“Start Where You Are. Use What you Have. Do What you Can.”

- Arthur Ashe. How everyone can do something about climate change. Even software developers.

Photo by Dan Myers on Unsplash

Bear with me on this detour from IT for a moment. It’s been a sobering week for anyone paying attention to climate science and policy. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released their AR6 Synthesis Report, providing yet another wake-up call on the urgency of climate action. We are already witnessing the effects of climate change at a rate even faster than we originally thought. Unless GHG emissions peak and start to decline in the next two years and we halve emissions by 2030, we will blow past the original 1.5 (and 2.0 °C) global warming limit set by the Paris Agreement.

Subset of Figure SPM.5 from IPCC AR6 Report showing that currently implemented climate policies are insufficient to meet any warming targets set by the IPCC.

Are you overwhelmed yet?! Me too. Here’s one more figure to stress you out.

Subset of Figure SPM.5 from IPCC AR6 Report showing the impact of different climate change scenarios on current and future generations.

Here’s the good news — it’s not all or nothing. As tempting as it may be to admit defeat, we still have a shot at avoiding some of the worst impact the youngest people on the planet (my kids, your kids) will witness. Doing something is better than doing nothing. Doing something saves a nation from flooding, a species from extinction, or a community from starvation. One of my favorite books on climate action is All We Can Save, an anthology of women-authored essays edited by Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Katherine K. Wilkinson. I love it partly as a woman and partly as a scientist, but mostly as an optimist. It really hammers home that any action against climate change is worth doing. And the thing I love most about this book is that they drive this point home with a Venn diagram. I love a good Venn diagram.

Climate action Venn diagram, by Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson.

If you’re like me, you go through moments of personal crisis where you wonder, “am I making things better or worse?” and, “what can I do to address climate change?” The climate action Venn diagram is here to tell you that yes, you can make a difference and how. The key takeaway, and what was incredibly eye-opening for me, is that we all have something to contribute that doesn’t require quitting your job to become a full-time climate activist or kelp farmer. In fact, that’s probably the worst thing you can do. (I don’t even know how to drive a boat.)

Let me explain through my own climate action Venn diagram. This is one I made last year.

This framework helped me see how I could bring my skills, network, and passion together to launch a CIO sustainability strategy last year. It’s also how I got involved in a PTA group at my kids’ school to help kick off a composting program. Sometimes the work you can do is obvious, but when it’s not this is a useful framework to explore what impact you can have with skills you already possess.

I want to carry this theme back to IT, where we left off in my last post on sustainability across the software stack to the role of the software developer. If you’re a developer, I’d encourage you to try your hand at your own climate action diagram and see what you come up with, but I suspect at least one of those actions might be learning how to build more sustainable software. I’ve previously mentioned Green Software Foundation as a helpful resource on this topic, but here are a few specific actions you can implement today:

Consider language choice

In an updated 2021 study of their highly cited 2017 work, Pereira et al. compared the energy consumption, speed, and memory use of 27 commonly-used programming languages in performing 10 benchmark problems. In general, compiled languages tend to be faster and more energy efficient. While there is no single language that outperforms all others on all parameters at all tasks, considering the appropriate language and algorithm for the task can make a big difference in energy consumption.

Emphasize reuse

Contribute to and use open source (or inner source if you’re working within a company) assets. Employ APIs and other reusable components to accelerate your development process and consider the reusability of your own code to save yourself and others time and energy in the future.

Develop and test using containers

Containers can be quickly spun up to provide developers with a curated testing environment for their projects, saving time and therefore energy. Perhaps more importantly, containers improve server utilization, improving the overall energy efficiency of data centers and enable carbon-aware workloads that can be run in times and locations that take better advantage of renewable energy sources.

Remove dead or unreachable code

Unused or unnecessary features consume unnecessary energy and do not achieve their intended purpose. Many compilers use static and dynamic code analysis to refactor code, already commonly used for vulnerability scanning. Although time-consuming, manual code reviews provide a more thorough approach.

Monitor real-time power consumption

Gathering data during deployment on actual energy consumed by your software and its architecture and environment is critical for understanding the gaps between the design choices and actual energy profiles. Many language-specific tools and resources are available for this purpose.

There are of course additional considerations in software design and architecture, as well as AI-specific considerations, which we’ll explore further next time. For developers, here are a few more resources worth checking out if you want to dive a little deeper:

• 10 Recommendations for Green Software Development, Green Software Foundation
• Why Green Coding is a Powerful Catalyst for Sustainability Initiatives, IBM Cloud
• Writing Greener Applications, seminar by Holly Cummins of RedHat

Have you made a climate action Venn diagram? Are you a developer? What other best practices or resources have you found to be useful?

Stacey Gifford, Ph.D. is CIO Sustainability Lead at IBM based in New York. This article is personal and does not necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies, or opinions.