 So yeah, that's the sort of typical response I've got from people when I said that I was going to talk about zero carbon wordpress They sort of look at me blankly and like what even is that right? What's what does it mean? What's wordpress got to do with climate change? It all seems a bit random, but um, I thought Paris was a good place to talk about this because 18 months ago in December COP 21 happened. It was the clock the Paris climate summit where The leaders from 195 countries formed the first legally binding agreement on climate change. So and that's what this photo is from it was It's a really historic event where politicians finally stood up and said yes We're actually gonna commit to doing something for future generations and If you're sort of environmentalist like me, it was sort of a little yay. Yes, like they're gonna save the world Now so 18 months later 18 months later this happened Don and Trump, you know, he's threatening to pull out of the climate agreement and We've also got Theresa May who is not too keen on it either. She dismantled the Department of Climate Change so politicians really aren't Aren't gonna save us from this and we don't have much time. So it's been one and a half years since the Paris climate summit and The international panel on climate change has said The year 2020 is crucial if CO2 emissions continue to rise beyond that date the most ambitious Amidstigation goals will become unachievable Which basically means that actually, you know, the chances of us avoiding runaway climate change diminish rapidly If we don't start to actually reduce climate emissions from 2020 we have to stop them They've already kind of just about plateauing, but we need to get them coming down And not only do we need to get them coming down the new study said we actually need to get to zero carbon globally well before the year 2040 so If you've got any sense of time like, you know, that's that's not very much time To actually transition away from fossil fuels and everything else that's contributing to climate change. So What's this got to do with WordPress? What's this got to do with the internet? Well, the internet emissions are huge. We think of like the internet as this really clean inert thing It doesn't have any it doesn't do any harm It's just you sit on your computer and it's all kind of shiny and lovely But actually it uses a huge amount of electricity. The internet uses more electricity globe Annually than the whole of the United Kingdom. It's 416 terrible hours per year and in terms of carbon emissions That's equivalent to the aviation industry Which is always like they've kind of the bad boy of climate change I think that flying is kind of really evil but actually the internet produces just as much carbon and If it was a country the internet would be equivalent to Germany. It's the sixth worst polluter in the world So we then bring this over to WordPress WordPress is 27 percent of the internet and You know, that's phenomenal and okay I'll admit it's not 27 percent of carbon emissions because a lot of that goes to like streaming sites like YouTube and Netflix and Amazon Prime and that sort of thing but nevertheless like as a community We're having a huge huge impact and that means we have a huge opportunity to actually pool together and share ideas And actually do something about like taking leadership on this issue So here's nine things that we as a WordPress community can actually do to tackle climate change First thing we can do is we can switch to a green web host so a green web host is basically one that runs itself on renewable energy and uses really energy efficient data centers there's There's there's a few around it's kind of hard to find out which ones which ones are good, but um The ones on the slide rack space Google cloud platform Green geeks that they're pretty good Um Try to avoid the worst polluters. I've been a little bit unfair I put a AWS on here as like the worst polluter But actually that's because until recently they were running like tons that it centers like purely on coal It was really bad, but they've actually taken a lot of leadership on this and they're moving really rapidly to renewable energy They're building their own solar farms are building their own wind farms And I think within a few years Amazon is actually going to be one of the best so So something to watch But one of the problems is that some of our favorite hosts like WP engine flywheel page lee wordpress.com Not only do they not necessarily run on renewable energy But they kind of can't necessarily control that and Speaking to them. The reason is that they don't actually run their own data centers They use different data centers like use like Google and linode and AWS and so on So they actually have any control over the efficiency of those data centers They don't have any control over the power supplies But what we can do is a community is we can make it clear to the our favorite hosts, whoever they are That we want our hosting to be green and they can then put pressure on the data center providers Or they can shop around and actually pick their data center providers and make that more of a priority If you're looking for a green host, I really recommend like checking out the green web foundation They have they have a database of hosts that are actually doing something about being green And they have a really nice chrome browser extension which puts this little green smiley face in your browser bar If the website you're visiting is powered by renewable energy and it also works on Google searches So when you get the search results, it'll show the little green smiley face next to the ones powered by renewables So that's really nice and green piece also have a really good report that's worth reading called click clean They're doing a lot of quite in-depth research on sort of the big data center providers to find out Who's good and who's who's dirty? So the next big thing you can do is create energy efficient websites So this kind of it's kind of logical next step that if energy equals carbon then Let's just make the websites less energy efficient The average website this year in 2017 is over 30 times the size that it was in 2003 and Data transfer data basically equates to energy the more data you have to store and transmit the more data centers You need the more transmission power is required to actually shift that data around the globe And the more data more energy is used by your computer at home or in the office to actually load that and serve that up to you So focus on small file sizes. However, you can use caching so that you're reducing server load Delete unused files. So, you know, I bet you've all got a WordPress media library That's just full of junk like stuff you uploaded and you just don't even you didn't even embed it in a post And probably pages that nobody reads and websites that you built like five years ago and like you don't really need them anymore But it's kind of cheap to just leave them on the server So just have a like spring clean get rid of all that old rubbish that you don't need Because somewhere there's a computer with it sitting on that's actually burn it, you know burning energy And then these ones seem really random like good SEO and good UX like seem like they have nothing to do with energy efficiency But actually if people can't find what they're looking for they spend more time online Clicking links and loading pages that actually don't do them. No good So you're kind of frustrating users and wasting their time for no benefit. So Good SEO and good UX are really good But then there's all the other things that don't to do with websites But actually as a word for us community we do so our offices use a lot of energy So actually try to use like energy efficient offices run them on renewable energy if you work from home sign up for a renewable energy provider Travel efficiently so find the most efficient way of getting so you see your clients getting to work getting to word camp Whatever it is. So walk cycle if you can if you're local take the train try to avoid flying if you can Have low carbon events so word camps, you know make it part of the organizing thing to think about having central locations Paris is fantastic because it's so easily accessible. It's so central Keep them local, which is another thing that was a WordPress community We're great at having really local events So people don't need to go to the other side of the world to find the a word camp promote sustainable transport to get to the events Use energy efficient venues and have low carbon food. So local food at the buffet veggie and vegan food and Choose good clients. So, you know if if we as a community actually Actually sort of Say yes, we're gonna work with people who are doing something to fight climate change, but we actually say no to people like the Koch brothers People like the Koch brothers will end up with really shit websites, and I'm sorry to say they have a really nice one So if we all actually take a stand on that then market forces will actually give a competitive advantage to people who are fighting climate change and a disadvantage to people who are Pushing us in the other direction read this book. It's really good Designing for sustainability. It's all about how to build greener web products by Tim Frick. He runs an agency over in the States called mighty bites Tax yourself the carbon it sounds really stupid, but these two guys think it's a good idea and At least the guy on the right. I think it's quite clever. So we're trying that Look it up. See if you want to do that for yourselves and blog about your zero carbon journey I think this is the best thing that we can do is just use the power of WordPress to share knowledge and share ideas Share our failures We're not going to get the information we need necessarily from the mainstream media, but the power of WordPress means that we can Actually, hopefully get the knowledge we need to fight climate change together Zero carbon WordPress is not going to be easy, but I think as a community if we pull together we can get there