired power plants. And Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft, has put billions of dollars to work on climate related issues through various efforts, including Breakthrough Energy and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Yet some question whether these philanthropic investments can make a difference when it comes to a 'planetary crisis'.
I can't help feeling v cynical and paranoid about motives here
I too feel somewhat skeptical & cynical... but given the political situation in the US, and specifically the deadlock in the US Senate (filibuster), the philanthropy of billionaires seems like one of the most viable ways towards making progress at this point. It's not ideal, but we don't seem to have a lot of other viable options at this point.
@uncleOxidant (great screen name!) Don't disagree but a weak deadlocked 'democracy'. with uberrich globalists making key decisions and funding them is not a good way forward either. The German National Socialists were great 'green' investors in the 1930's, that didn't end well...
> given the political situation in the US, and specifically the deadlock in the US Senate (filibuster), the philanthropy of billionaires seems like one of the most viable ways towards making progress at this point
It's probably not coincidence that the party that serves the power of the wealthy does things in the Senate to shift power to the wealthy.
> given the political situation in the US, and specifically the deadlock in the US Senate (filibuster), the philanthropy of billionaires seems like one of the most viable ways towards making progress at this point
For anyone wondering, this is not an accident. Billionaires greatly prefer it when they are seen by the public as the only viable solution to progress.
I wonder if he cashed that out in recent days now that his short position is in the money? If so then maybe he doubled (or better) his $500M and he can plow those profits into more philanthropy?
He was trash talking Tesla for a long time because his friend Warren Buffet invested in Chinese copy cats. He could have helped Tesla in 2008 a lot, but now his opinion and money doesn't count that much actually, as there's a healthy clean energy investor base at this point.
> Taking private money and making it public for the purpose of combating a global crisis is objectively a good thing.
It doesn't necessarily work out that way. It can distort the market and consume resources. For example (and IIRC from a journal article about 10 years ago), in western Africa philanthropic funding from a foundation went toward treatment for a disease (AIDS?); their money bought up all the healthcare resources, including medical personnel, diverting them from where they could have saved more lives.
More broadly, that much money is not just economic activity but also power, and it can be misused even with the best intentions.
Is there any negative externality in this particular version? Opening a new school to educate future generations such that they contribute new solutions seems totally positive to me.
> Mr. Bloomberg, the former New York mayor, said in 2019 he would spend $500 million to help close coal-fired power plants.
Did he, or was he just prepping his image for a presidential run? The website (https://www.beyondcarbon.org/) and associated social media accounts have not been updated since he launched his campaign two and a half years ago, and I can't find any specific actions or plans or people. There's quite a bit of information about Mike Bloomberg though. Seems like it was just an issue-specific campaign website.
Breakthrough Energy is venture capital, not philanthropy. It is intended to make a profit. The Gates Foundation doesn't appear to do any climate change work.
Bezos Earth Fund does seem to be actively donating real money to real projects, which is nice. Bezos earns a "could be worse" badge on this particular topic.
IMHO, all the competitors have something that can only make a difference at enormous scale. It's a huge risk to invest in anything that attempts to make a difference in the medium term.
This is great news. We need to find a way to stop the runaway global cooling and warm the planet enough to melt the ice caps. A warmer earth will support a much more robust ecosystem, helping to ensure our survival as a species.
Why not start a college? Does he not want the additional headaches and costs, is he playing status games, does he think Stanford could do a better job running this school than him, or some combination of the three
In addition to the reasons you have listed, it would probably be a big headache to jump through accreditation hurdles, hire staff, find a physical location, and any number of other problems that would distract from the goals he has in mind.
Much harder to start a new successful college than put money in one that's already successful. It takes a very long time to build a successful academic institution (Stanford is 136 years old, MIT 161, Harvard 385, etc.)
There's also the prestige aspect. Stanford carries weight in elite circles, so more bragging rights for the Doerr family I guess. It's why many rich people keep throwing money towards elite universities with tens of billions of dollars in their endowments already.
213 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 202 ms ] threadWe keep waiting for the windmills and batteries to solve the problem, while kicking the can down the road
https://amp.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/03/more-tha...
No, we are basically on a path to burn the same amount of coal in the future (but a larger percentage of our energy will come from other sources).
I’m not a doomer but we aren’t taking this issue seriously at all. The policy solutions exist but the political power isn’t there. I’m starting to think our best chance is a technological leap in carbon capture.
When I was a kid, I remember my uncle introduced me to a guy he worked for who had made his initial fortune way back. It turns out that he bought a company that sold inner tubes for car tires, and when the automakers first moved to tubeless tires, the business owner wanted to sell. So, my uncle's friend bought him out cheap, and then targeted all the buyers of the new cars with tubeless tires. Apparently, the new car buyers didn't trust the tubeless tires yet, and the first place then went was to my uncle's friend to get tubes for their tubeless tires.
The lesson here is that change is hard, and as humans, we aren't very good at it. My guess is that humanity will be kicking the can down the road for quite awhile.
That not true at all. The name of the university can only get you so far. For example, if you have a climate-related degree, can you really compete with Stanford CS majors for a SDE job? Or with ME majors for a product design position?
IMO if you get into Stanford and can pay for the degree, it would be a waste to spend it in a major like that unless you're really passionate and have very specific goals.
"So, basically, investment banking or data science"
Well, those are definitely not "whatever you want".
For this specifically: Yes, depending on your extra curricular activities and interests. And if it was a graduate degree, then yeah almost certainly.
Thankfully there are fewer Stanford CS majors graduating than there are SDE jobs available.
This all goes under the rubric of 'planetary sciences' of which 'earth system science' is a sort of special case. Also means you could work at NASA on Jupiter's moons etc.
> What do your do with a degree in climatology?
I write code, ironically. I'm in the camp that believes degrees aren't _totally_ about what you learn but more about advancing your reasoning and thinking skills and learning how to interact with people (not to say you don't learn anything in school, you definitely do but IMHO it largely depends on what you study).
Why is investing in research at a university less valuable than investing in research in the private sector? HN might have a bias toward the latter, effectively that people should invest more in the HN population.
Would be nice to see hard core innovators do hardcore things.
Like solar, nuclear, carbon sequestration etc..
Absent data, it's difficult to say. There are economies of scale, even if just in experience administering such projects.
https://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/stanford-university/...
https://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/university-of-califo...
The concentration of mega-gifts at the top has very perverse impacts.
Harvard built a $100M building a few years ago that is used by a total of 100 people a year.
Philanthropy combines prestige, PR, and “legacy” in a way that massively overvalued those three vs. any kind of measurable impact.
The alternative you are suggesting is badly, badly needed in the non-profit world.
But the “brand” game has won vs the execution game, esp. in higher Ed.
Which building is that? Not doubting you, just curious.
What a waste.
This seems to apply here.
Universities have degenerated somewhat into being professional sports teams and professional fundraisers.
"Attracting top talent" is nonsense, universities are already full of people so desperate for positions they work nearly for free.
If I had a billion dollars I'd build a university out the best equipment, the cheapest buildings, and a minimum wage for anyone doing academic work of $100k and see how far that got me.
I can remember seeing this in action at Stanford. Companies will fall over themselves and pay anything to have their name associated with absolutely anything that has the name Stanford on it. And the students know this, so they play the game. Every student group, organization, club, etc. no matter how small or meaningless is heavily sponsored by relevant corporate donors as a result.
Edit: link: https://www.henselphelps.com/project/chen-neuroscience-resea...
In general I wish people spent more time looking at alternatives when these huge projects are proposed. For instance, it drives me nuts thinking of all the alternatives when I see making bids to pay billions for the Olympics. That's the kind of money that could turn the whole area into a science Mecca in several different, with a whole host of positive downstream effects locally.
* Tribalism: Humans like people who "are like them", it's easier to relate. Thus, IME, Stanford grads prefer other Stanford-branded people. Or at least crême de la creme Ivy. Especially compared to the plebs and the proles.
* Vanity: Donors find it appealing that the structure will be around for a long time, prominently and proudly emblazoned with the donor's own name. Yes, external validation does feel good. Especially among certain (insecure) types. A truly altruistic and self-assured person makes donations anonymously.
Empire building is a popular pastime among the human species, especially those with power. The rest of us settle for something like Civ, SimCity, or sand castles.
Not the first by a long shot.
(Ahem, pyramids ...)
Gross.
Which building is this?
Academic institutions are also tax-exempt, therefore don't pay any tax on the profits of any endowment or real-estate investment gains. The rise of the ivy-league schools becoming glorified tax-free holding companies, with education side-gigs, corresponds with the bloat in academic administration.
https://observer.com/2006/05/nyu-columbia-make-a-mint-on-rea...
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/higher-ed-administrators-grow...
Why? For tax purposes.
Upon first hearing this I was shocked and disappointed. Over time I've lowered my hopes and expectations, and come to accept it for what it is:
Old, elite, uber-wealthy white men at the top, who want it to stay that way.
https://www.google.com/search?q=Stanford+president
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Marc_Tessier-Lavigne_at...
References:
"The Stanford Empire", by Mercury News
> Stanford's vast holdings. Stanford, Silicon Valley's largest property owner, controls more than 5,000 acres in Palo Alto and unincorporated Santa Clara County. On that land are the university's sprawling campus, a shopping center, tech offices, apartment buildings and entire residential neighborhoods.
> The value of Stanford’s empire is larger than those of Google, Apple and Intel combined.
https://extras.mercurynews.com/whoowns/stanford.html
"How Stanford Came to Dominate the Landscape in Silicon Valley", by KQED
> The value of Stanford's real estate empire is greater than the holdings of Google, Apple and Cisco combined.
https://www.kqed.org/news/11781771/how-stanford-became-the-l...
Anyways, 100 more Nature-level articles about climate change is not going to change the situation if there is no political will (or if it seesaws every 4-8 years at best).
It probably would have been much better to plant $1B worth of trees, or buy $1B of the Brazilian Rain Forest. But for similar reasons that Robert Moses loved bridges and hated tunnels, putting your name on a building at Stanford wins.
But, if you donate $1.1 billion to an eligible charity (and claim to have gotten nothing in return), then the US government basically pretends that you never made that money, and your tax bill goes down by roughly your marginal tax rate times the size of the donation. There are limits and caveats, but in general, it's a pretty fair treatment. I'm pretty sure big donors generally under-report the value of having their name on a building, etc. However, I believe it's nearly impossible to wind up with more money in your pocket post-tax by donating cash instead of keeping the cash. (I'm not an accountant. This isn't tax advice.)
I'm not saying you in particular are claiming people are donating cash out of greed, but the way I hear some people talk about tax write-offs is very misleading. It seems many Americans believe that donating $1.1 billion in cash can result in a $1.1 billion reduction in tax owed (assuming a marginal tax rate under 100%). Presumably, someone that wealthy gets their marginal tax rate down around the long-term capital gains rate, so they're probably getting about $165 million in tax reduction in exchange for that $1.1 billion donation. (Again, I'm not an accountant. This isn't tax advice.)
(Now, one could buy $1 million in art, get it appraised for $4 million, and if your marginal tax rate is under 25%, get more than $1 million knocked off your tax bill. Like I said, there are some loopholes in valuation, but not for cash and marketable securities.)
That being said, it would be nice to see something where getting your name on a building or an event in your honor would come with some automatic accounting assumption that the value of the publicity is worth at least 25% of the donation. If you want the full write-off, take your name off the building.
I think it's highly unfair in that it shifts decisions on social spending from the democratically made decisions of the people to a few wealthy individuals.
For an alternative way of looking at things - almost any economist would tell you that it is wise to tax negative externalities and subsidize positive externalities. This is one of the most foundational insights from microeconomics. And charitable giving is the closest to an ideal positive externality that you will find. Person spends money to a cause because it makes him feel good to do so. That transaction ends up helping other 3rd parties as well. Textbook positive externality.
https://www.economicshelp.org/micro-economic-essays/marketfa...
There's no reason to think the non-profit accomplishes anything or doesn't accomplish negative things. And there is an opportunity cost to the non-profit getting that money rather than, for example, schools.
You could say the exact same thing about how the federal government spends its money.
> And there is an opportunity cost to the non-profit getting that money rather than, for example, schools.
There's also an opportunity cost to the government getting that money, rather than, for example, educational non-profits.
Overall, do I think the federal government would do more good with the same amount of money? Probably. But would the federal government do more good with $0.16B, as opposed to the non-profit sector with $1.1B? I highly doubt it.
To the degree that it's possible to amass wealth in this country without having to coerce people (a la crony capitalism), the money from those few wealthy individuals are a time-delayed, indirect sum of the democratically-made decisions of the people to spend their hard-earned dollars on the products and services those wealth individuals have offered.
Philosophically, it's not all that different from the people's will being indirectly expressed via their elected representatives in government.
I dont really know where to start.
There are circumstances where you cant get your name on a building from a donation, there are circumstances that circumvent that requirement. There are circumstances where there is no tax deduction because the donation already occurred from another non profit.
These wealthy people are going to run circles around the the general understanding for another 100 years. Bite the bullet and pay a nonprofit lawyer to understand whats possible.
There are things you can do with asset valuations it just isnt that relevant
I'm honestly curious what the loopholes would be.
However, rich people set up their own 501(c)(3) organizations to which they are boards of to get free flights, hotels, meals, etc from. Basically, instead of spending that money directly, they "spend" it via donations to their 501c3, and their 501c3 sends them on trips
they donate to their own 501c3, and that 501c3 can donate to the next thing that makes the actual headlines. But the important thing for the conversations had here is that their own 501c3 can also invest and grow money. It can have lots and lots of capital firepower. When it uses that, there is no tax deduction for the owner. And in an article or headline, there is no information to extrapolate whether they were motivated by a tax deduction. thats my main point.
From my perspective, People are so desperate to find an issue with a large money movement that it is clouding their ability to understand what to even look at whether there is an abuse, advantage or not.
All the political will does nothing without research. We need both.
The flaw with this logic is assuming the money came from their personal balance sheet this year, as opposed to growing in a tax deferred or tax exempt account for decades already
Even Mackenzie Bezos’ donations are not giving her current year tax deductions (some additional ones could, its just not what she's been doing and she's been doing a lot and her methods are very common)
the understanding of what ultrawealthy are doing and why is very far from reality. I think its not productive to grasp for a tax/financial ulterior motive
That podcast episode:
https://omny.fm/shows/revisionist-history/my-little-hundred-...
I found a partial transcript of the episode:
https://www.simonsays.ai/blog/my-little-hundred-million-with...
During undergrad, the benefits are plenty. Brand name, excellent on-campus recruitment, bright and/or highly driven peer students, valuable networking opportunities, challenging coursework if you want it.
But with that said, taking Calc 1 at most elite schools isn't too different from taking calc 1 at some random school way down the (ranking) list. The syllabus will be the same, quality of your lecturer could go either way. At the undergrad level, there's really not much as far as "cutting edge" goes - after all, you're there to learn the fundamentals.
I'd say that it is at the research level that you'll start to see real payoffs. Mostly because these schools tend to attract top talent in the different fields, and have the funds to pay for them. And there's a pipeline between elite academia, and elite private (industry) research groups.
https://imgur.com/a/H6vEUsY
Post here when each of you who are concerned have shown your concern through your own action.
Read the first three paragraphs, and then you won't be able to stop.
In biology, the median 100th-ranked university professor is making incredibly incremental contributions (like applying a well known technique to the 300th gene). The average top university professor is making groundbreaking achievements.
I almost view it as the opposite -- if you gave the Watson and Crick lab (back in its heyday) $100, much more real impactful science would result compared to giving 100 me-too scientists $1.
In programming, if everyone would "just" be good enough, everyone could the elusive 10x programmer. In research, even if everyone would be the equivalent of the 10x programmer, there is simply often a lot of "boring" work to be done, such as what you dismissed as incredibly incremental contribution, to prepare the foundation for the next breakthrough. That means that "10x researchers" could, for various reasons including luck, end up in the 100th percentile because they have chosen a field that is not yet ready for a breakthrough (think, e.g. ML researchers slogging through the AI winter, wo didn't stick with ML until hardware became fast enough). Being the person making the groundbraking achievements means standing "on the shoulder of giants" as someone said a few centuries ago.
I wouldn't be surprised if today there are more "10x researchers" out there than there are breakthroughs waiting to be made.
ESG policies - backed by data monitoring requirements to combat greenwashing from sovereign wealth funds are real, arduous, and creating business and capital incentives with environmental alignment.
Early stage climate tech funds - of which their are many today where there were few even a few years ago - are giving a new generation of entrepreneurs something to focus on beyond monetization efforts.
And of course both company and billionaire branding is shifting to the importance of climate, carbon neutral solutions.
I take this all much less as a sign of altruism but of market efficiency - a shift towards making “saving the planet”profitable is the only model I believe will ever move the needle.
So to that end I applaud this effort - Just signaling viability of a career in the space is a great step in the right direction
What I am referencing is ESG for fundraising at institutional level which is the money that actually drives the world
Major pensions are prioritizing selecting managers with legit, objectively good esg policies and road maps with hard and enforceable targets that are tied to compensation
ESG offers a viable career path for people who don't actually like finance but want the money it pays. Plus, you get to tell yourself you're Making the world a better place. What's not to like?
An interesting fact in this vein is that by some estimates 14% of all venture capital is going towards climate tech [0]. Its a pretty broad category and really a hard number to pin down but it is still encouraging. They define "climate tech" as something that:
1. Directly mitigate or remove emissions
2. Help us to adapt to the impacts of climate change
3. Enhance our understanding of the climate.
[0] https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/services/sustainability/publicatio...
0: Establish venture-funded "marketplaces" for various climate-facing tokens to skim value while providing no real value-add.
Wrong lens. Who cares about his ego when he's making a real impact?
This is mainly prestige signalling, isn't it? He's a Silicon Valley oligarch, and this is the elite Silicon Valley school. If there's some additional, meritocratic factor specific to Stanford, for this type of billion-dollar gift... what is it?
edit: Perhaps it's synergies with their Natural Gas Initiative [0].
[0] https://ngi.stanford.edu/
edit 2: That's $1.98 million/year in oil & gas industry funding (adding up the tiers on this pricelist [1]).
[1] https://ngi.stanford.edu/content/corporate-affiliates-progra...
- "The NGI Industrial Affiliate Program offers three levels of membership:"
- "Sustaining Member ($250,000 per year), Corporate Member ($75,000 per year), and Basic Member ($35,000 per year, available to non Fortune 500 companies)"
What I see here is lots of money for talks, articles, conferences, and “awareness.”
Climate conferences are always held in nice places that you have to fly to. They’d do more for the environment by taking that money and paying people to pick up trash on the side of the highway. Of course, that’s why “climate” is the problem nowadays and not “the environment.” The former is a problem for other people to solve, the latter is a problem you can do something about yourself but requires getting off the couch.
China, India, Russia, Indonesia, Brazil, and Iran combined produce about four times the GHG emissions of the US (and nearly half of all world emissions). Move forward in time 30 years and add in countries with large populations like Pakistan, and it's clear that making alternatives to fossil fuels cheaper is a big deal for climate change. That's not to say the US political situation is of trivial importance, but it's not accurate to say we should ignore everything else.
Most everyone else is either ignorantly repeating what they are told, or trying to make money off them.
And? These countries combined have ten times the population of US and still only emit four times that of US. The per capita emissions of West are staggeringly high. Not to forget the west has already developed while these are all developing countries who will pollute more due to their growth phase. The responsibility of dealing with climate change primarily lies with the west only.
The only real solution to climate change is to decrease the rate of consumption and the overall size of the human population. 'Technical' solutions to climate change aren't. They'll simply increase our bandwidth for pollution.
The answers to climate change aren't technical, they're social. Society needs to become comfortable with the idea that doing less, being less productive and less consumptive, are fine. UBI, socialized healthcare, a guarantee of a basic social safety net so people can be very unproductive and still live safe, reasonably comfortable lives is what we need to solve climate change.
I would say reducing the US population would be more effective then reducing human population in an undefined way
You can educate people and provide them with low cost, high benefit options. But you can’t change human nature or brow beat people into having different priorities than they do.
Ironically, the social engineering project most impactful to global warming exists to give people what they (think they) want, not to force them to do something they don't want to do. They're called suburbs. We made a whole range of living arrangements flat-out illegal, because (most) people express a preference for low-density living. A social engineering project of historical proportions. You're right; we should eliminate it.
People should be allowed to build whatever kind of housing they want to build on property they own and we should eliminate the social engineering scheme that restricts developers to single-family homes in most areas.
Why criticize that they're establishing something on the basis of not having something?
And, yes, donations are often vanity projects. He will likely get his name on a building, maybe an honorary degree. His name is now forever tied to Stanford.
https://gcep.stanford.edu/about/exxonmobil.html
I rather doubt this one will be any better. A better option would just be to put $1 billion into a company dedicated to catching up to China on mass-scale monocrystalline PV wafer production for durable, high-efficiency PV panels for both rooftop solar and large-scale installations. Unfortunately neither California's natural gas industry nor the investor-owned utilities are thrilled about that either. Rooftop cuts directly into utility revenue, and replacing natural gas power plants with solar + storage plants makes Sempra and friends very sad.
https://www.pv-magazine-australia.com/2018/04/21/the-weekend...
The United States is more of a petro-state than most people realize, and a rapid transition to renewables (i.e. 3% reduction in fossil fuel production per year, matched by an equivalent increase in renewable energy production per year) is too much economic disruption to contemplate, it seems - although that is what is needed if you wanted to address the climate problem. American academics are not going to do anything on their own about this, as they don't control the funding.
or energy independent, depending on how you want to look at it.
1) In 2021, the United States imported about 8.47 million barrels per day (b/d) of petroleum from 73 countries. (EIA)
2) In 2021, the United States exported about 8.63 million b/d of petroleum to 176 countries and 4 U.S. territories.
The reasons you can't just say, halt exports and halt imports and be 'energy independent' are varied: there's regional demand (oil produced in the Dakotas can't easily get to Los Angeles, etc.) and there's the fact that refineries are built to distill specific grades of crude, you can't just mix-and-match.
Nevertheless, the fact that Obama & Biden, with Republican support, lifted the 1970s era ban on crude oil exports from the USA in 2015 is certainly a major factor in the gas price inflation, a fact neither party nor industry likes to see discussed in the corporate media.
Real 'energy independence' would come from using sunlight and wind, which cannot be embargoed or manipulated by OPEC etc, as the primary energy source.
Isolated self-sufficiency is one way to achieve that, but so is a balanced book of imports and production.
The U.S. today is more energy independent than in the past. To be specific, OPEC cannot do to the U.S. today what it did in the 1970s because they have far less pricing power. As they cut supply to raise prices, domestic fracking projects go back into the black and we increase supply.
I fully support transitioning to renewable energy sources, but it’s not necessary for energy independence. That is one of the least compelling reasons to change.
I don't know the parent commenter (though their name stands out), but on HN, isn't this essentially saying, 'give money to me/us'?
The petrodollar system is based on international trade in oil being denominated in USD. This finances the US deficit (in lieu of taxes) when oil exporters use dollar revenues to buy Treasuries
Not a traditional Petro state... Concepts like fiscal breakeven prices aren't in play. But some shades of gray perhaps
[0] https://ticdata.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-cent...
I'm with you on increasing domestic PV production at scale, but residential rooftop solar is not where you are going to get the most impact in terms of increased renewable generation. Residential rooftop LCOE is always 2-4x the cost of utility scale solar because of the sheer variety of roof types, more inverters per panel, and much higher per-watt soft costs (marketing, site analysis, permitting, etc).
Rooftop solar is good for reducing individual customer bills in many places though. In CA my PV array, which cost about $12k, reduces my annual electric bill by $1700/year, thanks to the rooftop solar-friendly net-metering system. If net metering incentives were reduced, the value proposition in pure $ would go down. These days, the main incentive to get solar PV in CA appears to be:
- Adding it to lower bills before net-metering is phased out (as has been proposed)
- Generating power for an EV
- Pairing with battery backup for power outage preparation
On the other end is the active philanthropy (like what Bill Gates does) which is a lot more effective and shows results faster.
sure, it's mildly better than hoarding the money in his investment profile, and is the tiniest step in the right direction for the moral responsibility of billionaires, but nothing about this is effective by any measure against the timescale and enormity of the problem of global warming
did you know that the *entire* nsf budget for the year is only around $8 billion?
Mr. Bloomberg, the former New York mayor, said in 2019 he would spend $500 million to help close coal-fired power plants. And Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft, has put billions of dollars to work on climate related issues through various efforts, including Breakthrough Energy and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Yet some question whether these philanthropic investments can make a difference when it comes to a 'planetary crisis'.
I can't help feeling v cynical and paranoid about motives here
https://www.amazon.com/Green-Tyranny-Exposing-Totalitarian-I...
It's probably not coincidence that the party that serves the power of the wealthy does things in the Senate to shift power to the wealthy.
For anyone wondering, this is not an accident. Billionaires greatly prefer it when they are seen by the public as the only viable solution to progress.
Exactly how big are all those efforts he's allegedly making to do something about climate change?
I agree.
> Taking private money and making it public for the purpose of combating a global crisis is objectively a good thing.
It doesn't necessarily work out that way. It can distort the market and consume resources. For example (and IIRC from a journal article about 10 years ago), in western Africa philanthropic funding from a foundation went toward treatment for a disease (AIDS?); their money bought up all the healthcare resources, including medical personnel, diverting them from where they could have saved more lives.
More broadly, that much money is not just economic activity but also power, and it can be misused even with the best intentions.
Did he, or was he just prepping his image for a presidential run? The website (https://www.beyondcarbon.org/) and associated social media accounts have not been updated since he launched his campaign two and a half years ago, and I can't find any specific actions or plans or people. There's quite a bit of information about Mike Bloomberg though. Seems like it was just an issue-specific campaign website.
Breakthrough Energy is venture capital, not philanthropy. It is intended to make a profit. The Gates Foundation doesn't appear to do any climate change work.
Bezos Earth Fund does seem to be actively donating real money to real projects, which is nice. Bezos earns a "could be worse" badge on this particular topic.
I assume this is to clean up all the trash Amazon sells?
IMHO, all the competitors have something that can only make a difference at enormous scale. It's a huge risk to invest in anything that attempts to make a difference in the medium term.
[edit - I've also submitted this link to HN - https://www.xprize.org/prizes/elonmusk/articles/meet-the-com... ]
Why not start a college? Does he not want the additional headaches and costs, is he playing status games, does he think Stanford could do a better job running this school than him, or some combination of the three
There's also the prestige aspect. Stanford carries weight in elite circles, so more bragging rights for the Doerr family I guess. It's why many rich people keep throwing money towards elite universities with tens of billions of dollars in their endowments already.