Shouldn't the G20 Just Stay Home, Skype, and Tweet?

They say there's no replacement for a face-to-face meeting, but that is hardly true any longer. While a decade ago video calls seemed Jetson-like and kind of creepy, Skype truly set us free to chat with words, or voice, or video, and a combination of all three.

So remind me why the world's leaders and their retinue must continually jet around the globe filling the upper atmosphere with CO2 and the halls of stuff conference rooms with a lot of hot air? Shouldn't we be saving the CO2 emissions for FUN stuff?

While the G20 agenda is certainly important, and social networks such as Facebook and especially Twitter have served an important role in keeping people connected around the events, we should take the next step.

To do things differently, we've got to think about things differently. Truly greening up a lot of the globe's meetings and conferences - canceling some, reorganizing others - seems like a lovely place to start. We've got some advanced videoconferencing technology at our fingertips. Why not use it? Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel talked to President Barack Obama by videoconference ahead of the G20 meetings - this should be the new standard.

We20 might be on the right track. We20 launched a web site a little earlier this year to use Twitter and Facebook to help people set up their own G20 meetings and make their own economic recovery plans.

We20 was the brainchild of a group of social entrepreneurs who all thought that, as the World Bank's Robert Zoellick put it, "We need a Facebook for multi-lateral economic diplomacy."

Paul Massey says We20 meetings have already produced shop-sharing partnerships and CO2 accounting schemes. The founders are hoping eventually government will make policy by building on these type of online-started thematic meetings rather than the old-school version of a lot of (generally) white guys sitting around a big conference table.

We20 is very young and Massey says it will be difficult to get established NGOs to figure out how to effectively utilize the platform. Maybe We20 will effect the real G20, maybe not. But it is certainly a step in a nice, new direction.

More from TreeHugger on green meetings
::San Francisco Puts Green Under One 'Ecothusiasm' Roof
::Green:Net Using Solar Power for Conference's WiFi Network
::Bioneers 2008: A Green Conference Standard
::Green Conference Debates Impact of Climate Change
::Toward a More Sustainable 2009
::IPCC Scientist Encourages Companies to Replace Travel With Video Conferencing
::You've Travelled the World: Now Change It

Comments

[SamKnause]

Thank you for your post. I was thinking the same thing when people we defending the CEO's jetting all over the world. Their arguments were that they were growing their businesses and I just don't buy it. Jet Setting is bad for the environment and bad for the economy. Those dollars could be put to a much better use.

[Richard2]

Graham,

Thank you for one of the most common sense postings in awhile. In your heart you know that if the planet was only four years away from a doomsday climate event, no AGW leader would get on a plane to fly anywhere.

Because many people do, the world wide audience can sense that this crisis is being hyped.

[MGhamma]

Still can't argue the science,eh Richard?

[KillTheMessenger]

"Shouldn't we be saving the CO2 emissions for FUN stuff?"

Remind me, how old are you, again? I think we should be saving the CO2 emissions for the serious stuff. The fun stuff, like playing a modern video game, requires 400-600W PCs with video cards that would have gone for a supercomputer just fifteen years ago. A gamer can easily rake up 10lbs. of CO2 budget a day just by playing. Multiply with a couple hundred days a year and you are right there in the "a ton of CO2 for your fun, dear" category.

So what does any of that have to do with your post? About as much as your post has to do with environmentalism and the G20.