Worldproblems

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World Problems (General)

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From Easily Solvable World Problems List

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Deforestation #urgent? Amazon in turmoil as deforestation rages on despite coronavirus pandemic

www.itv.com

https://youtu.be/LtWINl3C_7s This is a really inspiring TED talk that points out how easy it is and how little money it would take to solve huge global problems and that our belief that we can’t just fix them    s is learned helplessness. I think the only thing that could be better is that the call to action could be more systematic – I think projects like Thunderpledge (kickstarter for pledges, like to become a vegetarian — you don’t have to become a vegetarian unless 1 million other people do, for instance -- connected to http://radicalengineers.com/

l.facebook.com

If America ate beans instead of beef https://www.facebook.com/49004340/posts/10102017934799771/

www.facebook.com

“Scientists... calculated just what would happen if every American made one dietary change: substituting beans for beef. They found that if everyone were willing and able to do that—hypothetically—the U.S. could still come close to meeting its 2020 greenhouse-gas emission goals

www.scientificamerican.com

“That is, even if nothing about our energy infrastructure or transportation system changed—and even if people kept eating chicken and pork and eggs and cheese—this one dietary change could achieve somewhere between 46 and 74 percent of the reductions needed to meet the target.”

Just 100 gigafactories needed to move the world to sustainable energy

www.youtube.com

“We actually did the calculations to figure out what it would take to transition the whole world to sustainable energy... you’d need 100 gigafactories” ~Elon Musk https://youtu.be/RgpHPS7661M?t=1m35s

youtu.be

Where can I find more amazing calculations like this that reveal the potential of humanity? I feel learned helplessness about lot of the time about major world issues, but maybe I'm often wrong! The world is more abundant than I think.

Tom Currier’s proposal on homelessness

Rev2–

There are 4.97M hotel rooms in the US and the

average occupancy fluctuates between 54% (winter months) to 75% (summer months). Even in the peak season, this means that there are an average of 1,240,000 empty hotel rooms per night in the US (summer) and 2,280,000 during the winter.

There are an estimated 553,000 homeless people in the US right now

= 2.2x coverage in the summer, 4.1x coverage in the winter

If you take the spirit of the Delancey street model vs. the ethos of public/private prisons (integration vs. segregation from society), this model would use a small percent of existing hotel’s excess capacity (integration) vs. building purpose built shelters (segregation).

The weighted average daily rate for the cheapest 60% of hotels in the US is $87.82. This includes chains like Econolodge (economy, 21%) on the low end, Ramada Inn (midscale, 13% of rooms) at mid-tier, to Comfort Inn (upper midscale, 26% of rooms) on the high end of this program.

At 62% avg occupancy for economy/midscale/upper midscale, these chains currently make $54.68/room-night.

Assuming a room would have gone unsold otherwise, the core costs to the hotel would be consumables/utilities, laundry, wear/tear, depreciation, and cleaning labor.

Let’s assume this baseline cost is $30/night.

To reduce this cost and the risk that these guests would impact others, you could introduce a rule that in order to participate in this program, you have to “leave the room as you found it.”

Example details— The hotel staff could leave an extra set of sheets/toiletries in the room and anytime between 7a-1p, the person participating in this program could strip/change the sheets, clean up any garbage in the room, and put out a new set of toiletries (the hotel could provide photos of a finished room so they would know where things go).

A hotel staff member would still come in the room after the program participant has left and ensure it is in good condition for the next guest, but this requirement would serve two purposes: 1) reduce the labor load/cost of program (likely paid for by the city via tax breaks for the hotel), 2) create a mechanism for continuing the program for respectful guests.

If the hotel cleaning staff found a room in disarray at 1p, they would still have time to turn the room before the next guest, and that person would no longer be able to participate in the program as they were a disrespectful guest that did not follow the rules.

At $30/night, this program would cost $6B/yr to house 553k homeless people in existing hotel oversupply (2018 US federal budget is $4,094B).

We could create a program that would distribute this $6B budget to city governments that offer tax breaks to hotels participating in this program.

http://radicalengineers.com/

l.facebook.com

https://www.facebook.com/events/253781518553937/

www.facebook.com

https://www.bayesimpact.org/en/

www.bayesimpact.org

Stanford CS+Social Good https://cs4good.com/

cs4good.com