[17-meetings] "The Environmental Impact of Internet: Urgency, De-Growth, Rebellion": my talk at RIPE86

[Vesna Manojlovic]

"The Environmental Impact of Internet: Urgency, De-Growth, Rebellion", 
Vesna Manojlovic


https://ripe86.ripe.net/archives/video/1001/

https://wiki.techinc.nl/File:Xs-vesna-e_impact-ripe86-short-and-long.pdf

22. May 2023, RIPE86, Rotterdam


We are in a climate emergency, we have to stop using fossil fuels, in 
order to preserve the life on the planet.

Before I go on, I want to cover some logistics. I work for RIPE NCC as a 
community builder, however today I'm speaking for myself as [an] 
engineer, as an activist and as a mother and part of the RIPE community.

My time slot is short and my slides are long, so, please download the 
PDF version that is also on there with a lot of references and details 
and here, I am just going to try to focus on the highest possible 
abstraction level, so that some people call political and some people 
call it cultural perpetuity, so bear with me, there won't be many 
numbers in here.

Polycrisis

We are living in a poly crisis, that means there are multiple 
overlapping catastrophic events going on at the same time and they are 
reinforcing each other. To name just a few, it's economic crisis, 
geopolitical crisis, environmental crisis. All of them can be 
life‑threatening for some people and in these kind of existential crises 
people often rethink what is important to them, so for me, that is 
sharing, justice and livable planet.

And also in these kind of situations, there are a lot of strong 
feelings. I feel them now but I have to contain them because this is a 
professional set‑up and I'm also nervous, but mainly what the pictures 
that I didn't want to show you but that you can imagine and see from the 
news and stuff, about this poly crisis, invoking me, is grief and love 
and rage. I really get angry.

And what do we do when we feel strong feelings? We call for an immediate 
discussion. This is a bit of comic relief and it's a quote from my 
favourite Monty Python movie.

We all know we have these poly crises, and still we keep on talking 
about it, and this has been going on for a long time, so, the scientists 
have known the connection between greenhouse gas emissions and the 
increase of the temperatures for centuries. The researchers have been 
measuring the temperatures and the CO2 emission numbers for decennia and 
the UN has been on it, the governments have been getting together to 
come up with plans and they had made agreements there was a key oat to 
protocol, there is a Paris agreement and you can see them all on this 
graph and while all of this is going on the emissions keep on growing 
and the temperatures keep on growing.

And that kind of graph of  "up and to the right" is also very familiar 
to the people on the Internet, but we have to focus on a different 
graph, which is this one that kind of goes down, here, and it shows what 
kind of reductions in emissions we need, which ones did we need from the 
beginning? So from the 2015 Paris agreement, we were supposed to cut 
down emissions per year with 7.6%. This is one of the numbers I will 
mention, it will keep on coming back. If we started decreases emissions 
in 2020 that could have been 4% per year but we have wasted so much time 
and now we should go like 50% per year, that is really like 
unimaginable, what's even worse is to imagine what will happen if we 
don't do it.

So this is a news graph from a report with a lot of acronyms, IPCC, 
assessment report number 6 from March this year, and so they are saying 
that if we cut down emissions right now, we are locked in the 1.5 degree 
warming by the end of the century. If we go on with business as usual, 
the warming can go up to 8 degrees or 10 degrees globally so that means 
in other places it will be even hotter by the end of the century.

So what shall we do? Well, there is a lot of space in between and we 
really have to take immediate actions to make as much reduction as 
possible, as soon as possible. Otherwise, if we continue with business 
as usual, we are condemning future generations of humans and more than 
humans, to the unimaginable suffering and a lot of extinction, not only 
of humans but also of plants and animals and squirrels and we don't want 
that, at least I don't want that.

IAB Workshop on e-impact

So, the actual workshop that Internet architecture board organised in 
December with the topic of the environmental impact of the Internet, 
made me very happy. I thought, yes, finally, people who care, we will 
all get together so there was a lot of researchers and engineers, some 
civil society representatives and activists getting together, submitting 
papers, having discussions, immediate discussions, and it is going to go 
on at the next IETF meetings and at future RIPE meetings, so the general 
goals were to bring some understanding of what is the impact of the 
Internet, and to come up with recommendations of what should we do. For 
me personally, it was a task to bring these kind of subjects to the RIPE 
community and I'm happy that the PC has accepted this talk.

Going back, there is mailing list discussion here if you want to join.

So, what were the recommendations? We couldn't really come up to the one 
specific agreement so there is a very pretty picture of what not to do, 
and from my side, I would say all the companies, corporations, 
communities, have to reduce everything by 7 .5% per year for the next 
100 years, and that is emissions, energy usage, material usage, water 
usage, all the companies, with IETF and with RIPE. Then further, as a 
community, we could have the Net zero emissions Working Group and like 
the smallest thing we can do is add sustainability considerations to 
every Internet draft RFCor best current practices document.

DeGrowth

What else can we do? Well, we can learn from other movements, one of 
them is de‑growth, de‑growth is political, economic and social theory or 
movement, based on environmental anti‑consumerist and anti‑capitalist 
principles. Some of those principles are listed here and some of them 
are actually familiar and overlapping be RIPE; for example, cooperation, 
we have a Cooperation Working Group. Joyful living, we are very good at 
partying, and the next one that we could pick up is sustainability, we 
could create a sustainability task force.

However, de‑growth is very pluralistic movement so this is a subset of 
books that I have used to research while preparing for this talk, and 
de‑growth as a concept is very hold, well in the kind of western 
science, it is started in the 70s with small is beautiful and limits to 
growth, a report from ‑ but in other cultures, it is actually just a way 
of living in balance with our more than human neighbours. And so they 
don't have a word for it and now trying to translate it into language is 
actually a hard process. So, the de‑growth is overlapping with a lot of 
other movements, for example, aqua feminism or deColonial 
environmentalism, yeah, others too, there's a whole literature about it.


Well, with ICT we like to talk about a lifecycle. So, we start with the 
equipment, which has to be produced, then it has to be shipped to the 
other end of the world, then it needs to be operated using the energy 
and storing the data and then disposing of it at the end of the 
lifecycle. But all of them, all of these processes, are actually based 
on extract I'vism, exploitation, fossil fuels, pollution and injustice 
so that to me sounds more like a death cycle.

What can we do to minimise the impact that the Internet has on the 
environment? The least we can do is just reverse all of those for every 
component, so when producing, we can have the most sustainable practices 
for getting the materials, we can resource them more locally so we 
reduce the shipping, we can reuse some of the existing materials, and 
very important, stop using fossil fuels for all of the processes. Move 
towards renewable energy. But that's not a perfect solution. We also 
have to reduce the amount of energy used for running the networks, for 
producing equipment, for shipping the equipment and finally, at the end 
of the lifecycle, we can prolong the use of the equipment by repairing, 
repurposing, recycling and also by removing the way of thinking which is 
a planned ‑ and there is movement in Europe for the right to repair so 
there are ways that we can do this in small incremental ways.

However, we are not doing it. Why aren't we doing it? Well, there is 
listed here in this research paper the 12 reasons for delay. *Delay is 
the new denial*. And from these 12 reasons, I see three that are kind of 
prevalent in technical communities: Which is what-aboutism, 
perfectionism and techno optism. So how to counter them.

What-aboutism is: why should we do it, they are worse, they should do it 
first. Well we all have to do it, including the car industry, the 
aviation industry, the building industry but within we within Internet 
industry have to do our part and this is where we have the power and the 
agency. So, we have to do it. And we could also be examples to other 
industries.

Perfectionism, oh, let's measure some more, let's find the best way that 
we can tackle this so that we actually target the best possible way of 
dealing with it. We don't have time for this. That time is over. We have 
to do everything right now, all at the same time. And timely the techno 
optism, that's the hardest one, we do believe technology can solve a lot 
of problems but if you look historically on those graphs that I showed 
before, the tech did not save us until now, so we have to do something 
else; I am suggesting de‑growth.

Which is a problem, because the tech industry is addicted to growth. 
Everything is growing; the number of users is growing, the wealth is 
growing, and the energy consumption is growing.

About the wealth:

Among the top five richest companies in the world, four are big tech, 
the fifth is big oil ‑‑ not the greatest company to be in. So we as an 
Internet industry, we have great power and we also have great 
responsibility to do something to decrease the environmental impact of 
our industry on the planet.

There is a choice again. We can do it by self‑regulation or we might get 
regulated by national, regional and international treaties, that are 
already in place so there are standards, there are agreements, ISPs have 
to follow them, data centres have to follow them, EU just had a big 
conference called beyond growth, so this is happening, people are doing 
it, we have to speed up the way that we are doing a good for the planet.

In simple pictures, this is the graph. We have to reverse the graph that 
goes like this and it has to start going like this, so again, the magic 
number used to be 7.6% but now, I'm asking you to go better, choose 10%, 
put it in all of your metrics and all of your OKRs that every year the 
energy consumption of your company, of your industry, of your country 
has to go down 10%.

Or, if you appreciate my graphic design skills, then you can see the 
more detailed picture, which shows multi solving so you can choose one 
action that is actually going to solve multiple problems, and you have 
to do it on all kinds of axis, so whether you do something on a personal 
level that is going to do the ‑‑ more local impact or the more global 
impact but whatever you do, it's going to have to be a lot because we 
have big problems and we have to find very good powerful solutions for them.

So, for RIPE, just to repeat, the suggestions are, the recommendations are:

Use the 7.6% decrease, create a sustainability task force and for 
anybody in the position of power who can make decisions, demand that 
there is sustainability considerations section in every presentation, 
every paper submitted, every funding proposal, every solution that you 
implement at your work, that's the least you can do.

Because until now, we have been kind of playing by the rules, but now 
it's time to move away from that and towards civil disobedience and then 
it also becomes personal. So this is a picture of my daughter, Alisa at 
her first RIPE meeting, there in my hands and below is her at Amsterdam 
airport at the protest against private jets. She got arrested, it was 
not the first time.

(Applause)

It won't be the last time, and yes, she is very brave, I am very proud 
of her, thank you for the applause. And I'm also sad and angry that she 
has to do this. How did it come to that that the new generations, that 
joined the RIPE meeting in 2004, now have to go and protest against us, 
against the governments, which ‑‑ who did not do their job to provide 
the future for these young generations.

But she's not alone. There is many more people that are going to the 
streets and using the civil disobedience as a tool in addition to 
de‑growth, to ask for big changes. So, I'm inviting you to join the 
scientist rebellion.

And to conclude: I want you to be alarmed. We are in a poly crisis. Do 
the de‑growth, join the existing movements, join other communities and 
also, take responsibility for the global impact of what we do locally, 
stop using fossil fuels and imagine a different world; imagine a world 
with climate justice, a world without fossil fuels, a world that we can 
live to the future generations, we can do it together.



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