Re: [Manycouches] Daniel presentation @ 113

[Alexandre Petrescu <[e-mail]>]

Le 13/04/2022 à 10:27, Vittorio Bertola a écrit :
> 
>> Il 12/04/2022 11:56 Jay Daley <[e-mail]> ha scritto:
>> 
>> 
>> Hi Eliot
>> 
>> The major point about offsetting, which I think we agree about, is
>>  that offsetting is an "after the fact" action, not a preventative
>>  measure.  I understand that some will say "what’s the harm in 
>> meeting X times, if we offset all the emissions" but, without 
>> commenting on the rights and wrongs of that, the response to that 
>> should not be to attack offsetting as a concept.  Instead, we 
>> should be taking the approach that it is vital for us to offset all
>> of our emissions, whatever the level of those emissions.  In other
>> words whether we meet three times a year or once a year, we should
>> be offsetting those emissions.
> I am all in favour of donations from the IETF to any carbon 
> offsetting mechanism. I just want to add that there is a global 
> regulatory trend to include additional carbon taxes into the cost of
>  air travel, so it may be that our emissions are offset already when
>  we buy the ticket. Still, the more the better.
> 
> Also, in philosophical terms, I do take issue with Daniel's comment 
> during the presentation that travelling in person is "20th century" 
> and travelling virtually is "21st century". Actually, when people are
> asked what progress would be to them, many mention the ability of
> being able to travel more, and more freely, and know other cultures
> better. One would hope that by seeing more of the world the IETFers
> would generally be more open minded, at least if they manage to get
> out of the hotel every now and then :) And I do feel sometimes that
> this community is narrow minded and scarcely diverse.

I agree with both comments about travelling in-person being 20th
century, and about the inner need of mobility freedom and culture openness.

In that sense, there is this new view of the multimodal transportation.
  Traditionally, multimodal transportation means to combine various modes
(train, car, etc) to effectively bring a person to a destination. But a
new view might consider the  virtual presence to be an additional step
in that chain of modes.

Travel in person, but only up to the point where Internet is so good
that a digital projection of the person to the meeting room, and back,
largely outcomes the costs of carbon emissions of further travel beyond
that point.

For example: travel materially from home to the closest 'cave' equipped
with sensors and Internet at terabit/s bandwidth, and immerse from there
to the IETF meeting room on the Internet, rather than taking a plane.

Alex

> 
> Moreover, there are parts of the world where foreign tourism is an 
> essential part of the local wealth - basically what allows people to
>  get out of poverty. This does not apply to meetings in North America
>  or Europe (except South-Eastern Europe), but Bangkok, for example, 
> would be one of those cases. Under this viewpoint, if we are so 
> concerned about the world, we may want to prefer meeting in places 
> where the money we bring, even if at the price of travel, creates 
> good socioeconomic value. Though they are also likely to be the ones
>  that involve longer travel in average... But the point is that 
> pollution is not the only social impact of business travel and not 
> the only factor to consider to make "ethically good" choices.
>>> 
>>> I listened to the recording of the shmoo meeting regarding 
>>> Daniel's analysis, and I took from it several points. The points
>>>  I took away were these:
>>> 
>>> * By some models on average, individuals that attend three 
>>> meetings per year create as much emissions as an average German 
>>> in one year.
>>> 
> This is a one-size-fits-all approach which is unfair and rather 
> dangerous. Many of us, including myself, have made choices to reduce
>  their environmental footprint long ago. Others maybe move all the 
> time in a 2.5-ton SUV and will already have polluted like three or 
> four Germans without even buying the ticket. All in all, it is the 
> individual who has to be responsible and choose where to allocate 
> their environmental impact and how to minimize it. If we proceed with
> the hybrid model, people and companies that feel like they have to
> stop travelling will be able to do so, while others who choose to 
> allocate their CO2 to travel will also be able to do so, and 
> everybody will be happy. The problems start when some people want to
>  push their own personal assessments onto the entire organization.
> 
> This is an important issue and I share the objective, though my 
> personal assessment is that we cannot reduce the meetings in person 
> at least for the next 2-3 years, while the social damage of the 
> pandemy is being recovered. I am just worried that, like other 
> non-technical topics in the recent past, this issue will prompt a 
> divisive discussion in which people who disagree with the trend will
>  be singled out and questioned at a moral level.
> 
> -- vb.
> 
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