30,000 walking, talking carbon emitters tackle climate change

Counting international negotiators, environmental groups, business representatives, journalists, indigenous peoples organizations and more, there are some 30,000 visitors on hand in Durban, South Africa, for the latest round of global climate change talks.

That’s 30,000 people coming from as far away as Argentina, Canada, Russia and Trinidad and Tobago … which means thousands upon thousands of planes flown, taxis ridden and hotels booked. And all that means lots of energy consumed and lots of carbon dioxide emitted — the very things that climate talks are aimed at curbing.

Granted, advances in networking technology are making it easier than ever to “meet” with others in far-flung parts of the world without ever leaving home. Cisco, for example — an “official networking technology partner for COP17 (the 17th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) — expects to connect 119 of its TelePresence rooms, as well as 36 Tata Communications Public TelePresence rooms, for an “unparalleled set of video-based virtual collaboration at any large event to date.” Maybe, without technologies like these, the number of people in Durban this week would be even higher, and the resulting carbon footprint even larger.

Is it all worth it, though? Meeting face to face still provides richer, more meaningful opportunities for dialogue and relationship-building than does sitting in a TelePresence room or video-chatting via Skype … however much more efficient those technologies might be than jetting cross-planet. Only one outcome will be able to provide an answer to that question: an agreement that finally sets the world on a more sustainable energy and carbon path.

All the other activity — whether in person or via the “intertubes” — will ultimately be just so much hot air … literally.