Sunday August 4 2019, Cockle Bay, 14:50 AEST

How can we minimise our software’s contribution to climate change? How do we make software that can withstand climate change-related disasters? How do we deal with the knowledge that we’re careening towards catastrophe?

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, if the entire world pulls together to zero out carbon emissions in the next thirty years, we might be able to limit global warming to 1.5°C, which will still lead to immense human suffering and irreversible environmental damage. What can we do about this? Can we do anything?

I’ll look at the following points:

  • Calculating the carbon cost of your cloud hosting.
  • The environmental case for efficient algorithms.
  • The likely outcomes of climate change, and what they mean for your app.
  • Dealing with existential dread.

Watch 'Environment Variables: how software impacts climate change' on PyCon AU's YouTube account

Merrin Macleod

I am a software developer based in Wellington, New Zealand.