Re: Ethical Web Principles

Hi Chris,

Thanks for the links. While I agree emissions should be the central point of focus in relation to sustainability (with regards to climate impact on the Web) as it covers a wider range of variables, I do think there is perhaps something to mentioning energy use (perhaps as a by-product of emissions) in context for the very reason that most nations still produce a significant proportion of their electricity through non-sustainable sources (coal / gas) and thereby it has a trickle down impact in terms of sustainability. Which will ultimately have a energy footprint dependant on how resource intensive sites and apps (and their assets) are.

Alex
________________________________
From: Chris Adams <chris@thegreenwebfoundation.org>
Sent: 13 May 2022 11:41
To: Alexander Dawson <alex@hitechy.com>
Cc: public-sustyweb@w3.org <public-sustyweb@w3.org>
Subject: Re: Ethical Web Principles

Hi Alex. thanks for sharing this.

If you’re going to look refer to this, it’s worth being aware that there’s a whole discussion going on about the Sustainability principle, calling it anticompetitive for daring to refer to energy use, as well as a W3C session in 2019 from Tantek Celik.

https://github.com/w3ctag/ethical-web-principles/issues/

A while back I raised this issue to tweak the language to refer to carbon specifically - at the time, I figured it was a way to talk about the thing we really care about - the harmful effects of the emissions rather than the energy use, as when we only look at efficiency/consumption as a lever, we miss all kinds of opportunities for improvement

https://github.com/w3ctag/ethical-web-principles/issues/11

We cover this in more detail with this three levers model here:
https://www.thegreenwebfoundation.org/news/three-levers-for-change-as-a-technologist-consumption-intensity-and-direction

There are obviously more issues to account for than just carbon, and we cover some of them in this report we released before:

https://www.thegreenwebfoundation.org/publications/report-fog-of-enactment/

There are all kinds equity related issues as well TBH, as well as non carbon related impacts to account for, and we’ve died into some of this here as well

https://www.thegreenwebfoundation.org/news/what-people-think-building-a-sustainable-internet-involves-vs-what-it-might-actually-be/
https://www.thegreenwebfoundation.org/news/who-pays-for-cleaner-energy-on-the-web/




Chris Adams

Co-director

w: thegreenwebfoundation.org<http://thegreenwebfoundation.org>
e: chris@thegreenwebfoundation.org<mailto:chris@thegreenwebfoundation.org>
t: @mrchrisadams

The Green Web Foundation
Van 't Hoffstraat 1
6706 KD Wageningen, The Netherlands


On 13. May 2022, at 01:36, Alexander Dawson <alex@hitechy.com<mailto:alex@hitechy.com>> wrote:

Hey everyone,

I saw this interesting document on W3C TAG and thought it might be useful toward integration in any future recommendations we hope to make in the future. Especially 2.2 and 2.9 as it ties directly into our goals.

https://www.w3.org/TR/2022/DNOTE-ethical-web-principles-20220512/

As it's a draft note I figured I'd post it now while they are still developing it.

Alexander