sari

Before starting this memo I would like to touch some words on afforestation/reforestation programs (a.k.a planting trees) as a carbon offset mechanism. Planting trees has become the darling of many large companies that aim to become carbon neutral in the next couple of years. However, planting trees (as a carbon offset mechanism) has many issues:

To me, online content consumption seems to exist on a pendulum of sorts: we love content to the extreme — Unbundle!! Give us more! — until we are overwhelmed with choice and analysis — It’s too much!! Bundle it back up again! — and swing to the opposite side. In the end, we always end up somewhere in the middle… but it’s a lot of swinging back and ... See more

Instead, we should raise our clean energy production ambitions. We don’t want to replace 100% of our current dirty energy — we want to generate vastly more energy than we are currently using and make it zero carbon.

The market for consumer productivity apps, which spurred companies like Dropbox and Evernote to multi-billion-dollar valuations, has proven to be mostly a mirage. Businesses are increasingly happy to buy software for their employees; people are often loath to buy software for themselves. And for all it did right, Mailbox never became anything more ... See more

First, there are more ways than ever for people in search of belonging to do things together, and the trend is accelerating. We are seeing new communication services designed for people to interact with each other, rather than just the void of social media.

When you recycle plastic, you prevent it from polluting the oceans. This myth is based on the enduring delusion that plastic from curbside bins can be efficiently turned into other products. But sorting the stuff is so onerous and labor-intensive—and the resulting materials of so little value—that recycling plastic is hopelessly unprofitable in the... See more