Climate Impact and KDE

[Alexander Neundorf]

On Freitag, 20. September 2019 11:02:44 CEST Jens wrote:
> So recent discussions about Climate Strike raised some very good points
> about what KDE as a community can do to decrease its footprint. I want
> to thank Friedrich for raising them.
> 
> Personally I think this is a rather fun focus for design, community
> work and development (and I should probably have thought about it
> faster so it could have been squished into the goals voting/suggesting
> - but such is life) and just want to toss some ideas around if others
> are interested
> 
> Community ideas:
> Making a clear statement that carbon footprint in travel will be a
> factor in travel support from the eV. Basically we know that there is
> zero possibility for some to choose, say trains (train from India or
> across the Atlantic is not feasible), but adding that as a part of the
> application process; "choose best transport with ecology and
> environment in mind" can go a long way and for larger events asking
> organizers to look up alternatives and present them as part of the "how
> to get to X" page (much of this is already done of course but
> formalizing it would be awesome).
> 
> Decentralized and Online community events. Now I think we all know the
> value of meeting IRL, how important that is and how it can't be
> replaced, but I would love to explore how we can make online or smaller
> co-run events more interesting. Basically trying to time several
> smaller local events with each other and do some broadcast of talks and
> a way for each event to be able to ask questions of the others talks
> (as if they where there). Evaluate and check how we can make social
> events but online sort of.
> 
> Improve our internal social communication. This sounds a bit guache but
> I think looking at how we can make the forum/social media angle more
> attractive, perhaps more formal, might help the wider community feel a
> part without having to travel to large events (which beyond ecological
> impact is often impossible for many, for various reasons)
> 
> Technical Ideas:
> Look at Plasma and applications energy consumption - and I know it is a
> piss in the ocean 

No, IMO this is significant.
This affects millions (?) of computers running every day for hours.
I don't know how much energy it is, but I would expect that it is all together 
non-negligible.

OTOH meetings in real life are sooo valuable, and even video meetings are so 
much less personal.

Alex