In the meantime I’ll be sweeping through the minefield of the Internet…

It is actually about a .5 multiplier you should use on air mileage to compute CO2 tonnage. I was doing a ratio of mileage to tonnage (approx .84) when I should have been doing a ratio of km to tonnage (approx .51). Read the columns in the data sheet too quickly. So Zak is approx correct.

Bradley – thanks for helping me discover my error. Sorry Zak.

You made an interesting point about flying cheaper. Flying with full capacity would be better than flying with less than full capacity. Not sure of the relationship of capacity to price however if it is as you suggest then your argument would follow.

I also noticed that in my data table they are using the same multiplier irrespective of whether you are taking a short flight or a long flight. I suspect this is a simplification – the number of takeoffs and landings is probably a significant factor as well.

FYI, in a few weeks I will be doing some “Green Math” on my website when things become a little bit less busy for me.

Another way to calculate this: Cheap tickets cost about US$1000 per 20,000km. I assume that the marginal increase in fuel consumption costs less than the ticket price. That $1000 will buy only about 400 gallons of jet fuel, which is about 1.5 tons of carbon. You may argue that I shouldn’t use marginal fuel usage (see the post above), and you would be partly right. But if you buy cheap tickets, you are guaranteed to be using only marginal fuel because you are helping to fill up an aircraft that was going to fly anyway. If you buy the high-priced tickets you are encouraging the airline to fly even if it cannot fill the aircraft. If you must fly, perhaps the best thing you can do to improve your carbon footprint is to buy cheap tickets.

We might eventually achieve this by following the path that Rasmus has laid out as they are good ideas. I think there is a gulf of execution, however, between the what Rasmus is envisioning and where we are now. This is the first blog to raise awareness of the issue of green conferencing.

Strategically, I think the next step is to keep this flame alive. Keep talking about it, keep blogging about it, keep doing the math to show this is unsustainable and unacceptable given what we now know about the probably consequences….

I’ve always been bothered by Al Gore’s movie which consists of him in a car or flying here or there to preach the reduced co2 gospel. What gives might the right? Buy some offsets and ease your conscience? Because I’m preaching the gospel I get a special break?

It’s not going to be easy. The path, however, involves keeping the discussion going IMO.

Regards,
Paul

We dramatically cut the costs and waste associated with the event, while being able to involve people usually excluded from conferences for economic (and accessibility) reasons. For example, we were able to involve Thai students in the event – something that is basically impossible for any European or American tech event.

I’ve been chatting about some ideas along these lines with John Robinson from the Center for Interactive Research on Sustainability (http://www.cirs.ubc.ca/) – I bet that between CIRS, Mozilla and some committed tech partners and a few friends with some funds, we could throw some events like this as a way to build skills in the area and set expectations from conference participants about how stuff like this should be done.