Re: Next steps towards a net zero IETF

[Andrew McConachie <[e-mail]>]

On 21 Mar 2023, at 23:59, Christian Huitema wrote:

> On 3/21/2023 3:40 PM, Charlie Perkins wrote:
>> Hello folks,
>>
>> I do not intend to express any opinion on the merits of carbon 
>> offsets, IETF investigations, etc.  However:
>>
>> On 3/21/2023 3:06 PM, Alexander Pelov wrote:
>>>
>>> I have never chartered an airplane to go to a meeting, and none of 
>>> the people I know have done so. I don't know of any hotel having 
>>> been built for an IETF meeting, and although I tend to eat out more 
>>> at in-person meetings, I try sticking to 3 meals a day (cookies 
>>> don't count).
>>>
>>> Did London, or Prague, or Singapore see bigger planes arrive for the 
>>> IETF? Or more of them?
>>
>> This is a good example of the "tragedy of the commons".  Every 
>> consumer may feel that no one will experience any pain if they just 
>> take a little bit.
>
> Individual choices to matter.
>
> The problem that Alexander Pelov mentions is not new. I remember 
> studying it in economic classes pretty much just after the relation 
> between demand, supply and prices. If I am in the station, the gates 
> of the train are about to close, nobody else will come in, and there 
> are empty seats, why wont the railroad company just let me in without 
> a ticket? The short answer is "because capitalism", but the long 
> answer is that the number of cars in the train and the frequency of 
> the trains depend on expected traffic -- schedule too few and you 
> loose market share, schedule too many and you loose money.
>
> Same goes for planes, or for that matter for elections. Your 
> individual vote alone cannot probably change an election, but if many 
> people vote the same way the result will indeed change.
>

Trains and planes are fundamentally different in this regard, because 
planes calculate their weight at takeoff and only take as much fuel as 
they need. The amount of CO2 produced by a passenger plane is directly 
proportional to how many passengers it’s carrying.

I wasn’t aware how detailed these calculations can be until I read 
this incident report of a miscalculation.
<https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/604f423be90e077fdf88493f/Boeing_737-8K5_G-TAWG_04-21.pdf>

--Andrew