Episode #60: Going Green with Serverless with Paul Johnston (Part 2)

About Paul Johnston:

Paul Johnston is an interim CTO, CTO and strategist who has particular interests in serverless, cloud, startups and climate change. Formerly, Paul served as a Senior Developer Advocate at AWS for Serverless and CTO of multiple startups, including one of the world’s first serverless startups. Paul is also a co-founder of ServerlessDays.

Twitter: twitter.com/PaulDJohnstonMedium: medium.com/@PaulDJohnstonProject Drawdown: drawdown.org/Roundabout Labs: roundaboutlabs.com/Leading Edge Forum: leadingedgeforum.com/White Paper: The State of Data Center Energy Use in 2018IPCC Special Report: Global Warming of 1.5 ºCBlog post: To fix Climate Change, stop being a techie and start being a human

Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/DTpP7RGXV6g

Transcript

Jeremy: All right. We talked about the big three a little bit and compared them in terms of their green and stuff like that, but in that paper that you wrote, you have this cloud league table in there where you compare them. I'd love to know more, what about Alibaba and Oracle and IBM and some of these other things, where do they all stack up against one another?

Paul: They aren't as big. Let's just be clear on that one. They aren't as big, and their green credentials are less clear. For example, Alibaba is very big in China for obvious reasons, it's a Chinese business and yes, they have a footprint outside of China, but they're a primarily Chinese business. When we looked and researched and were trying to find out about all of their green credentials, we found very little information whatsoever. It was almost non-existent. We found a little bit about efficiency in data centers and putting things in cold regions of China. You're like, "Well, that doesn't actually change anything if you're growing at a massive rate." It changes the conversation a little bit.

Jeremy: Can you do that though? Can you pack your servers in snow? Does that help with the cooling bill?

Paul: It depends on the server, I suppose. But I'd say you end up with this, not every conversation is equal. This is shown across the political spectrum as well. The conversation in China is very different to the conversation outside, in terms of industrial nations. Industrialized nations such as the U.S., UK, Australia, and Europe as well. You have very different social context. But anyway, coming back to Alibaba, we just found very little information. IBM and Oracle, actually, both had lots of information. IBM has had a commitment to renewables and sustainability for a very long time. I think since the '70s if I remember right. They have good credentials, but they don't offset their renewables in data centers or regions.

Paul: I think I remember, from the top of my head, because I can't remember everything, they are renewable in the UK. I think Oracle are renewable in the UK anyway. But some of these regions, they are renewable, but not all of them. But it's not clear unless you dig into the paper and unless you dig into their information. Nobody, as far as I can tell, has a little green dot against a region that says, "This one's renewable." It would be so much easier if they did. These other organizations, none of them, apart from Google and Microsoft have really made a play for being the green advocates in the space. Amazon does, but that's a whole other conversation which I'm not going to go into at this point. But the three lower down, I think, are struggling to be able to play in the same conversation. I think they would like to be seen as green, but I don't think they are really pushing the agenda because they don't see it as a point of differentiation.

Jeremy: All right. Then what does the tech industry have to do as a whole? I know you had some recommendations in your paper about this, but just what are maybe the top two or three things that the tech industry as a whole could do to address the climate crisis?

Paul: The climate crisis as a whole.

Jeremy: Or I guess their impact on it anyways. Let's start with that, we could build from there.

Paul: I don't know anymore. I think I've gone backwards and forwards on-

Jeremy: Don't give up Paul, don't give up.

Paul: It's not that. It's just there are so many things. I think my biggest thing is the tech industry needs to find its activist voice. I think that would be my point. I think sitting there and going, "Oh, everything's going to get fixed by technology," is entirely the wrong approach. I think my personal view, as much as I like Tesla's technology, I don't think Tesla is going to save the world. I'm not an Elon Musk fan, I find him very difficult in a number of different ways. That's as much as I'm going to say, but I find-

Jeremy: I don't think he listens to this podcast, so don't worry about it.

Paul: That's fine. But I find a lot of people within tech look at techno utopianism, and let's call it that because I think that's a pretty simple way of it. That technology will save us. The more that I look and the more that I look at what is happening in the world and the speed the technology is evolving and what we need to do in the speed that we need to do it in terms of climate change, I don't think we're going to get anywhere near fast enough technology evolution. We have to do something else. We can't just expect technology to catch up, fix it, and just for us to carry on.

I think technology needs to learn to find its activist voice. I think we need to be activists against those organizations who are not doing enough, who say they're green and are not, and in this, Amazon, I will call this out. Much as I love their serverless technologies and the people who work there are brilliant, the wider organization I think is not doing a good enough job in terms of its green credentials. That hasn't been good enough from my point of view. I want them to do better. Because actually, I think a green Amazon would be a great thing for the world and I think they can do it. I have seen Amazon and what it does when it's amazing, and I think if they turn themselves around and actually did the green thing properly, then I think that the hope for the future would be significantly higher.

That is why I want Amazon to change is because I think they have the power to be a force for good, and I think they're not doing that at the moment enough. That's one. I think find the activist, find the place that you within tech want to change and go and change it. Because I don't think we have anywhere near as much time as people think. I think your career in tech in 10 years time will not look like the career in tech that you think it is now. We are in a completely changing environment. Depending on what happens in the U.S. in the next few years, the world is changing around us. We are in an inflection point that I don't think many people are aware of. This is just...