Re: [Manycouches] Daniel presentation @ 113

[Vittorio Bertola <[e-mail]>]

> Il 15/04/2022 04:45 Daniel Migault <[e-mail]> ha scritto:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> True, average can be seen as a one-size-fits-all approach but this seems quite common. That is correct, we probably find one person emitting less and one emitting more than the average. Emissions are likely  characterizing the country's  economy and in that case Germany and Poland are relying on coal to produce energy more than other economies/countries. There is no specific intention to target one country more than another. Whether one person in the country has a SUV or not does not impact too much on the number. As usual, this should not be taken as an encouragement to buy an SUV, but what matters is the aggregate and the effort needs to be collective. I am puzzled by this. Then, you could also say that if one person takes a flight to attend an IETF meeting does not impact too much on the number. This is not what you wanted to say.



Since what matters is the aggregate, here is the aggregate:



https://www.iea.org/commentaries/carbon-emissions-fell-across-all-sectors-in-2020-except-for-one-suvs



An SUV with one person on board generates around 130 g/km of CO2 per person[1]. A Boeing 747-400 on a long international flight generates around 100 g/km of CO2 per person[2].



Then, the main factor becomes how many kilometers you make. Depending on where the meeting is, you may fly 2000 or 10000 km or more - let's assume 5000 in average. How much time does it take for you to drive 5000 km on your SUV? It depends on your personal transportation patterns, but for the average car owner that would be three months, for some even less. In the end, how much you fly is not the decisive, life or death factor in saving the planet. It is more complicated. Some, for example, would claim that the decisive factor is how much meat you eat: some estimates place the emissions from beef at 100'000 g of CO2 and CO2-equivalent greenhouse gases per kg[3]; 1 kg of beef = 1000 km on a flight = 750 km on an SUV.



Now, this is not a good reason to just continue flying carelessly. If we can spare some meetings, let's do it. But we could also continue meeting in person while rotating the places and encourage people more than 1000-2000 kms away to attend remotely. Or we could simply conclude that what we do is so important, and so better done in person, that we should continue meeting in person and rather focus our own emission reduction targets on something else, like the personal use of cars or the needless production of waste.


What I dislike is the idea that the organization decides for everyone where they should focus their own emission reduction practices, which IMHO is a personal responsibility. (The collective responsibility is rather to make sure that the economic incentives are appropriately set, i.e. that all negative externalities of each product and activity are properly included within their prices, so that flying becomes more expensive and people reduce travel automatically, but according to their own priorities.)


I would rather prefer that each of us has a choice, and the hybrid model meeting allows this quite well. Then, if most people choose to attend remotely, physical meetings will naturally die out for lack of interest.



In any case, this is a discussion that we need to have and of course this is just my view of the problem.



Then, one more thing:

> 
> You are not the only one willing to 3 in person meetings a year, however, I have not seen any objective data to support the claims that we cannot do less than three in person meetings.   We are not robots and this is not a matter of science, it is a matter of humanity. We need to socialize for our wellbeing - if we don't, we become mentally insane, as many people did in these last two years. Data are useful to assess the consequences of our choices, but this is not a mathematical optimization problem.





[1] https://www.greencarcongress.com/2021/06/20210602-eea.html

[2] https://www.carbonindependent.org/22.html
[3] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1201677/greenhouse-gas-emissions-of-major-food-products/




-- vb.