No, your email doesn't really emit 4g CO2. Here's what it really means

It's been awhile since I've written an article on here but it's worth it this time because I'm back email footprints yet again!?

It's no great secret that we've had problems with disinformation and misinformation in the climate movement for decades! We had it when I was a young activist and it continues to be a problem in 2022 and I'm sure it'll be a problem from now to 2100 and beyond.

Some of the disinformation is an ecofascist wet-dream. As that allows them to build a social model that blames brown people for the climate crisis and as with all such disinformation, it is completely false! But relies on the innumeracy of most western populations, to ride on the same wave that drives conspiracy theories.

More subtle is the footprint of emails. This doesn't have a particularly nefarious outcome, but psychologically, it does click with, and appeal to, much the counter-narrative against big-tech. There is a lot wrong with big-tech (Musk?). Including the questionable reasons for space travel, but all of that is circumstantial and crucially, collating vested "anti-interests" into a big enough group to oppose or even attack technological advancement. Much of the reason some people have for this are political, and for some others it's hiding their own incompetence.

Politics only exists due to incompetence in any system. You are either managing it or hiding it.

So here are 4 things wrong with the body of knowledge of email Carbon footprints

1. Email is information, not energy or power

This is the foundational mistake made by almost all the commentators in this space. Information itself doesn't have a mass and doesn't have a weight. But the hardware in computers, does. That is the thing that?consumes energy itself.

However, it doesn't understand emails. Only people understand emails. Computers only understand ‘bits’ (words technically – the CPU bit width that stores a basic integer. So a 64-bit CPU has a 64-bit word). Each bit switches something on or off, but the power for the chips that switch on-and-off, is still driving it. That’s it.

In a communication channel, it only means your name, emails, drawings, images etc.?when the packets are put back together again and the file is shown to us. It's what we humans read.

2. Bits travel over carrier signals

In order to send information like an email, you have to generate or accept a series of bits that carry that information. The circuits pull power from the source regardless of whether we use it, because oscillating clock is always ticking.

When sending internet traffic, including emails, this is usually done through a series of “frames” at different layers which are a lot like having a Russian doll, taking it apart and sending each part, as a “packet” on a “conveyor belt”, which takes it from you to your favourite aunt Joan.?

But here’s the thing. The conveyor belt is always on. There is nothing you can do about the energy between the you and Joan. The belt is running regardless and as a fully provisioned system, if you simply don’t send something, the conveyor keeps running, empty. “Wasting” the space and the energy on it.

It’s the same in CPU’s. Clock cycles run anyway. If you don’t use it, it idles. Just like your car idles. When you idle, it’s waste. Kicking out a passenger while it’s idling doesn’t make it idle less. If you get out of the car and it’s idling, it doesn’t make it idle less (don’t try that at home or worse, on the road)

You can even see the CPU clock cycles your own PC uses when idling if you open your task manager and look for the "System Idle Task". In the snippet below, 80% of my CPU is ticking along, not being used for anything other than the operating system and it's monitoring.

The same is true with wired connections, but different in WiFi. Since WiFi switches on the radio receiver to send and receive but the only place a wireless connection is used to send emails is in your house and that of the recipient. Wired connections, with synchronising and handshaking, used in between. This is precisely how Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) works. It grabs power from the unused clock syncs running on the cable at up to 50W these days, depending on what's being sent at the time.

Yes, the same line is used for data and power. Clever isn't it?

3. Information energy-mass equivalence

I know right? How can I talk about this having given you point 1? Subject to the caveat of point 1, the only way that creates an effective theory to reason about the size of an email's Carbon account. Information energy-mass equivalence tries to find the mass of a “bit” and then uses that with Einstein’s famous equation to calculate the energy of a bit and thus, the representative energy used for its transfer. But crucially, the bit that sits above the carrier signal (conveyor belt).?

This is akin to understanding that a lorry that emits 90g CO2/kg/km emits 60g CO2/kg/km anyway just pushing the lorry around. So when you get less lorry journeys, and have fewer lorries on the road, you can significantly reduce Carbon footprints as a result.?Choose your boxes and couriers wisely!

However, unlike a conveyor belt, having few lorries is like switching off servers. But in real life, they don’t switch off. Even if your PC does. So the conveyor belt is always running.?

Hence, contrary to popular belief, the calculated real-world email footprint is in the billionths of a Watt-hour. That’s akin to reducing one 2L plastic bottle in an ocean of plastic bottles the size of Canada.?It's billions of times worse greenwashing than plastic recycling.

4. There is no such thing as a Zero Carbon transformation, even if the result is Net Negative

Whether we like it or not, the act of transforming to a Net Zero or Negative Emissions has a period at the beginning where it heightens Carbon emissions. Sometimes it can be short (like attaching contract or conducting a procurement), or it can be very long and damaging (Direct Air Capture, I’m looking at you).?

Plus, because the planet has given us a hard deadline the bigger that capitalisation period, the worse it is. Because you expend a fortune trying to turn it, but also spend time, which we don’t have. We can’t afford any mistakes because we miss something, or worse, chase tartan paint.?

Given the negligible footprint of emails, this means every action sending a reasonable email (don’t attach, link) will increase the footprint of emails. Bar none. You’ll pour 1,000 2L bottles into that Canadian sized plastic raft to save 1 bottle.

So what’s the solution?

It goes back to what I said in a previous post. Easiest solution ever! Just get green energy and tech suppliers who use it. It’s literally the simplest solution to guarantee you’re going to make a difference.?Then, it doesn't matter that much how many servers you run from that energy, especially if you reuse the servers. Even if you can't guarantee intermediate servers, you've reduced the first 2 or 3 hops.

When it comes to digital service, this solution is the first place everyone should go. Anything else uses more Calories in action potential triggered by the accumulation of neurotransmitters over the synaptic cleft.

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