Hi everyone,
If you live in Australia, this has been a rough year to think about climate
change. After the hottest and driest year on record, over 20% of the forest
surface area of the south east was burned in the bushfires. Although I was
hundreds of kilometres from the nearest fire, the air quality was rated as
hazardous for several days in my city. This brought home for me two points.
One, that "4ºC" is not about taking off a jumper and going to the beach more
often, but actually represents a complete transformation of our planet. 4ºC is
what separates us from the last ice age, so we can expect our planet in 80
years to be as unrecognisable from today as today is from the ice age.
Two, that climate change is already with us, and we can't just continue to
ignore the problem and enjoy whatever years of climate peace we thought we had
left. Greta has it right, we are running out of time and absolutely drastic
action is needed.
All this is a prelude to add my voice to everyone who has already said that
messing with the NumPy license is absolutely *not* the drastic action needed,
and will be counter-productive, as many have noted.
Having said this, I'm happy that the community is getting involved and getting
active and coming up with creative ideas to do their part. If someone wants to
start a "Pythonistas for Climate Action" user group, I'll be the first to join.
I had planned to give a lightning talk in the vein of the above at SciPy,
which, and believe me that I hate to hate on my favourite conference, recently
loudly thanked Shell [1] for being a platinum sponsor. (Not to mention that
Enthought derives about a third of its income from fossil fuel companies.)
Unfortunately and for obvious reasons I won't make it to SciPy after all, but
again, I'm happy to see the community rising.
Perhaps this is derailing the discussion, but, anyone up for a "Python for
Climate Action" BoF at the conference? I can probably make the late-afternoon
BoFs given the time difference.
Juan.
[1]: https://twitter.com/SciPyConf/status/1276898138977193984
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