7 ms·

Who will pay to protect tech giants from rising seas?

43 points by stygiansonic 5y ago

nelsondev 5y ago
This article is Activism masquerading as Journalism.
- throwawayboise 5y ago
  Have you read much mainstream news lately?
- breakfastduck 5y ago
  Welcome to the last 10 years
- eplanit 5y ago
  There's no distinction anymore. As of this last week, NPR isn't even trying to hide it anymore: https://www.rt.com/usa/530618-npr-reporters-activists-protest/ https://www.rt.com/usa/530618-npr-reporters-activists-protes...
syspec 5y ago
The government using the taxes paid to the local municipalities and state, because these companies are strong economic drivers for those areas. It's kind of how the NYC metro is not meant to break even, it cost the city money to run it, but it second order effect it is a huge economic driver thus worth footing the bill for
- Grimm1 5y ago
  Kind of off topic but I wish I saw more improvement with the NYC subway for the money that goes into it. As I understand it the system is so behind on updates and repairs that it would take decades to correct and I think there's a lot of graft and mishandling of funds that won't ever be investigated.
gmuslera 5y ago
They are there a very high income company that can or cannot afford that protection for them or their neighbor communities, but what about everywhere else, where there are no tech giant with that possibility? They are making the wrong question. Or some of the companies/entities behind (either causing, financing disinformation campaings, or getting "donations" from them) have to support that cost, or should be done by the government (they didn't take any compromise regarding climate for almost 30 years) or the people will have to deal with that in their own way. And in the last case, the companies are in the same situation. And the worst part is that the problem won't be a couple of feet of sea level rise, in the last month we've seen plenty of floods by extreme weather alone. And not sure how will end the sea level at the end of the decade with the positive feedback on climate, and high temperatures around Greenland.
- bobthepanda 5y ago
  It also pretty much affects anywhere with significant amounts of water. The recent floods in Zhengzhou were pretty bad, and that was hundreds of km inland.
croumet 5y ago
As usual in fascist California, socialize the risk, privatize the profits.
throwslackforce 5y ago
It would probably be easier for Facebook or Google to just reboot their headquarters, in multiple offices, wherever their labor pool migrates when their homes get flooded. For the most part it's just people at desks in buildings, which can be set up anywhere there is electricity. These companies would take a freebie if municipalities decided to mitigate flooding on their behalf, but it wouldn't end up being an existential issue for them to just move elsewhere if things became untenable.
- leoh 5y ago
  Just as plausible they would seek to protect their existing investments, which could become increasingly valuable due to increasingly limited shoreline protected from weather volatility, while also helping surrounding communities. Win/win.
gwbrooks 5y ago
No matter what you think about climate change, that subhead is a rookie mistake and a false dichotomy: The private companies are taxpayers.
- samename 5y ago
  Tech companies generally get away with paying less than their fair share: https://fortune.com/2019/12/06/big-tech-taxes-google-facebook-amazon-apple-netflix-microsoft/ https://fortune.com/2019/12/06/big-tech-taxes-google-faceboo...
  - username90 5y ago
    10 billion a year in global tax avoidance for those tech companies combined doesn't sound like a lot considering their revenue is around 600 billion a year. Also consider that all the workers are also tax payers and they want the company to continue existing, their taxes would also go towards protecting the bay. Their tax dollars wouldn't exist in California if those tech companies weren't there.
    - asutekku 5y ago
      10 billion a year of tax money can fund a lot of stuff. Just because it is a fraction of a 600 billion does not make it somehow better.
      - username90 5y ago
        It is across the entire world, it wouldn't be used in the bay area. They already pay taxes properly for all the workers and buildings they have in the bay area, if that isn't enough then they ought to raise those taxes since they should cover the cost of operating there.
        breakfastduck 5y ago
        So it's not useful because it wouldn't benefit the bay area? In fact, it's from places all over the world, significantly poorer places, where the money would stretch even further. You're making it sound even worse.
paulpauper 5y ago
The same way any other infrastructure is paid for?
baggy_trough 5y ago
25 or 50 years from now those companies might not be anywhere close to the bay, if they still exist.
trhway 5y ago
MV, EPA and MP becoming Venice. Giving the unstoppably rising price of real estate nobody is going to move away from such a valuable land, even if it is covered by 3 feet of water (to illustrate - imagine the gold rush if real estate development in the shallow waters of the Bay would get allowed today). And once we get used to building in water i can see a new SF built few miles off the Ocean beach :) It can possibly be a future demand generator for various VTOL, human and package carrying, developments around. Google even has its own - KittyHawk. By the time of flooding we'll have batteries improved another order, automated air traffic management, etc.
- eloff 5y ago
  It's cheaper still to build barriers, especially since the sea level rise is gradual. It's just that if you think of what we're going to spend worldwide to mitigate the harms of sea level rise, it seems incredibly stupid to be burning subsidized fossil fuels. That's without even factoring in the other problems climate change will bring. A proper carbon taxing scheme with tariffs on countries that don't play along would make so much sense. One way or another the bill will be paid. Nature is a relentless debt collector.
  - trhway 5y ago
    >It's cheaper still to build barriers for some definition of cheaper. For full cost you need to factor in political costs of implementing such a a collective action as well as opportunity costs. And once built it needs to be maintained. It requires continuous involvement into political fight to insure that the maintenance is happening to avoid Katrina type situations. The implicit threat of non-maintenance becomes a tool of political blackmail and pressure. It makes for high-risk business environment which is just bad for business. >it seems incredibly stupid to be burning subsidized fossil fuels. well, removing the subsidies and decreasing the fossil fuel burn is an immediately available very low cost collective action to slow climate change and delay water rise... We can see how it's been going so far. >A proper carbon taxing scheme with tariffs on countries that don't play along would make so much sense. Russia for example has all the sanctions and tariffs (and when there is no tariff imposed from outside, Russia usually takes care about that by having self-inflicted inside tariff there :) so it is hard to make much more, and Russia is anyway going full-steam into that warmer future (the global warming was taught in middle school even back in 198x in USSR) pumping oil and gas like crazy. Many Russian territories are becoming much more conductive for living and doing agriculture there. Short of WWIII there is not much can be done here (and Russia is actively building bases in the North and Far East as well as new strategic weapons system - the point is that they don't bet much on global international cooperation :). I'm pointing at Russia because i know it better than other countries, and of course it may be that Russia is large outlier, yet i somehow think that a number of other countries are also not betting much on successful global international cooperation in particular when it comes to global warming.
PicassoCTs 5y ago
I wonder if some particular hard to establish fabs are going to move into market disturbance resistant vessels. Basically move the chipplant into an old aircraft carrier, stabilize in production mode with pillars and piers - and thus be encapsulated from local market turmoils, international politics and local politicians.Seasteading, without the sea, but all the negotiation benefits of mobility.
- zrail 5y ago
  There are no old aircraft carriers. They get turned into museums or scrapped.
  - selectodude 5y ago
    An aircraft carrier costs about $10bn. It's doable.
    - PicassoCTs 5y ago
      If you are not picky, a left-over unfinnished one from the sovjet-union could be had for 20 million. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_aircraft_carrier_Liaoning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_aircraft_carrier_Liaon...
- Marazan 5y ago
  You can't run a fab in a ship for a large number of reasons.
coldtea 5y ago
The public, through the state, as always.
okareaman 5y ago
I live near Facebook and Google. It's doesn't seem to me much of a task to build dikes. Those trillion dollar companies can pay for it themselves Costs of sea dikes – regressions and uncertainty estimates (2017) https://nhess.copernicus.org/articles/17/765/2017/nhess-17-765-2017.pdf https://nhess.copernicus.org/articles/17/765/2017/nhess-17-7...
- nomoreplease 5y ago
  According to the article, the ones they built don’t meet federal safety standards. This is probably why it seems easy.
worker767424 5y ago
Kind of a weird question to ask with how slowly the sea level is rising and how ephemeral relevancy in tech can be. Remember that Facebook and Google are in old Sun and SGI buildings.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
ur-whale 5y ago
Gosh that's a terribly bad design of a website.
- reilly3000 5y ago
  How so?
modshatereality 5y ago
last time this was posted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27970880 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27970880 what kind of fool tries to fight against the ocean, and bill the rest of society for it?
- umvi 5y ago
  The Netherlands?
anonuser123456 5y ago
Why not just levy a bond on property in the affected areas?
jefftk 5y ago
The article asks who should pay to build dikes that keep the water out of Silicon Valley. Instead of building dikes, though, we should fill the Bay in: https://jefftk.com/p/make-more-land https://jefftk.com/p/make-more-land
- ip26 5y ago
  I wonder what happens to the Bay Area's beloved moderate climate when the Bay, filled with the very cool water of the Pacific, is gone?
  - ithkuil 5y ago
    The area proposed is the part south of the dumbarton bridge which accounts for only a portion of the bay area.
rebelos 5y ago
One should ask (rhetorically) why these outlets seem to have an incel-like obsession with esoteric Big Tech stories when there are an abundance of more pressing and pertinent matters they could cover.
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  Journalism seeks lenses and frames for its stories. Tech giants are both known and high profiles, as well as illustrating burden-of-payment issues and the question "if they can't afford this then who can?"
unearth3d 5y ago
Wiser to retreat (but retreat unpalatable for USians). Make corps pay directly. If govt pays it's just socialized cost, with no impetus to move.
reilly3000 5y ago
I quite enjoyed the pictorial introduction on mobile. Props to the NPR digital team; mobile-first storytelling par excellence.

43 points by stygiansonic 5y ago

nelsondev 5y ago

This article is Activism masquerading as Journalism.

throwawayboise 5y ago
Have you read much mainstream news lately?
breakfastduck 5y ago
Welcome to the last 10 years
eplanit 5y ago
There's no distinction anymore. As of this last week, NPR isn't even trying to hide it anymore: https://www.rt.com/usa/530618-npr-reporters-activists-protest/ https://www.rt.com/usa/530618-npr-reporters-activists-protes...

syspec 5y ago

The government using the taxes paid to the local municipalities and state, because these companies are strong economic drivers for those areas. It's kind of how the NYC metro is not meant to break even, it cost the city money to run it, but it second order effect it is a huge economic driver thus worth footing the bill for

Grimm1 5y ago
Kind of off topic but I wish I saw more improvement with the NYC subway for the money that goes into it. As I understand it the system is so behind on updates and repairs that it would take decades to correct and I think there's a lot of graft and mishandling of funds that won't ever be investigated.

gmuslera 5y ago

They are there a very high income company that can or cannot afford that protection for them or their neighbor communities, but what about everywhere else, where there are no tech giant with that possibility? They are making the wrong question. Or some of the companies/entities behind (either causing, financing disinformation campaings, or getting "donations" from them) have to support that cost, or should be done by the government (they didn't take any compromise regarding climate for almost 30 years) or the people will have to deal with that in their own way. And in the last case, the companies are in the same situation. And the worst part is that the problem won't be a couple of feet of sea level rise, in the last month we've seen plenty of floods by extreme weather alone. And not sure how will end the sea level at the end of the decade with the positive feedback on climate, and high temperatures around Greenland.

bobthepanda 5y ago
It also pretty much affects anywhere with significant amounts of water. The recent floods in Zhengzhou were pretty bad, and that was hundreds of km inland.

croumet 5y ago

As usual in fascist California, socialize the risk, privatize the profits.

throwslackforce 5y ago

It would probably be easier for Facebook or Google to just reboot their headquarters, in multiple offices, wherever their labor pool migrates when their homes get flooded. For the most part it's just people at desks in buildings, which can be set up anywhere there is electricity. These companies would take a freebie if municipalities decided to mitigate flooding on their behalf, but it wouldn't end up being an existential issue for them to just move elsewhere if things became untenable.

leoh 5y ago
Just as plausible they would seek to protect their existing investments, which could become increasingly valuable due to increasingly limited shoreline protected from weather volatility, while also helping surrounding communities. Win/win.

gwbrooks 5y ago

No matter what you think about climate change, that subhead is a rookie mistake and a false dichotomy: The private companies are taxpayers.

samename 5y ago
Tech companies generally get away with paying less than their fair share: https://fortune.com/2019/12/06/big-tech-taxes-google-facebook-amazon-apple-netflix-microsoft/ https://fortune.com/2019/12/06/big-tech-taxes-google-faceboo...
- username90 5y ago
  10 billion a year in global tax avoidance for those tech companies combined doesn't sound like a lot considering their revenue is around 600 billion a year. Also consider that all the workers are also tax payers and they want the company to continue existing, their taxes would also go towards protecting the bay. Their tax dollars wouldn't exist in California if those tech companies weren't there.
  - asutekku 5y ago
    10 billion a year of tax money can fund a lot of stuff. Just because it is a fraction of a 600 billion does not make it somehow better.
    - username90 5y ago
      It is across the entire world, it wouldn't be used in the bay area. They already pay taxes properly for all the workers and buildings they have in the bay area, if that isn't enough then they ought to raise those taxes since they should cover the cost of operating there.
      - breakfastduck 5y ago
        So it's not useful because it wouldn't benefit the bay area? In fact, it's from places all over the world, significantly poorer places, where the money would stretch even further. You're making it sound even worse.

paulpauper 5y ago

The same way any other infrastructure is paid for?

baggy_trough 5y ago

25 or 50 years from now those companies might not be anywhere close to the bay, if they still exist.

trhway 5y ago

MV, EPA and MP becoming Venice. Giving the unstoppably rising price of real estate nobody is going to move away from such a valuable land, even if it is covered by 3 feet of water (to illustrate - imagine the gold rush if real estate development in the shallow waters of the Bay would get allowed today). And once we get used to building in water i can see a new SF built few miles off the Ocean beach :) It can possibly be a future demand generator for various VTOL, human and package carrying, developments around. Google even has its own - KittyHawk. By the time of flooding we'll have batteries improved another order, automated air traffic management, etc.

eloff 5y ago
It's cheaper still to build barriers, especially since the sea level rise is gradual. It's just that if you think of what we're going to spend worldwide to mitigate the harms of sea level rise, it seems incredibly stupid to be burning subsidized fossil fuels. That's without even factoring in the other problems climate change will bring. A proper carbon taxing scheme with tariffs on countries that don't play along would make so much sense. One way or another the bill will be paid. Nature is a relentless debt collector.
- trhway 5y ago
  >It's cheaper still to build barriers for some definition of cheaper. For full cost you need to factor in political costs of implementing such a a collective action as well as opportunity costs. And once built it needs to be maintained. It requires continuous involvement into political fight to insure that the maintenance is happening to avoid Katrina type situations. The implicit threat of non-maintenance becomes a tool of political blackmail and pressure. It makes for high-risk business environment which is just bad for business. >it seems incredibly stupid to be burning subsidized fossil fuels. well, removing the subsidies and decreasing the fossil fuel burn is an immediately available very low cost collective action to slow climate change and delay water rise... We can see how it's been going so far. >A proper carbon taxing scheme with tariffs on countries that don't play along would make so much sense. Russia for example has all the sanctions and tariffs (and when there is no tariff imposed from outside, Russia usually takes care about that by having self-inflicted inside tariff there :) so it is hard to make much more, and Russia is anyway going full-steam into that warmer future (the global warming was taught in middle school even back in 198x in USSR) pumping oil and gas like crazy. Many Russian territories are becoming much more conductive for living and doing agriculture there. Short of WWIII there is not much can be done here (and Russia is actively building bases in the North and Far East as well as new strategic weapons system - the point is that they don't bet much on global international cooperation :). I'm pointing at Russia because i know it better than other countries, and of course it may be that Russia is large outlier, yet i somehow think that a number of other countries are also not betting much on successful global international cooperation in particular when it comes to global warming.

PicassoCTs 5y ago

I wonder if some particular hard to establish fabs are going to move into market disturbance resistant vessels. Basically move the chipplant into an old aircraft carrier, stabilize in production mode with pillars and piers - and thus be encapsulated from local market turmoils, international politics and local politicians.Seasteading, without the sea, but all the negotiation benefits of mobility.

zrail 5y ago
There are no old aircraft carriers. They get turned into museums or scrapped.
- selectodude 5y ago
  An aircraft carrier costs about $10bn. It's doable.
  - PicassoCTs 5y ago
    If you are not picky, a left-over unfinnished one from the sovjet-union could be had for 20 million. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_aircraft_carrier_Liaoning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_aircraft_carrier_Liaon...
Marazan 5y ago
You can't run a fab in a ship for a large number of reasons.

coldtea 5y ago

The public, through the state, as always.

okareaman 5y ago

I live near Facebook and Google. It's doesn't seem to me much of a task to build dikes. Those trillion dollar companies can pay for it themselves Costs of sea dikes – regressions and uncertainty estimates (2017) https://nhess.copernicus.org/articles/17/765/2017/nhess-17-765-2017.pdf https://nhess.copernicus.org/articles/17/765/2017/nhess-17-7...

nomoreplease 5y ago
According to the article, the ones they built don’t meet federal safety standards. This is probably why it seems easy.

worker767424 5y ago

Kind of a weird question to ask with how slowly the sea level is rising and how ephemeral relevancy in tech can be. Remember that Facebook and Google are in old Sun and SGI buildings.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

ur-whale 5y ago

Gosh that's a terribly bad design of a website.

reilly3000 5y ago
How so?

modshatereality 5y ago

last time this was posted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27970880 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27970880 what kind of fool tries to fight against the ocean, and bill the rest of society for it?

umvi 5y ago
The Netherlands?

anonuser123456 5y ago

Why not just levy a bond on property in the affected areas?

jefftk 5y ago

The article asks who should pay to build dikes that keep the water out of Silicon Valley. Instead of building dikes, though, we should fill the Bay in: https://jefftk.com/p/make-more-land https://jefftk.com/p/make-more-land

ip26 5y ago
I wonder what happens to the Bay Area's beloved moderate climate when the Bay, filled with the very cool water of the Pacific, is gone?
- ithkuil 5y ago
  The area proposed is the part south of the dumbarton bridge which accounts for only a portion of the bay area.

rebelos 5y ago

One should ask (rhetorically) why these outlets seem to have an incel-like obsession with esoteric Big Tech stories when there are an abundance of more pressing and pertinent matters they could cover.

dredmorbius 5y ago
Journalism seeks lenses and frames for its stories. Tech giants are both known and high profiles, as well as illustrating burden-of-payment issues and the question "if they can't afford this then who can?"

unearth3d 5y ago

Wiser to retreat (but retreat unpalatable for USians). Make corps pay directly. If govt pays it's just socialized cost, with no impetus to move.

reilly3000 5y ago

I quite enjoyed the pictorial introduction on mobile. Props to the NPR digital team; mobile-first storytelling par excellence.