Projects/Sustainability/CAT Skills

CAT Skills

This is an informal study group among tech professionals in the Climate Action Tech community who want to learn and discuss what they can do to mitigate the climate crisis.

Documentation from this project will contribute to Micro Climate's 1000 Ideas.

December 6, 2019

• Location: Mozilla Office, Community Space. Schlesische Straße 27. 10997 Berlin, Germany
• Time: 09:30 - 15:00. Flexible. Drop-ins ok.
• Hosts: Chris Adams and Michelle Thorne

10 Bold Ideas for a Sustainable Internet

Make Sustainability Engineering a career pathway

• Sustainability engineering needs to be an recognized professional specialization as well as a skill integrated across the engineering field.
• Similar to accsssibility in web development, sustainability should be foundational in any developer's practice. See: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Accessibility
• This means incorparting sustainability engineering into computer science courses and educational programs.
• And hiring for these roles and as well as upskilling existing developers in this area.
• The tech profession should pressure non-compliant sites to invest in their sustainability and to follow best practices in engineering.

Budget for 1 planet

• Learn to count carbon.
• Ensure your budgets account for carbon costs as well as financial ones.
• Encourage and teach others to set carbon budgets.
• Use the Platform, Packets and Process to categorize carbon costs for digital projects. https://planetfriendlyweb.org/

Get the magnitudes right

• It's not always intuitive what changes will result in the most environmental gains.
• Quantify and openly publish tests and measurements about the carbon footprint of your digital work. Compare that carbon cost of other activities, like flying or running a load of laundry. This helps build a better understanding of how "expensive" internet-related activities are.
• What is most effective depends on your context, and to win, we need to at least have an idea of what is effective to the nearest magnitude.
• https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~rcs/research/interactive_latency.html, but for carbon.
• Consider rebound effects.

Change the Aesthetic

• What is desirable in one era can seem outdated and undesirable years later when societal norms change. We should design and code for a new sensibility, one that is irresistably sustainable.
• Like it or not, tech is a fashion driven industry. Make the transition irresistable, and the everyday injustices outrageous.
• Make caring about climate impact part of being a good professional.

Ask the Right Questions

• We need a Joel test for Climate. A set of yes/no questions to ask when finding your next job, that show if an org is taking the climate crisis seriously.
• For example: "Does this company collaborate with the fossil fuel industry?"
  • is there a public commitment to net zero emissions?
  • is there a public timeline to reach net zero emissions?
  • are there a public independent audit of progress on the way?
  • is there disclosure of how much biz comes from projects to help extract fossil fuels?

Keep it in the Ground

• It is socially unacceptable to work on getting fossil fuel out of the ground in a climate emergency. We should not be working on projects to help extract fossil fuels, ever.
  • Qn: "Does this project help get fossil fuels out the ground?
  • A: Yes?
  • You: Not working on it. End of discussion.

Use equity for equity

• The work you do isn't the only lever you have. Money works for you too.
• Shares in your pension delay climate action - ask and switch.
• Stock you are paid in can force discussions that need to happen - use it like Amazon for Climate do.
• Divest your pension. https://gofossilfree.org/resources-tools/

Serve the planet

• Like a national service, or a tour in something like the Peace Corp, but without the problematic colonial bits. Because climate is a planetary problem, that we solve en mass, not by relying on single heroic figures. Frame it accordingly.

Fight denial

• Understand that algorithms and misinformation play a key role in delaying climate action.
• Develop information recommendation algorithms in a way that favor science-based information.
• Optimise for truth, not clicks.

Notes

• Possible: Our ten bold ideas for climate action in the 2020s: https://www.wearepossible.org/latest-news/ten-bold-ideas
• Possible also advocated for a Climate Debate in the UK. With ice statues of the politicians who didn't show up. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6bJhKvFVw4
• Khazzoom–Brookes postulate: In the 1980s, the economists Daniel Khazzoom and Leonard Brookes independently put forward ideas about energy consumption and behavior that argue that increased energy efficiency paradoxically tends to lead to increased energy consumption. In 1992, the US economist Harry Saunders dubbed this hypothesis the Khazzoom–Brookes postulate, and showed that it was true under neo-classical growth theory over a wide range of assumptions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khazzoom%E2%80%93Brookes_postulate
• 1856: Eunice Foote presented carbon dioxide
• William Stanley Jevons first observed that increasing efficiency of coal power plants, then more coal is used. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Stanley_Jevons
• Sustainability Engineer career path. Responsible CS tie-in.
  • References: How to build an engineering competency matrix: https://circleci.com/blog/7-steps-to-building-an-engineering-competency-matrix/
• Museum of fossil-fuels opens in Sweden: https://group.vattenfall.com/press-and-media/news--press-releases/pressreleases/2019/the-museum-of-fossil-fuels-opens-in-sweden--a-fossil-free-life-is-soon-a-reality
• Platform, Packets, Process: tools to quantify emissions in digital orgs.

December 13, 2019

• Location: Mozilla Office, Community Space. Schlesische Straße 27. 10997 Berlin, Germany
• Time: 09:30 - 15:00. Flexible. Drop-ins ok.
• Hosts: Chris Adams and Michelle Thorne