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This is Gustaf from YC. I wrote the first Carbon Removal RFS. Planting tree is actually a great carbon removal technology. Unfortunately most forest owners in

by gustaf 8y ago

This is Gustaf from YC. I wrote the first Carbon Removal RFS. Planting tree is actually a great carbon removal technology. Unfortunately most forest owners in the world don't know or don't have incentive to care the about the carbon impact the forest have on the climate. Biggest reason forests are taken down is to grow cattle for beef. If you are working on a startup to reverse this we'd like to fund it too

ISL 8y ago
If you'd like to fund trees, one could start buying land and start protecting trees. Spending that money on intensive lobbying and forest advocacy in rapidly-deforesting countries could have an impact, too. The trick, of course, is that neither of these techniques compound for the individual nor a startup. They are pure charity for the planet.
- abledon 8y ago
  we need a black mirror-esque social credit score system where based on the individuals revenue, and what corporation they work for they have a 'tree quota' they need to fulfill. this could be hours volunteered at a global tree planting foundation, $$ donated to public works companies who plant the trees. I suppose if someone only made a small amount of $ and hid the rest behind their corporation , corporations would also have to be responsible in the system and donate $ to plant trees. website would be something like tree.global ... we need some way to tie all the world (or atleast continents) together under one government, a .global domain name or something. EDIT: after reading other comments on how trees arent the greatest solution, replace trees with the best option and tie it to a continent wide / global wide black mirror credit score system.
- francisofascii 8y ago
  So does anyone know why this isn't happening more? Surely there are plenty of super wealthy tech titans, Hollywood stars, etc. that care about climate change. They could buy up rural land that is suitable for forestry and start planting trees, or prevent deforestation. Even small time donors could make an impact. Land in the US is cheap, right? What am I missing?
  - PeterisP 8y ago
    Land isn't that cheap compared to the (not that large) effect, especially if we want that effect to be meaningful in the short term. Buying land and planting trees there will cost something like $2000 per acre and retain something like one ton of CO2 per acre per year (an order of magnitude estimate - depending on details both the cost and CO2 effect can be very different). Industrial carbon capture at power plants can do that for something like 70$ per ton. That's much cheaper than forestry, but that's still not good enough. ycombinator is obviously looking for technologies that scale better than these existing approaches, something that might achieve large scale carbon removal at maybe $10/ton or less, at which stage the option "just pay a lot of money to reverse the effect of our emissions" might be plausibly considered affordable to our society.
    - ed_balls 8y ago
      Why do you want to buy the land? Raise the money for seedling, get volunteers/robots to plant them. Pay people to maintain trees on land (which should require 0 effort). You can come up with some clever designs to make it a tourist attraction and make some extra cash. Plenty of room for improvements. Let say you can have 100 000 trees per square km. If 40 trees gives you 1 ton of carbon per year then spending $25 000 gives you $10/ton.
      - PeterisP 8y ago
        Well, because to the first approximation pretty much all land is used - any land thats suitable to be a forest but is not already a forest is only that way because it's used for grazing or farming, otherwise it would overgrow naturally (though not as efficiently as with planting). If you want to increase the amount of woodland, you have to decrease the amount of pastures or farmland, so you have to either buy that land from the previous owner (because they won't be able to graze or plant there anymore) or take it from them by force.
        ed_balls 8y ago
        I pretty sure that are that 10 mln km^2 around the word that is not use (Canada, Alaska, Syberia and patches of land around the world)
- 52-6F-62 8y ago
  Also is this a suggestion that a company that did just this would be accepted and funded? That's an interesting option, but I wonder how a company might sustain itself doing this. Lease land to eco-friendly activities like zipline adventures or something? Also sounds like a good reason for expansion of National Parks services.
- buzzy_hacker 8y ago
  Right. And that charity is https://www.coolearth.org/ https://www.coolearth.org/. They don't buy land but they protect trees.
- samstave 8y ago
  Actually, my idea would be the following: 1. Automate tree/crop planting 2. Reform regulations stipulating that planting of trees/crops/plants should be required on any and all uninhabited lands, as a matter of "imminent domain" regardless of the land owner. Perhaps even as a tax incentive to land owners. 3. The development of a maintenance and management policy and system around all that is planted 4. In conjunction with the RFS for flooding deserts, develop a multi-stage water transfer to desert desalinization ponds, then to be used in irrigation of the tree planting efforts. We already have autonomous farming combines with excellent ability to harvest crops and plant seed. They should be put to use at scale in panting trees. Further, we could make an effort to employ the vast amounts of humans with little opportunity to be productive to build, plant and deploy a massive effort such as this. We dont need to try to do everything with robots, when we have millions and millions of humans. If we are so progressive and smart, maybe learning how to manage a labor force in the millions to accomplish a great work such as terraforming a desert is someting we should attempt again.
  - aoner 8y ago
    RE: 1. Automate tree/crop planting: https://www.biocarbonengineering.com/ https://www.biocarbonengineering.com/ These guys use drones to shoot tree seeds in the ground. Also regarding terraforming a dessert, I think one of the biggest problems with is the number of water needed in the area, but I do think that this will be a really interesting part of the solution. Maybe the increase of land prices due to the decrease of arable land might make such ventures more profitable. There's a great ted talk about reversing desertification: https://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_world_s_deserts_and_reverse_climate_change/transcript?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_worl...
    - thinkling 8y ago
      Around here, tree farms replant by hiring people who plant hundreds to thousands trees per day per person and are paid for piece-work, a fraction of a dollar (~$0.20?) per treelet planted. Given that you need to do this once every 25-40 years (maturity cycle of the tree), is doing it with drones really that big a win?
- schiffern 8y ago
  >The trick, of course, is that neither of these techniques compound for the individual nor a startup. They are pure charity for the planet. "Doesn't concentrate wealth exponentially; BZZT rejected!" At some point, we apparently forgot that wealth/power inequality itself massively contributes to environmental problems. * If you have no political power, you can't defend yourself and your land from pollution. * If a large portion of the society has no political power, a large portion of the society cannot defend themselves and their land from pollution. * In a society with extreme wealth, the price mechanism can't "kick in" to protect increasingly-scarce renewable resources (ie saving a species from extinction). Donella Meadows gives a much better explanation than I can, using fisheries as an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMmChiLZZHg&t=18m48s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMmChiLZZHg&t=18m48s
  - schiffern 8y ago
    Better timecode link (the relevant comments are here in Part 2, but the whole thing is worth watching): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuIoego-xVc&t=10m30s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuIoego-xVc&t=10m30s
- Pfhreak 8y ago
  I'm seriously considering doing this myself. I've got some money set aside, and a smallish group (~20) people who are interested in contributing time, smaller amounts, etc. I'm no tech billionaire, but there's definitely areas where I could buy a few dozen acres of land. I've been researching what's involved in reforesting, and it looks like a ton of work and a non-trivial cost. And maybe not the most efficient dollar / CO2 ratio, but also something that has the nice side effect of having a living forest around. (And also the side effect of providing exercise, access to the outdoors, etc.)
Cshelton 8y ago
Is that really the biggest reason for forest being removed? Are there issues with raising cattle on land with a trees spaced maybe every 10 feet or so? Does it have to do with herding the cattle? Feeding the cattle? Those I feel can be solved with technology, specifically IoT/Drones/Autonomous Bots. It seems to me, if every livestock pasture in the world has trees every 10 feet, maybe less, it could have a pretty big impact. Combine the Apple orchard with the cattle grazing land. Use technology to efficiently operate both. Edit: And speaking of cattle. I wonder if we can literally strap something onto the back of a cow that would be able to capture methane, burn the bio-mass, and collect everything to be retrieved later on and used/buried.
- dharma1 8y ago
  I don't think you need fart bags, cows fed seaweed emit significantly less methane -https://e360.yale.edu/features/how-eating-seaweed-can-help-cows-to-belch-less-methane https://e360.yale.edu/features/how-eating-seaweed-can-help-c.... Cattle is one main reason, second one is clearing forest for industrial agriculture like soybean and palm oil plantations. Third one is logging for wood products. Essentially they are all because of overpopulation and massively increased demand for these products.
  - seveneightn9ne 8y ago
    Don't forget that the main use for the soybeans is cattle feed.
- seveneightn9ne 8y ago
  It's the feed for the cattle that takes up the most space, and that is directly replacing rainforests.
- dakna 8y ago
  Combining trees and livestock has been done for centuries and is called Silvopasture: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silvopasture https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silvopasture
nixonpjoshua1 8y ago
Another major issue is the removal of mangrove ecosystems which are great at long term deposition of carbon (mostly driven by shrimp farming). Our company is working on these issues by trying to reduce demand for meat and seafood by creating alternatives to it, but I think the problem is so large it needs to be tackled from multiple angles. As you term it both Phase I and Phase II type solutions. What worries me is that the Phase II type solutions are going to be mostly a political problem at least much more than they are technical problems, and political problems are much harder to fix than technical problems where the solutions can be market driven rather than based on international consensus. I think with enough creativity most Phase I type solutions can be market driven and be accomplished without achieving consensus.
baxtr 8y ago
Have a look at “Mossy Earth”. I can connect you with the founder if needed.
joe_the_user 8y ago
Well, The other thing with trees is that they aren't permanent carbon sinks in the way that coal underground is. Wood will eventually rot or burn and release it's carbon. Human beings have taken carbon in the form of hydrocarbons underground and released is into the C02 - O2 cycle in the air. The main way to solve this would seem to be putting it back into the ground. So, reverse coal-mining? Turning wood into charcoal and burying? These seem like necessary counter-parts to simply growing trees.
- throwaway5752 8y ago
  That's called bio-char, and is referenced in the submitted link here.
- thinkling 8y ago
  I think you're overstating the problem with carbon released from decaying wood. Trees newly planted now will net-absorb carbon for the next 50-100 years, exactly the time period when we need to bring the carbon balance under control until we have our energy used cleaned up and other technologies developed. When the newly planted forest matures, trees fall and rot, but new growth takes their place. So it doesn't release a large amount of carbon, but enters a steady state roughly carbon-neutral.
adamsea 8y ago
Gustaf, without being too facetious, I think a startup to incentivize landowners to use forest land for carbon removal instead of beef would be called "donating to a politician's election campaign." : ). The reason I make the joke is to ask, is looking at technical/business solutions without directly addressing the social and political reasons why global warming has gone on basically unchecked like missing the forest for the trees?
- gustaf 8y ago
  I agree that political action is incredibly important. Carbon tax, carbon incentives etc. I don't believe we need to change our political system in order to stop climate change. And if we had to that would make it far more difficult to do. Even if countries implemented carbon tax and carbon incentives like many have it doesn't change that we innovation. Modern cheap verification systems, Marketplace's like Nori.com
bbojan 8y ago
Grassland, if properly managed, can sequester more carbon than a forest. This is related to the (unintuitive) fact that grasses are more efficient producers of organic matter than trees. Joel Salatin has done some great work related to this and collected decades worth of data. So the irony is that we could grow more beef and pull carbon out of the air at the same time, only if we cared. But we don't, it's easier to slash and burn then to also take the environment into consideration...
- wdewind 8y ago
  > So the irony is that we could grow more beef and pull carbon out of the air at the same time, only if we cared. I want this desperately to be true as someone who loves meat but everything I've read tells me it's not. There is definitely a nice symbiotic relationship that exists between cows grazing and grasslands but it is significantly more expensive to raise animals this way, and you can raise significantly fewer of them per sq ft. The main issue with cows is methane, not carbon (edit: carbon dioxide*), anyway.
  - zinclozenge 8y ago
    I might be pedantic, but methane is a carbon atom and 4 hydrogen atoms. I assume you meant carbon dioxide.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - wdewind 8y ago
      This is HN, the one place you don't need to apologize for pedantry. Right: I meant carbon dioxide. Made the edit :)
  - DTrejo 8y ago
    Salatin’s mob grazing creates soil. It is cheaper to raise them this way because you don’t need to buy corn feed. The cows digest grass well. They do not digest corn well, which means corn fed cows produce methane and get sick, and don’t build the soil (sequestering carbon). Definitely worth watching some YouTube videos and reading about it, it’s pretty fun and interesting.
bskinny129 8y ago
I'm working on a way to bring dollars to carbon removal, whether as simple as planting trees or investing in these more advanced upcoming technologies. It is an app with a personal pledge to balance the negative impact of your own driving and flying with a small payment. Cheap at just a couple dollars a week, with the potential to reach a significant scale through companies. In fact, I look forward to hearing back from YC later today! If anyone is interested in keeping in the loop on progress: https://www.producthunt.com/upcoming/pledge-balance https://www.producthunt.com/upcoming/pledge-balance
- adamsea 8y ago
  Is your app eventually meant to turn a profit, and if so how? Or, are you doing this on a nonprofit basis and planning to keep it as such?
  - bskinny129 8y ago
    I believe a business model helps align incentives and increases potential scale. Certainly things can evolve, but the plan is no cut from users and charge businesses a markup to balance employee commute and flights. Hopefully can make it in the businesses self-interest where they see a return on their small investment in terms of employee satisfaction and retention.
    - adamsea 8y ago
      I certainly agree a business model can do those things, and sometimes does. I could see companies such as Patagonia, who have a strong reputation for prioritizing sustainability, potentially being interested in a service like that. It seems tricky though to align the interests of your users, your customers (businesses, the ones who will actually be paying you) and the environment. Which is not to doubt your intent, but is why I am skeptical of market-based approaches to solve a problem which is of the type (a problem of the commons) that governments can be good at (if they choose to be) and businesses struggle with.
      - 8y ago
bwreilly 8y ago
We at DroneSeed are using swarms of unmanned aircraft for mass forest/rangeland restoration projects - monitoring, planting, invasive species mitigation, etc. The mission of the company is to help combat climate change by substantially reducing the cost of afforestation/reforestation. Happy to talk about it any time: ben at droneseed.com
- tvanantwerp 8y ago
  I pictured DJI drones dropping seed bombs, but taking a look it seems a lot more impressive than that. Very cool--hope this takes off!
kumarski 8y ago
This is Kumar from YCS2012. I really really wish YC would bring on a polymer, nuclear, petroleum, or materials engineer to help wrangle on these thesis-es on all things related to energy. [I'm more on the textiles side of polymers, but I'm here if you need me.] Trees are not a great carbon removal technology, grasslands are much better as they aren't impacted by fires and droughts. Grasslands sequester carbon underground whereas woody trees store it in leaves and woody biomass. What you're saying is actually questionable in a non-stable climate which is what humanity has today. I think it's really foolish to allow carbon pollution credits to be backed by trees instead of grasslands. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/dec/01/trees-may-increase-air-pollution-on-city-streets?fbclid=IwAR3TCIrUZcZ3WD6VDzN5kbzUE8DVnz6IiIxhqHQxO68a10EYNtXtkfrKOiM https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/dec/01/trees-ma... Also, bark beetles aside from droughts and fires are pretty onerous to tree populations.
- dharma1 8y ago
  What do you think about perennial grains that sequester carbon underground, like Kernza? https://www.greenbiz.com/article/could-perennial-grains-be-next-climate-saving-superstars https://www.greenbiz.com/article/could-perennial-grains-be-n...
  - Tharkun 8y ago
    From what I understand, it can sequester carbon because its roots run pretty deep. But then what? Won't the soil become saturated with carbon? Or isn't that an issue?
    - dharma1 8y ago
      That's right, and you won't have the carbon emissions that happen right now with annual grains from tillage/erosion/too much fertiliser. Soil has a carbon budget but I'm not sure saturation is an issue - that's basically how grasslands work today
antt 8y ago
I've read through the prospectus and seems like it's only for US based companies. I'm in Australia and the geology of the Tasmania/South Victoria region is the best in the world for carbon capture using trees. Specifically it's the native habitat of the Tasmanian blue gum, the worlds fastest growing tree, and here it grows between 20-100% faster than anywhere else. Is there any option for having non-US startups funded given that ego-engineering can't be done out of the Bay Area alone? I and the other co-founders have no interest in moving since we are already in the best place for what we are doing.
- plierhead 8y ago
  I'm in New Zealand and trees grow here like weeds. A hectare of pine trees reaches maturity in 25 years and holds 200 odd tons of carbon. Once mature, those trees can be harvested and the carbon locked away in furniture, buildings, etc. As far as I know, it doesn't matter where on the planet the carbon is being sequestered, so a global view will likely be more effective.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
gdubs 8y ago
In many ways it’s the soil itself: https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/soil-carbon-storage-84223790 https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/soil-carbo...
schiffern 8y ago
>most forest owners in the world don't know or don't have incentive to care So why limit yourself to existing forests? Instead of flooding deserts (using energy-intensive/land-intensive/wealth concentrating desalinization), we can re-green those same deserts[1], which restarts the "atmospheric river" that brings water to the interiors of continents. Isotopic analysis has revealed that trees powers the water cycle (by recycling rainfall that would otherwise flow off into the ocean) and causes 80% of Earth's terrestrial rainfall.[2] Compared to desalination this is far less costly (downside being, it's harder for Nestle et al. to profit off it). Yes Virginia, rain literally comes from trees! This partly explains why deforestation leads to desertification. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xcZS7arcgk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xcZS7arcgk [2] https://www.nature.com/articles/nature11983 https://www.nature.com/articles/nature11983
red-tea 8y ago
Stopping our reliance on animal products is the next big change for humanity. People will look back on these times like we look back on times of slavery and tyranny. Either that or we die.

by gustaf 8y ago

ISL 8y ago

If you'd like to fund trees, one could start buying land and start protecting trees. Spending that money on intensive lobbying and forest advocacy in rapidly-deforesting countries could have an impact, too. The trick, of course, is that neither of these techniques compound for the individual nor a startup. They are pure charity for the planet.

abledon 8y ago
we need a black mirror-esque social credit score system where based on the individuals revenue, and what corporation they work for they have a 'tree quota' they need to fulfill. this could be hours volunteered at a global tree planting foundation, $$ donated to public works companies who plant the trees. I suppose if someone only made a small amount of $ and hid the rest behind their corporation , corporations would also have to be responsible in the system and donate $ to plant trees. website would be something like tree.global ... we need some way to tie all the world (or atleast continents) together under one government, a .global domain name or something. EDIT: after reading other comments on how trees arent the greatest solution, replace trees with the best option and tie it to a continent wide / global wide black mirror credit score system.
francisofascii 8y ago
So does anyone know why this isn't happening more? Surely there are plenty of super wealthy tech titans, Hollywood stars, etc. that care about climate change. They could buy up rural land that is suitable for forestry and start planting trees, or prevent deforestation. Even small time donors could make an impact. Land in the US is cheap, right? What am I missing?
- PeterisP 8y ago
  Land isn't that cheap compared to the (not that large) effect, especially if we want that effect to be meaningful in the short term. Buying land and planting trees there will cost something like $2000 per acre and retain something like one ton of CO2 per acre per year (an order of magnitude estimate - depending on details both the cost and CO2 effect can be very different). Industrial carbon capture at power plants can do that for something like 70$ per ton. That's much cheaper than forestry, but that's still not good enough. ycombinator is obviously looking for technologies that scale better than these existing approaches, something that might achieve large scale carbon removal at maybe $10/ton or less, at which stage the option "just pay a lot of money to reverse the effect of our emissions" might be plausibly considered affordable to our society.
  - ed_balls 8y ago
    Why do you want to buy the land? Raise the money for seedling, get volunteers/robots to plant them. Pay people to maintain trees on land (which should require 0 effort). You can come up with some clever designs to make it a tourist attraction and make some extra cash. Plenty of room for improvements. Let say you can have 100 000 trees per square km. If 40 trees gives you 1 ton of carbon per year then spending $25 000 gives you $10/ton.
    - PeterisP 8y ago
      Well, because to the first approximation pretty much all land is used - any land thats suitable to be a forest but is not already a forest is only that way because it's used for grazing or farming, otherwise it would overgrow naturally (though not as efficiently as with planting). If you want to increase the amount of woodland, you have to decrease the amount of pastures or farmland, so you have to either buy that land from the previous owner (because they won't be able to graze or plant there anymore) or take it from them by force.
      - ed_balls 8y ago
        I pretty sure that are that 10 mln km^2 around the word that is not use (Canada, Alaska, Syberia and patches of land around the world)
52-6F-62 8y ago
Also is this a suggestion that a company that did just this would be accepted and funded? That's an interesting option, but I wonder how a company might sustain itself doing this. Lease land to eco-friendly activities like zipline adventures or something? Also sounds like a good reason for expansion of National Parks services.
buzzy_hacker 8y ago
Right. And that charity is https://www.coolearth.org/ https://www.coolearth.org/. They don't buy land but they protect trees.
samstave 8y ago
Actually, my idea would be the following: 1. Automate tree/crop planting 2. Reform regulations stipulating that planting of trees/crops/plants should be required on any and all uninhabited lands, as a matter of "imminent domain" regardless of the land owner. Perhaps even as a tax incentive to land owners. 3. The development of a maintenance and management policy and system around all that is planted 4. In conjunction with the RFS for flooding deserts, develop a multi-stage water transfer to desert desalinization ponds, then to be used in irrigation of the tree planting efforts. We already have autonomous farming combines with excellent ability to harvest crops and plant seed. They should be put to use at scale in panting trees. Further, we could make an effort to employ the vast amounts of humans with little opportunity to be productive to build, plant and deploy a massive effort such as this. We dont need to try to do everything with robots, when we have millions and millions of humans. If we are so progressive and smart, maybe learning how to manage a labor force in the millions to accomplish a great work such as terraforming a desert is someting we should attempt again.
- aoner 8y ago
  RE: 1. Automate tree/crop planting: https://www.biocarbonengineering.com/ https://www.biocarbonengineering.com/ These guys use drones to shoot tree seeds in the ground. Also regarding terraforming a dessert, I think one of the biggest problems with is the number of water needed in the area, but I do think that this will be a really interesting part of the solution. Maybe the increase of land prices due to the decrease of arable land might make such ventures more profitable. There's a great ted talk about reversing desertification: https://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_world_s_deserts_and_reverse_climate_change/transcript?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_worl...
  - thinkling 8y ago
    Around here, tree farms replant by hiring people who plant hundreds to thousands trees per day per person and are paid for piece-work, a fraction of a dollar (~$0.20?) per treelet planted. Given that you need to do this once every 25-40 years (maturity cycle of the tree), is doing it with drones really that big a win?
schiffern 8y ago
>The trick, of course, is that neither of these techniques compound for the individual nor a startup. They are pure charity for the planet. "Doesn't concentrate wealth exponentially; BZZT rejected!" At some point, we apparently forgot that wealth/power inequality itself massively contributes to environmental problems. * If you have no political power, you can't defend yourself and your land from pollution. * If a large portion of the society has no political power, a large portion of the society cannot defend themselves and their land from pollution. * In a society with extreme wealth, the price mechanism can't "kick in" to protect increasingly-scarce renewable resources (ie saving a species from extinction). Donella Meadows gives a much better explanation than I can, using fisheries as an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMmChiLZZHg&t=18m48s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMmChiLZZHg&t=18m48s
- schiffern 8y ago
  Better timecode link (the relevant comments are here in Part 2, but the whole thing is worth watching): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuIoego-xVc&t=10m30s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuIoego-xVc&t=10m30s
Pfhreak 8y ago
I'm seriously considering doing this myself. I've got some money set aside, and a smallish group (~20) people who are interested in contributing time, smaller amounts, etc. I'm no tech billionaire, but there's definitely areas where I could buy a few dozen acres of land. I've been researching what's involved in reforesting, and it looks like a ton of work and a non-trivial cost. And maybe not the most efficient dollar / CO2 ratio, but also something that has the nice side effect of having a living forest around. (And also the side effect of providing exercise, access to the outdoors, etc.)

Cshelton 8y ago

Is that really the biggest reason for forest being removed? Are there issues with raising cattle on land with a trees spaced maybe every 10 feet or so? Does it have to do with herding the cattle? Feeding the cattle? Those I feel can be solved with technology, specifically IoT/Drones/Autonomous Bots. It seems to me, if every livestock pasture in the world has trees every 10 feet, maybe less, it could have a pretty big impact. Combine the Apple orchard with the cattle grazing land. Use technology to efficiently operate both. Edit: And speaking of cattle. I wonder if we can literally strap something onto the back of a cow that would be able to capture methane, burn the bio-mass, and collect everything to be retrieved later on and used/buried.

dharma1 8y ago
I don't think you need fart bags, cows fed seaweed emit significantly less methane -https://e360.yale.edu/features/how-eating-seaweed-can-help-cows-to-belch-less-methane https://e360.yale.edu/features/how-eating-seaweed-can-help-c.... Cattle is one main reason, second one is clearing forest for industrial agriculture like soybean and palm oil plantations. Third one is logging for wood products. Essentially they are all because of overpopulation and massively increased demand for these products.
- seveneightn9ne 8y ago
  Don't forget that the main use for the soybeans is cattle feed.
seveneightn9ne 8y ago
It's the feed for the cattle that takes up the most space, and that is directly replacing rainforests.
dakna 8y ago
Combining trees and livestock has been done for centuries and is called Silvopasture: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silvopasture https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silvopasture

nixonpjoshua1 8y ago

Another major issue is the removal of mangrove ecosystems which are great at long term deposition of carbon (mostly driven by shrimp farming). Our company is working on these issues by trying to reduce demand for meat and seafood by creating alternatives to it, but I think the problem is so large it needs to be tackled from multiple angles. As you term it both Phase I and Phase II type solutions. What worries me is that the Phase II type solutions are going to be mostly a political problem at least much more than they are technical problems, and political problems are much harder to fix than technical problems where the solutions can be market driven rather than based on international consensus. I think with enough creativity most Phase I type solutions can be market driven and be accomplished without achieving consensus.

baxtr 8y ago

Have a look at “Mossy Earth”. I can connect you with the founder if needed.

joe_the_user 8y ago

Well, The other thing with trees is that they aren't permanent carbon sinks in the way that coal underground is. Wood will eventually rot or burn and release it's carbon. Human beings have taken carbon in the form of hydrocarbons underground and released is into the C02 - O2 cycle in the air. The main way to solve this would seem to be putting it back into the ground. So, reverse coal-mining? Turning wood into charcoal and burying? These seem like necessary counter-parts to simply growing trees.

throwaway5752 8y ago
That's called bio-char, and is referenced in the submitted link here.
thinkling 8y ago
I think you're overstating the problem with carbon released from decaying wood. Trees newly planted now will net-absorb carbon for the next 50-100 years, exactly the time period when we need to bring the carbon balance under control until we have our energy used cleaned up and other technologies developed. When the newly planted forest matures, trees fall and rot, but new growth takes their place. So it doesn't release a large amount of carbon, but enters a steady state roughly carbon-neutral.

adamsea 8y ago

Gustaf, without being too facetious, I think a startup to incentivize landowners to use forest land for carbon removal instead of beef would be called "donating to a politician's election campaign." : ). The reason I make the joke is to ask, is looking at technical/business solutions without directly addressing the social and political reasons why global warming has gone on basically unchecked like missing the forest for the trees?

gustaf 8y ago
I agree that political action is incredibly important. Carbon tax, carbon incentives etc. I don't believe we need to change our political system in order to stop climate change. And if we had to that would make it far more difficult to do. Even if countries implemented carbon tax and carbon incentives like many have it doesn't change that we innovation. Modern cheap verification systems, Marketplace's like Nori.com

bbojan 8y ago

Grassland, if properly managed, can sequester more carbon than a forest. This is related to the (unintuitive) fact that grasses are more efficient producers of organic matter than trees. Joel Salatin has done some great work related to this and collected decades worth of data. So the irony is that we could grow more beef and pull carbon out of the air at the same time, only if we cared. But we don't, it's easier to slash and burn then to also take the environment into consideration...

wdewind 8y ago
> So the irony is that we could grow more beef and pull carbon out of the air at the same time, only if we cared. I want this desperately to be true as someone who loves meat but everything I've read tells me it's not. There is definitely a nice symbiotic relationship that exists between cows grazing and grasslands but it is significantly more expensive to raise animals this way, and you can raise significantly fewer of them per sq ft. The main issue with cows is methane, not carbon (edit: carbon dioxide*), anyway.
- zinclozenge 8y ago
  I might be pedantic, but methane is a carbon atom and 4 hydrogen atoms. I assume you meant carbon dioxide.
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  - wdewind 8y ago
    This is HN, the one place you don't need to apologize for pedantry. Right: I meant carbon dioxide. Made the edit :)
- DTrejo 8y ago
  Salatin’s mob grazing creates soil. It is cheaper to raise them this way because you don’t need to buy corn feed. The cows digest grass well. They do not digest corn well, which means corn fed cows produce methane and get sick, and don’t build the soil (sequestering carbon). Definitely worth watching some YouTube videos and reading about it, it’s pretty fun and interesting.

bskinny129 8y ago

I'm working on a way to bring dollars to carbon removal, whether as simple as planting trees or investing in these more advanced upcoming technologies. It is an app with a personal pledge to balance the negative impact of your own driving and flying with a small payment. Cheap at just a couple dollars a week, with the potential to reach a significant scale through companies. In fact, I look forward to hearing back from YC later today! If anyone is interested in keeping in the loop on progress: https://www.producthunt.com/upcoming/pledge-balance https://www.producthunt.com/upcoming/pledge-balance

adamsea 8y ago
Is your app eventually meant to turn a profit, and if so how? Or, are you doing this on a nonprofit basis and planning to keep it as such?
- bskinny129 8y ago
  I believe a business model helps align incentives and increases potential scale. Certainly things can evolve, but the plan is no cut from users and charge businesses a markup to balance employee commute and flights. Hopefully can make it in the businesses self-interest where they see a return on their small investment in terms of employee satisfaction and retention.
  - adamsea 8y ago
    I certainly agree a business model can do those things, and sometimes does. I could see companies such as Patagonia, who have a strong reputation for prioritizing sustainability, potentially being interested in a service like that. It seems tricky though to align the interests of your users, your customers (businesses, the ones who will actually be paying you) and the environment. Which is not to doubt your intent, but is why I am skeptical of market-based approaches to solve a problem which is of the type (a problem of the commons) that governments can be good at (if they choose to be) and businesses struggle with.
    - 8y ago

bwreilly 8y ago

We at DroneSeed are using swarms of unmanned aircraft for mass forest/rangeland restoration projects - monitoring, planting, invasive species mitigation, etc. The mission of the company is to help combat climate change by substantially reducing the cost of afforestation/reforestation. Happy to talk about it any time: ben at droneseed.com

tvanantwerp 8y ago
I pictured DJI drones dropping seed bombs, but taking a look it seems a lot more impressive than that. Very cool--hope this takes off!

kumarski 8y ago

This is Kumar from YCS2012. I really really wish YC would bring on a polymer, nuclear, petroleum, or materials engineer to help wrangle on these thesis-es on all things related to energy. [I'm more on the textiles side of polymers, but I'm here if you need me.] Trees are not a great carbon removal technology, grasslands are much better as they aren't impacted by fires and droughts. Grasslands sequester carbon underground whereas woody trees store it in leaves and woody biomass. What you're saying is actually questionable in a non-stable climate which is what humanity has today. I think it's really foolish to allow carbon pollution credits to be backed by trees instead of grasslands. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/dec/01/trees-may-increase-air-pollution-on-city-streets?fbclid=IwAR3TCIrUZcZ3WD6VDzN5kbzUE8DVnz6IiIxhqHQxO68a10EYNtXtkfrKOiM https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/dec/01/trees-ma... Also, bark beetles aside from droughts and fires are pretty onerous to tree populations.

dharma1 8y ago
What do you think about perennial grains that sequester carbon underground, like Kernza? https://www.greenbiz.com/article/could-perennial-grains-be-next-climate-saving-superstars https://www.greenbiz.com/article/could-perennial-grains-be-n...
- Tharkun 8y ago
  From what I understand, it can sequester carbon because its roots run pretty deep. But then what? Won't the soil become saturated with carbon? Or isn't that an issue?
  - dharma1 8y ago
    That's right, and you won't have the carbon emissions that happen right now with annual grains from tillage/erosion/too much fertiliser. Soil has a carbon budget but I'm not sure saturation is an issue - that's basically how grasslands work today

antt 8y ago

I've read through the prospectus and seems like it's only for US based companies. I'm in Australia and the geology of the Tasmania/South Victoria region is the best in the world for carbon capture using trees. Specifically it's the native habitat of the Tasmanian blue gum, the worlds fastest growing tree, and here it grows between 20-100% faster than anywhere else. Is there any option for having non-US startups funded given that ego-engineering can't be done out of the Bay Area alone? I and the other co-founders have no interest in moving since we are already in the best place for what we are doing.

plierhead 8y ago
I'm in New Zealand and trees grow here like weeds. A hectare of pine trees reaches maturity in 25 years and holds 200 odd tons of carbon. Once mature, those trees can be harvested and the carbon locked away in furniture, buildings, etc. As far as I know, it doesn't matter where on the planet the carbon is being sequestered, so a global view will likely be more effective.
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gdubs 8y ago

In many ways it’s the soil itself: https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/soil-carbon-storage-84223790 https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/soil-carbo...

schiffern 8y ago

>most forest owners in the world don't know or don't have incentive to care So why limit yourself to existing forests? Instead of flooding deserts (using energy-intensive/land-intensive/wealth concentrating desalinization), we can re-green those same deserts[1], which restarts the "atmospheric river" that brings water to the interiors of continents. Isotopic analysis has revealed that trees powers the water cycle (by recycling rainfall that would otherwise flow off into the ocean) and causes 80% of Earth's terrestrial rainfall.[2] Compared to desalination this is far less costly (downside being, it's harder for Nestle et al. to profit off it). Yes Virginia, rain literally comes from trees! This partly explains why deforestation leads to desertification. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xcZS7arcgk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xcZS7arcgk [2] https://www.nature.com/articles/nature11983 https://www.nature.com/articles/nature11983

red-tea 8y ago

Stopping our reliance on animal products is the next big change for humanity. People will look back on these times like we look back on times of slavery and tyranny. Either that or we die.