Webinar: Let’s get together with a small carbon footprint

As a follow up to the Earth Day Special Webinar on Health, Equity and Climate Change, we are now excited to host PAN Presents: Let’s get together with a small carbon footprint.

Date: May 27, 2021
Time: 10 -11 AM Pacific time

Our work time and meetings have a hidden carbon footprint! Online video, including streaming, videoconferencing, and video embedded in apps, uses a lot of electricity. Since about 79% of the world’s electricity comes from fossil fuels, that translates into a carbon footprint for streaming video estimated at 1% of the world’s total. This topic is very controversial in the field of information and communications technology (ICT) engineering, as the SFU research team Tackling the Carbon Footprint has discovered. Although in British Columbia we’re fortunate to have electricity derived from renewable sources, our online media still rely on data centers and networks in other provinces and countries that use fossil fuels. This means we too are implicated in online media’s carbon footprint.

Laura Marks and Stephen Makonin will give an overview of the issue. They’ll suggest best practices and ways to be mindful of our online carbon footprint, including in video conferencing, tailored to Pacific AIDS Network.

 

Suggested audience:

  • HIV and hepatitis C organization staff and volunteers, including harm reduction workers
  • Community members and other allies
  • Anyone interested in the impact of technology on climate change!

 

Presenters

Dr. Laura U. Marks is Grant Strate Professor in the School for the Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University. She works on media art and philosophy with an emphasis on appropriate technologies.

Dr. Stephen Makonin is an Adjunct Professor in Engineering Science and the Principal Investigator of the Computational Sustainability Lab at Simon Fraser University. He has been a software engineer for over 24 years working for various local/international industry clients.

 

Please read this before you register

Media Release: In registering to take part in this event, you acknowledge that PAN is recording this event and that your name, image and voice may be recorded. You give PAN the right and authority to use your name, voice, and image if applicable.

After registration you should receive an email with the subject line “Confirmation of Registration.” SAVE THE CONFIRMATION EMAIL as it provides your unique link to get into the webinar. Check your Junk folder in email if it doesn’t arrive within an hour.

If you DO NOT receive an email within an hour of registering, please EMAIL [email protected] as soon as you realize this. We won’t be able to provide access to links on the morning of the webinar as we will be setting up.

Register here