Comment by notyourday
8 years ago
> Every single person who claims they believe global climate change is a very serious, and man-made, problem absolutely should be taking personal steps now to address it. Telecommuting is a thing. Home-solar is a thing. Electric cars are a thing. Quit telling _others_ to solve the problems, and start doing it personally, now.
Let me get it straight, you mean Leonardo Di Caprio, George Clooney and Al Gore should live like the peasants? Please, hold my beer.
Cognitive dissonance is unbecoming.
Spewing tons of CO2 en route to a CO2 control conference, when the same ends could be met via teleconference, is hypocrisy.
You can live well while reducing your impact on the environment. They certainly have the money to.
Is it? I don’t think teleconferencing technology is at a state (yet) where it’s nearly as effective at conveying messages and building relationships as in-person conferencing. It‘s closer than it used to be, and it may get closer still in the future (e.g. if VR gets good enough that people want to use it for that), but for now it’s not there. Teleconferencing also has a public perception of being cheaper and thus less important. So, if the goal of a conference is to cause some measurable reduction in the expected amount of carbon being dumped in the future, by encouraging government action and such - it’s certainly debatable whether conferences can actually achieve that goal, but that’s the goal - then a virtual conference would probably result in a substantially smaller reduction. And if a substantial portion of a measurable change is measurable, then it’s a lot bigger than the CO2 cost of some plane tickets, which at a global scale is immeasurable.
On the other hand, making a point of using telecommunications could make for a good PR stunt, which could increase attention and thus effectiveness. It could also help promote the idea of using teleconferencing as an environmental measure. Overall, though, I’m not sure how good a stunt it’d be - it might give people the impression that fighting climate change requires people to make great personal sacrifices in their way of life, which, whether or not it’s true, could hurt the cause by creating cognitive dissonance. (I’m pretty sure it’s not true, per se. Rather, it would require a ton of money, which would hurt people’s way of life indirectly, but not as obviously.)
To quote a dialog I once overheard at a marathon's finish line:
"You run a marathon and smoke?"
"It's better than just smoking."