On 7/26/19 12:10 AM, Toerless Eckert wrote:
This threads mails on CO2 and climate change are somewhat pythonesque to me... The IETF trying to shame itself about 3 meetings of 1000 people a year while its product, the Internet has been the biggest reducer of energy that i could think of in comparison of equivalent alternatives. For the whole planet for the last few decades.
Maybe. The Internet also consumes a lot of power, both directly (routers, servers, etc.) and via things enabled by the Internet (e.g. bitcoin; and people keep PCs on now that we have constant connectivity, whereas they used to turn them off). Without a detailed analysis, I see no reason to be confident that there's an overall savings in carbon.
(Whether there's an overall benefit to the public, given all of the issues surrounding privacy and political manipulation, might also be up for question. I like having easy access to information and goods and services, don't like that nearly everyone's phone and computer is now an eavesdropping device.)
However, I don't think "shaming" helps, for much of anything. I think "shaming" can result in a decrease of awareness. It promotes denial and distraction away from other issues that might be worse or more deserving of attention.
It's easy to look at the carbon cost of a single transcontinental airplane flight (or of a few flights for IETF) and think "that's too much". But the best way to reduce one's total carbon generation might be, for example, to reduce the number of less distant flights one takes in a year. For instance, travel by train, when that option is available. Save the carbon-generation for the trips that really matter.
But focusing entirely on carbon generation seems likely to result in the wrong kind of optimization. Sure, we could generate 1/3 less carbon if we only met 2 times per year. Just think of how much carbon we'd save if we never met at all! And it would be entirely "fair" too, since nobody would be excluded because of inability to travel. Of course there are other barriers to effective participation in IETF. For instance it helps to know people...
I'd rather see us focus on how we do our work, to see above all how much of our output is actually useful, whether we're working effectively not only in person but also via email. If working more effectively would let us complete a WG's work in 1/2 the time, all other things being equal, each WG would consume 1/2 the carbon. We might still meet 3 times a year (or not) but get more useful work done.
Or it might be that IETF would be more useful to the Internet community if it produced fewer RFCs (each of more value) than we do now.
Keith
