Fighting the climate crisis (also) with open source

This is a text automatically translated from Italian. If you appreciate our work and if you like reading it in your language, consider a donation to allow us to continue doing it and improving it.

Let's go back to talking about the climate crisis and green after our article on CO2 emissions from the internet. While the movement Extinction Rebellion Italy has always used almost only free software, recently also the movement Fridays For Future Italy he decided to fight the climate crisis also withOpen source also thanks to the Telegram channel: Open For Future.

For those who don't know what it is Fridays For Future: it is a movement born thanks above all to the perseverance of Greta Thunberg. Every day in August 2018, he staged sit-ins in front of the Swedish Parliament. Sitting with a sign that says "Skolstrejk för climatet” ¹ (School Strike for the Climate) then decided to demonstrate every Friday until Sweden aligned with the Paris Agreement to reduce carbon emissions. From then on, as you can imagine, the demonstrations became a real avalanche throughout the world.

Extinction Rebellion, despite being less known, is equally important. I'm a group of activists who believe in the effectiveness of nonviolence. They therefore practice mass actions of civil disobedience. By rebelling, they ask governments to reverse the course that is leading us towards climate disaster.

Extinction Rebellion Italia and Fridays For Future Italia

As we said, Extinction Rebellion Italy has always used alternative systems for their internal communications (ProtonMail, Mattermost And Signal). They do video conferences on Jitsi And BigBlueButton, they use WordPress with maps of OpenStreetMap instead of Google's to manage events. Their favorite social networks are Telegram, Mastodon And Peertube and to find social media links not rebels you have to make an extra click on their site: they are in fact carefully hidden so as not to give them free advertising. Their site is hosted on FlokiNET, zero-emission Icelandic servers.

The movement Fridays For Future Italy has recently taken an important step forward towards awareness and sustainability, right on their website. They took the plunge by bringing their own Hosting on a zero impact server (BM Service). They also moved on to WordPress. They then began a journey of reclaiming their lives online by communicating with Telegram. They also opened their own profile Mastodon. Finally they will also post their videos on Peertube, L'decentralized alternative to Youtube which is part of the fediverse as well as the previous social networks mentioned (here is our article on Mastodon).

Fighting the climate crisis (also) withOpen source

Although these things may not immediately seem directly related to the climate crisis in reality they all go hand in hand with each other: it is important to be able to have an overall vision. Starting from the importance of using the zero impact server and going as far as using WordPress, an open and free platform.

Sites developed on software such as WIX (on which the website was previously based FFF ITALY) allow you to create sites quickly. But they are specially designed so that you can no longer do without them, remaining stuck in their labyrinth from which it is almost impossible to escape ². To put it less romantically: Fridays For Future Italy he had to copy all the previous articles by hand because WIX it did not allow the content produced to be easily exported. Here is the difference between using closed software and free software.

Free from Big Tech

What you write about Facebook and Instagram it can in fact be deleted or obscured at any time, based on how their algorithm feels that day ³. It is essential to regain possession of what we write: a website with WordPress allows you to do it. Switching to alternative social media helps you avoid being subjected to the rigid rules of the market and the whims of some CEO. To run a alternative social network (or rebel, as XR Italy calls him) as Mastodon or Pixelfed all you need is a small home server with a very low environmental impact. Furthermore, the social networks of the fediverse are interoperable with each other and do not create any exclusive bubble as they do instead Facebook and other web giants.

If you are interested, we will soon create an ad hoc article dedicated to the fediverse and alternative social networks.

The Big Tech, as we have already seen in the past with the campaign Big Tech Loves Big Oil, they often make great use of the greenwashing. In practice they make people believe in words that they are very good and super ecological and then support oil companies by providing them with technologies (AI) to facilitate the discovery of new oil deposits ⁴. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Fighting the climate crisis: the events

There are always events and days of demonstration, from their page upcoming events find all the information.

Some examples of upcoming events:

• March 2, 2022, public meeting with the minister Cingolani;

• March 6, 2022, introduction to Extinction Rebellion Turin;

• March 7, 2022, aperitif with Extinction Rebellion Verona.

As anticipated we believe that Open source and ecology have more in common than is believed and than their popularizers are often aware. Together we can join forces and create something truly great

1. Greta Thunberg in front of the Swedish Parliament[↩]
2. Roach Motel[↩]
3. Facebook, Instagram and censorship[↩]
4. XR Italy on Big Tech Loves Big Oil[↩]

Join communities