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Earlier this week, Y Combinator, which has backed companies like Airbnb and Reddit, put out a request for startups working on technology that can remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
"It's time to invest and avidly pursue a new wave of technological solutions to this problem — including those that are risky, unproven, even unlikely to work," Y Combinator's website says.
Y Combinator is looking for startups working on four approaches that they acknowledge "straddle the border between very difficult to science fiction" — genetically engineering phytoplankton to turn CO2 into a storage-ready form of carbon, speeding up a natural process in which rocks react with CO2, creating cell-free enzymes that can process carbon, and flooding Earth's deserts to create oases.
Sam Altman, the president of Y Combinator, acknowledged that these ideas are "moonshots," but said that he wants to take an expansive approach to the issue.
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(Score: 2) by Snow on Monday October 29 2018, @04:15PM (4 children)
What a shortsighted view.
It looks like initial funding is done by private investors. If there are successes and they require additional funding to scale up, then that could and should be funded by taxing carbon emissions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 29 2018, @05:12PM (3 children)
You know how you figure out what society needs or wants, what the requisite resources should cost, who should be paying for it all, and how complex flows of resources should be sustained in the long run (even without people realizing that they're working together)? Capitalism.
The problem here is a lack of property rights. That's what you're actually concerned about: Externalities; the Tragedy of the Commons. What we need is better defined ownership, not additional arbitrary-and-capricious command-and-control by a well-armed group of jackboots (hey, I thought monopolies are supposed to be a bad idea, especially monopolies who gain power through do-as-I-say coercion rather than do-as-we-previously-agreed cooperation).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 29 2018, @08:16PM (2 children)
Yes, yes, and this is why we need to kill all men and move forward with that angelic contract system thingie. I thought we'd covered all this territory before.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 29 2018, @10:34PM (1 child)
Some territory, yes. All this territory? Naaah.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 29 2018, @11:04PM
Well, what else is left to explore? Dazzle me with your superior intellect!