For the purpose of envelope calculations about the climate emergency, the world is emitting the equivalent of about 40 billion metric tons of CO₂ per year.
According to the 2018 U.N. IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C (aka IPCC SR15), the global carbon budget remaining to have a paltry 2 in 3 chance of keeping long term warming not higher than 1.5°C over pre-industrial levels, assuming some natural carbon-emitting feedbacks such as wildfires, is perhaps a mere equivalent of 240 billion metrics tons of CO₂ as of 1 / 1 / 2020. Therefore, that means that at the present rate of emissions, we will exhaust the emissions budget in about 6 years. We don't have "12 years to save the planet" and a "green new deal" is nowhere near the kind of effort needed. Drastic reductions of emissions appear logistically possible, but require huge change in our social systems of production and distribution -- a real struggle both practically and "politically". Libre software, it seems to me, is an invaluable tool to help people globally communicate in spite of social media companies, and globally coordinate and cooperate around the kinds of fast, drastic reforms needed to reduce emissions. To me, this suggests the Free Software Movement's highest priority ought to be simple, well documented, easily forked and hacked (even if minimalist) complete systems -- successfully deployed into the hands of many millions of people who not only get software freedom, but who understand it and usefully exercise it. We need to leverage the adaptability of software to help our global adaptation to the climate emergency and the need to shut down emissions very quickly. The movement is nowhere near that level of individual use or that level of exercise of the freedom to hack and share. Little else matters, in the short and medium term than to fix this. I don't presume to know what this implies for the future of RMS, any particular software project, etc. But I think it is where focus belongs -- including that, ideally, the FSF would be swiftly and radically reformed into an org that actually centered deploying useful software freedom as an urgent task -- a focus that is palpably, painfully absent from the current efforts of its all too "professional" executive staff. -t
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