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The world does not need more Mark Zuckerbergs, it needs millions of small and mid-size businesses working on the build out of low carbon energy sources. Convert
by rpmcmurphy 9y ago
The world does not need more Mark Zuckerbergs, it needs millions of small and mid-size businesses working on the build out of low carbon energy sources. Converting the world electricity supply to run off renewable sources will require tens of trillions of dollars of investment over a period of decades. It's not a small opportunity, but unlike the app economy, it's not a winner take all market. This is mostly a good thing, although we won't see many overnight billionaires from it.
- caust1c 9y agoI agree the future is built on small businesses. But to have the most impact on the environment we could all just stop eating so much meat.
- landryraccoon 9y ago> we could all just stop eating so much meat. Sounds promising. Maybe you can build a small or medium sized organization around trying to make that happen.
- apoverton 9y agoImpossible Foods is a startup working on this mission. They have a really tasty product too. http://impossiblefoods.com/about/ http://impossiblefoods.com/about/
- bobsman123 9y agoBut it’s not meat, so I won’t eat it. I need to eat 4000 calories a day and a lot of that needs to come from meat.
- auxym 9y agoHeck, even replacing beef by chicken or farmed fish is a lot less resource intensive.
- b4lancesh33t 9y agoTravelling less is much more important. Skip that vacation to Europe or Asia if you really want to have an impact on your footprint. Just one such trip dominates the impact of eating meat.
- devmunchies 9y ago> Just one such trip dominates the impact of eating meat. impact of eating meat for how long? one year? I know that going vegan for a year is better than getting an electric car.
- wavefunction 9y agoYou could do both though.
- tertius 9y agoThe end your argument leads to suicide. Let's do what's needed not what to utmost but useless.
- DamonHD 9y ago"... four widely applicable high-impact (i.e. low emissions) actions with the potential to contribute to systemic change and substantially reduce annual personal emissions: having one fewer child (an average for developed countries of 58.6 tonnes CO2-equivalent (tCO2e) emission reductions per year), living car-free (2.4 tCO2e saved per year), avoiding airplane travel (1.6 tCO2e saved per roundtrip transatlantic flight) and eating a plant-based diet (0.8 tCO2e saved per year). These actions have much greater potential to reduce emissions than commonly promoted strategies like comprehensive recycling (four times less effective than a plant-based diet) or changing household lightbulbs (eight times less)." http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa7541/meta http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa7541/m...
- DamonHD 9y agoBTW, compared to many of my peers I have done all four. http://www.earth.org.uk/ http://www.earth.org.uk/ I'm definitely not strictly veggie: I just wolfed down a nearly free burger when offered! And though I haven't flown for years, I may need to visit China once or more over the next couple of years.
- thinkloop 9y agoI prefer figuring out how to incorporate the externalities instead of banning/quitting things. Meat at twice the price would probably solve the problem.
- EGreg 9y agoYeah good luck achieving that using pure capitalism. Unless you liberate all the farm animals by buying them out. You need regulations to prevent factory farming!
- taysic 9y agoWe can start by removing subsidies. Amount US taxpayers spend yearly to subsidize meat and dairy : $38 billion To subsidize fruits and vegetables : $17 million US retail price of a pound of chicken in 1935 (adjusted for inflation) : $5.07 In 2011 : $1.34 Pounds of chicken eaten annually per American in 1935 : 9 In 2011 : 56 Revenue collected by US fishing industry per pound of fish caught : $0.59 Portion of this figure funded by taxpayers as subsidies : $0.28 https://meatonomics.com/2013/08/22/meatonomics-index/ https://meatonomics.com/2013/08/22/meatonomics-index/
- tertius 9y agoComparing current day consumption to a single year in the past reeks of bias.
- taysic 9y agoWhat kind of bias? I copy pasted a cluster of lines from that page, but the sources themselves are well documented, mainly from the gov itself. Anyway here's another source that shows that meat consumption has dramatically increased since the 1920s, though that wasn't my central point: http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2012/06/27/155527365/visualizing-a-nation-of-meat-eaters http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2012/06/27/155527365/vis...
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- odiroot 9y agoWe could stop flying, driving and buying electronics from Asia. Are you willing to do it?
- cubano 9y agoWhy would we do that when are bodies are specifically evolved for eating both vegetables and meat? I, for one at least, consider along the millions of years that evolution tried a version of homo sapiens that couldn't eat meat, and it was selected against...why would we now attempt to overturn the apparent wisdom of that selection?
- majewsky 9y agoQuoting from the collective wisdom of HN here: Because it doesn't scale.
- rdiddly 9y agoOh crap, you summed up my long-ass comment in 4 words! "I've been disrupted by a leaner competitor!"
- vintageseltzer 9y agoI don't think they're saying we should stop eating all meat — just that it should be significantly reduced. That's pretty much a no-brainer for our health, for the environment and to reduce the suffering of millions of animals at the hands of the industrial livestock industry. Personally, I used to eat meat multiple times a day, and now I only eat it once or twice a week. It has really improved my life. I think everyone should try it.
- n4r9 9y agoThis is the classic "appeal to nature" fallacy. On top of that, we don't know much about the diet of ancient humans, including how often they actually got to eat meat. Natural selection isn't wise, it's just an uncaring response to the environment. The environment has changed dramatically.
- tertius 9y agoIt's not wise no, but it puts us where we are. Generic engineering is all the tool that we have to fight ur and we're not so good at that.
- rpedela 9y agoPreaching abstinence has never worked. It didn't work for sex and it is not going to work for meat-eating. The right question/attitude is how can we have an abundance of meat while protecting the environment? One possible solution is lab-grown meat and if that doesn't work then we need to invent some other solution that produces abundance with minimal cost to the environment.
- walshemj 9y agoand why do you think that? a lot of the so call gig economy employees are "small businesses" or at least that's what ubber et all say
- kloncks 9y agoWhy do you not think the world needs SMBs over larger corporations with more resources? Are there any economic study or more academic writings on this topic. I'd be curious.
- maxxxxx 9y agoFor one it would be a major factor in reducing income inequality. Large companies are designed to funnel profits to relatively few people. I also strongly believe we would see more innovation and generally a more resilient economy.
- ghthor 9y agoThis is merely because of the structure that has been dominate for organizing large corporations. It is authoritarian heirarchy, which is essentially the kings of old. We need new ways of organizing our companies, new ways of empowering the employees, and better ways of distributing and holding the value of the company among more equal ownership proportions. This is a tough sell, but I think this period of history will go down as a dark age of freedom in the private sector and the next age will be the empowerment of individuals as the owners and decision makers in large organizations.
- lovich 9y agoI agree with you about the authoritatianism in large corporations currently, but what makes you think the future will be more free? The internet looked like it might help for a while, but it's currently being constricted by the ISPs and corporations like Facebook and Google, while more and more data is being tracked about each person at every moment. Authoritarianism broke down many times because you couldn't track what everyone doing and eventually someone managed to make a plan to fight against you. Information technology is just making it easier for authoritarians to maintain control
- rpmcmurphy 9y agoIf you take solar arrays as an example, someone needs to do the build out. That someone is likely to be a local or regional company that hires local workers. Planning and construction accounts for a significant fraction of project costs as materials costs have plummeted, so this is money that ends up being recirculated in the local economy. Of course there will be large companies in the mix, but there won't be a network effect that results in one company owning the whole industry like Facebook, which is a good thing.
- Retric 9y agoThe current trend is to transition ~all electricity generation to renewable because they cost less. Part of this is because interest rates are so low, but cars also seem headed in that direction. (2.5% of new car sales worldwide, dropping prices and rapidly growing sales.) So, I don't know if we actually need to change much at this point. EX: Per person US emissions are down ~18% since 2000. We are on tack to hit 50% drop reasonably quickly.
- perlpimp 9y agothats the secret of robustness of German economy.
- samstave 9y agoWhat absolutely astounds me is how Facebook literally has failed to offer anything of substance to empower people from their massive user base. For example, it should be "three clicks and you're in" to found a virtual company and state "this is the problem we are going to solve, who's with me" - and another person from across the globe should be able to say "heck yeah let's do this" and then Facebook would say "that sounds great we will host your site/app/whatever and when you show traction on that problem you will hit level 1 funding of "X" and so on and so on..." Facebook has the daily attention of over a billion people they claim, yet they literally just steal their energy and provide no building power. Start a fucking economy and empower people unlucky enough to be born in a far reaching place such as the Congo but smart enough to know how to solve various problems affecting many. Facebook is not making the world a better place until they do something like this.
- abraae 9y agoI don't know why it astounds you. Facebook is a business. I doubt they spend much time in the board meetings pondering what they are doing for the planet. Instead I'd guess its all about mobile clickthrough rates and ROI on recent acquisitions.
- samstave 9y agoI'm astounded at what a bullshit business it is.
- lioeters 9y agoI agree with your sentiment - they have the potential to truly contribute to "making the world a better place", yet seem to be blinded by their narrow focus, or lack of vision..