Yesterday, 
Rather than deleting the image, I decided to run it through an AI engine, along with the words, "Brandon and Mark in Minneapolis in autumn as the sun sets." The result, pictured above with the original image for reference, is pretty funny. Neither of us are too recognizable, and the AI seems to have inserted a lake between us.
Today is Friday, which is when I like to summarize inspiring stories for my news job. The biggest news on that front this week was Patagonia, a $3 billion company, being donated to the climate change fight. Patagonia has long been at the forefront of environmental issues, so this latest move is right in line with their brand. Of all of the companies explicitly working for social or environmental benefit, they're one of the best.
At the coffee shop this afternoon, I talked with a young man who is working on a carbon credit system for average people. He was still firmly in the idea phase and hoped eventually to create a phone app. I suggested that blockchain might be the right technology for doing a secure and resilient credit system. He had no idea what I was talking about, but maybe he'll look into it.
To be honest, I'm not really sold on the whole carbon thing. Climate science suggests a link between atmospheric carbon and rising temps, which makes sense to me. But carbon is far from the only cause of warming, and warming itself is a poor approximation of what's actually going on with climate change. From what I've seen, carbon credit schemes promise big, but to do little to stop polluters from polluting.
In worst case scenarios, these schemes encourage clear-cutting forests and replacing them with palm oil trees, which have an agreed-upon rate of carbon sequestration. These offsets are then traded on closed markets, themselves only viable because of poorly-formulated government regulations. So a company might burn tons of coal and stay in compliance with government regs by 'offsetting' their pollution by buying 'excess' sequestration from another company that ruins ecosystems in order to participate in the carbon credit marketplace. It's a total racket. Greenwashing at its finest.
There are better directions we could move in with regard to carbon pollution. It might even be possible to create ethical carbon trading markets. The only way this could really work is with a global scope and the participation of average people all over the world. I've seen a couple of crypto projects concerned with carbon, but haven't found one that's both recognized by governments AND traded on accessible global exchanges.
I didn't say any of this to that young man at the coffee shop. Instead, I encouraged him to keep developing his app. In my opinion, the real idea he's playing with is rewarding people for good behavior, which I totally support. The most challenging aspect of this idea, in my opinion, is that only activity gets rewarded.
Most of the time, the best thing a person can do is nothing. Inactivity is great for the planet. I'd love to see an app that rewards this inactivity. How that could actually work is unclear. But it's fun to think about.
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