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  1. dizmo

    dizmo

    I wonder if they'll actually make it to 20 million.

    It seems to have really slowed down.

  2. Jtalk4456

    Jtalk4456

    I think they can do it. Even if they don't, 15 million trees is still amazing!

  3. dizmo

    dizmo

    If only we could raise money like that for carbon capture machines ?

    They'd do so much more than trees.

  4. ARikozuM
  5. vanished

    vanished

    It actually is rather sad at how slow this has been to gain support.  Perhaps it's because they are not a very efficient charity and people are weary of that and wanting to give elsewhere, and if so fair enough, but when you think about the kind of money behind the services that cause problems compared to the money behind solutions, it can get depressing real fast.  I know of one server of one oil company in one country that was putting $6M of business through it per day.  They lost more than this entire campaign in minor leaks and evaporation in a year, and were happy that they were on par or ahead of the average for that metric.

  6. Jtalk4456

    Jtalk4456

    i wouldn't describe 15 million dollars raised as being slow to gain support. Also I'm not sure why you're viewing this as inefficient or sad. Currently planting trees is being viewed as the quickest, cheapest, easiest way to combat climate change

    https://www.cbsnews.com/news/planting-a-trillion-trees-could-be-the-most-effective-solution-to-climate-change/

    If you're referring to arbor day specifically, they are a great organization. They are top rated by charitywatch.org and do a lot of good for the world.

    https://www.charitywatch.org/charities/arbor-day-foundation

    Plus they are doing this event by lowering the cost per tree to $1 vs the normal $5-20. 

    I really don't know what is depressing you about humanity joining together with a prominent top rated charity to fix the climate crisis, but I simply cannot be depressed at results this amazing

  7. vanished

    vanished

    I say inefficient because even at that reduced price (which I was unaware of), $1 per tree is much higher than some others.  Gamers Nexus is currently running a campaign with someone else, don't recall the exact figure but I thought it was somewhere in the 20 cents range.

     

    What's sad is that it takes the entire internet pulling together for months to scrape together $15M when there are companies and extremely wealthy individuals - most of whom are likely responsible for vastly more than their fair share of the problem this is trying to solve - who could come up with that much in an instant and not even notice the expense, and yet in the end it still falls to normal people to raise these funds.

     

    I can generalize this situation though.  It's not just this tree campaign, it's actually a common issue you see in news articles where the reporters completely miss the point and end up celebrating something that is sad to be necessary in the first place, and that underlying problem should receive more attention than it does.  For example, something like "entrepreneurial teen drops out of school to mow lawns for 12 hours a day 7 days a week to pay for dying father's medical bills".  They twist a sad situation that should not need to happen into a "wow that's so great look at this!", and in doing so gloss over the actual problem that should be getting called out.

  8. ARikozuM

    ARikozuM

    The same happened with France's Notre Dame (Paris?). The thousands of civilians mustered up all of 1.x million dollars when the Louis Vuitton owner exclaimed (he never did donate though) wanting to donate millions himself.

  9. ARikozuM

    ARikozuM

    Looks like they may have actually donated, but that kind of "pocket change" goes to show why the systems we live in are shit. Those who look for solutions have no money and those who have the money don't want to look for solutions. 

  10. Jtalk4456

    Jtalk4456

    While I can agree that some individuals can certainly be doing more, I actually care more about what normal people can do. As you said, 20 mil would be a drop in the bucket for some. For that reason, it's not a noble sacrifice if they do it, despite how much money that is. But if a bunch of lower and middle class citizens can manage to pull together 15 MILLION dollars in a few months, that to me is simply phenomenal

    Not to throw religion in the mix, but just because the quote reflects my feelings:

    Quote

     

    And he sat down opposite the treasury and watched the people putting money into the offering box. Many rich people put in large sums. And a poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which make a penny. And he called his disciples to him and said to them, “Truly, I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the offering box. For they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.”

    Mark 12:41-44

     

    Also a dollar for a tree is ridiculously cheap for buying a tree normally. Considering that Arbor day is in USA where the Eden reforestation project operates globally, uses cheap local labor and is not paying for the cost of mailing the trees around the world to plant. The main thing though is that it's not a contest of which charity has cheaper trees. It's that people ARE getting involved. Common people are taking the initiative and doing their part, even if they can only help a little. So looking at it, I'd say the eden one has a better value sure, but that doesn't make me in the least disappointed, let alone depressed with what team trees has managed to do in such a short time. 

  11. vanished

    vanished

    For me the value provided isn't how much people can sacrifice proportionally, in fact, the more they can avoid sacrificing while still making a difference, the better imo.  We don't want people to sacrifice and suffer, particularly if they're the ones most affected by the problem already and have done the least to cause it.  For me, the value is just what gets done on an absolute scale.  For that reason a cheaper option is nice because it means every dollar has x times more impact, and more people donating, and donating larger sums at that, whether they're lower class or super rich, is all good news.  Obviously I love that this campaign has come as far as it has.  Every bit of progress is better than nothing.  I'm just sad that it's not so much more, because I know it could be, and obviously that would be even better.

  12. dizmo

    dizmo

    Interesting CBC article, however carbon extractors will do significantly more work, in a much smaller footprint, and can be targeted at areas with higher concentrations; a single carbon extractor can do the work of 40,000,000+ trees. Regardless, planting trees alone can never be the single thing we attempt to do to combat climate change.

     

    Haha, it's not just lower and middle class. If you look at the donations I think the top 3 million trees are wealthy people. They likely invested significantly in the lower levels as well.

  13. ARikozuM

    ARikozuM

    Political: 

    Spoiler

    Carbon tax. Polluters and deforestation companies should pay the restoration. 

    Good night.

  14. vanished

    vanished

    Yeah I know Elon Musk at least did 1M, not sure who else, and that's great.

  15. Jtalk4456

    Jtalk4456

    That's fair. I wish it could be far better too, I just want to make sure we don't discount the good done in the process. I do want less fortunate to suffer less, but when they DO pull through it and suffer and make it work, I can't help but be more inspired by it than I am by elon musk dropping a mil on the campaign. The eden project is very interesting though and I'll definitely be taking a better look at it.

  16. ARikozuM

    ARikozuM

    No one else has done much. Nestle put an ad on Twitter saying they would donate $12M to help remove plastic from the oceans. They purchase upwards of $100Ms in plastic a year. That 12M is nothing but a PR primer.

     

    ^ Public relations, not plastic removal.

  17. dizmo

    dizmo

    The Spotify CEO did 1 million and 1, one of his executives did 100k+, one of the YouTube CEOs did in the hundreds of thousands. There were others I just can't remember what they were.

     

    Really, it has to come down to governments, not private corporations. Do private corporations have tons of cash? Yup. Most of them use it to invest in themselves, to grow, etc. Governments are the ones that are going to have to foot the bill, and they can be the ones that tax the corporations, as @ARikozuM said.

     

    @ARikozuM Sure, but they didn't have to donate that 12 million, did they. How does what they spend on plastics have anything to do with how much they donated? Not only that, it's not really their fault. Sure, they produce the product, but who's the one dumping it in the ocean? Doubt most of it's them.

  18. ARikozuM

    ARikozuM

    Nestle does a lot that the gov't will never hold them accountable for.

     

    Thanks for letting us know about those who did something for the project. We need those who can pay to start paying more. 

     

    As far as the waste goes, they should pay for a program that helps bring back plastic to recycling centers. Those 5 cent programs worked wonders when I was a kid. Glass, plastic, metal. If there's an incentive people will use it.

  19. vanished

    vanished

    Speaking of those deposits to make sure the stuff actually does get recycled, I think they do work, but clearly not well enough or ocean plastic wouldn't be an issue.  Luckily I think there's an easy fix for that - simply increase the amounts.  At a bare minimum, the deposit should be whatever it costs to clean up that container from wherever it's likely to end up, plus the cost to cleanup whatever extra environmental impact is caused by having to make new plastic to replace it vs what would have been released by just recycling it.  That seems like common sense to me, and in fact that idea of paying the true price, not just what it takes to make it, assuming you're allowed to dump infinite waste wherever you want, could and should be applied to a lot of things imo.

  20. dizmo

    dizmo

    @ARikozuMPrograms like that aren't really as effective as you might think. Where do you think most of the recyclables go? China. However, they've recently decided they don't want them, and are moving to higher quality product production. Thus, most are simply going into landfills, because it's too cost intensive to actually repurpose it.

     

    The government is an arm of the people. So really, you have no one to blame but the populous. Don't use government as a scapegoat.

     

     

  21. ARikozuM

    ARikozuM

    Most states have stopped doing those incentives. There's also the issue that most manufacturing has left the US in search of cheap labor. We can simply start recycling plants here in the states for metals like iron and aluminum alongside plastics. Hell, there are plenty of toy companies looking for recycled plastic for eco friendly toys along with the Made in USA mark. 

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