Hi everyone,
2020 has been an eventful year for all of us. While the horrible toll of the corona virus and resulting lockdowns have captured everyone’s attention, the bitter reality is that the scope of the virus-induced crisis pales in comparison to the potential catastrophic effects of climate change. If there is one glimmer of silver lining in the events of the last months it is that we have witnessed that humans are capabale of quickly learning, mobilizing, and taking action when faced with a crisis. So how can we find this same level of urgency and action around complex problems like climate change?
For some time now we’ve pondered what we, as a small business with limited resources, can do to help prevent this looming global disaster. In this context I am very pleased to announce that from last week we (OpenCage GmbH) have committed 1% of gross revenue to funding next-generation carbon removal techniques in collaboration with our payment processor Stripe. Our contribution, deducted automatically from every payment Stripe processes for us, is being allocated to the projects they’ve selected here, which will expand over time.
Here’s a screenshot of how this is communicated in our Stripe checkout page:
We strongly encourage other businesses and organizations to join this effort. Together we can help fund the breakthrough technologies that will be needed to save our planet. Many thanks for Stripe for leading this effort and making it easy for us to take action while also having confidence that our funding will be applied effectively.
Let’s solve it,
BTW - on a related note, our many servers are hosted with Hetzner, where they are all powered by renewable energy.