Except for the fact that McDonald's doesn't need to change anything for an electric car to use their drive-through. Literally the only thing that needs to change to move to (hydrogen|electric|whatever) for transportation is the refueling step. With IPv6 pretty much everything except the wires needed upgrading.

Decarbonization isn't just about cars. Currently, many homes have a furnace that burns fossil fuel, which can run from a small generator during a power outage. That generator could even use the same fuel as the furnace.

Switching to heat pumps means that our electric grids need to become a lot more reliable, both in terms of weather resistance and generation capacity.

I have lived many places with gas furnaces, and one with an oil furnace. None of them have worked when the power was out. The only place I have lived that had central heat when the power went out was an apartment with steam radiators.

All of the "currently need electricity" furnaces can be replaced with heat pumps without improving reliability of the grid. And if that is X% of the furnaces, we get X% of the total benefit by doing so. With IPv6, as long as each person accesses a single server node that is IPv4 only, then each person needs an IPv4 address.

One can run a gas boiler using an UPS (battery) to power it. In places where power outages are common people have them. A battery with the capacity enough to run a heat pump for at least several hours would be prohibitively expensive.

Again, if we replace every single furnace without a battery backup with a heat-pump, we get the majority of the benefit without any loss of utility. IPv6 transition has significant network effects, decarbonization has relatively few (with refueling being the primary one)

IPv4 is not an existential threat

Sure, the analogy is not perfect — e.g. AFAIK there are no subsidies for v4 as there are for fossil fuels.

As far as existential threats go: everybody thinks locally and acts globally in most, if not all of their actions.

And existential threats and mortality are difficult for people to deal with. In fact there’s a whole branch of human activity devoted to that topic (religion).

I don’t mean to reduce the significance of the risk (I dropped my other work and now work in climate repair myself) but I think there is are fascinating and instructive lessons to be learned from this example.

The Internet with its AJAX/ReST architecture enabled by JavaScript in the browser lets you "link globally, interact locally"!

I just hope the Big AJAX Industry doesn't bribe congress to subsidize Fossil Protocols such as XML and SOAP, just to delay the transition to more environmentally friendly technologies like JSON and ReST.

NOTE: This packet is sold by net wait, not by volume. Packed as full as practicable by modern automatic equipment, it was delayed the full net wait indicated. If it does not appear full when opened, it is because contents have been compressed during shipping and handling.

I had never before thought of "think globally, act locally" as a description of the end-to-end principle.

For most people it's just means-to-end principle.

By "everybody thinks locally and acts globally" are you making fun of all that old hippie shit?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_globally,_act_locally

Announcement: The new official slogan is "act globally, act locally". Please update your programs.

Yes, regardless of ideals, I think my formulation is accurate. Nobody thinks of the polar bears when they drive their SUV a mile to pick up a loaf of bread.

So "think provincially, act catastrophically". ;)

This classic 1973 paper by W Wulf and Mary Shaw of CMU was the manifesto of the early anti-globalization movement:

https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/953353.953355

Exactly, both won't (fully) happen until it's economically essential to make the transition.

The parts of the internet stuck on v4 (hard wired IPSs) won't move until is economical unviable to not use v6. Hopefully the rapid increase in v4 IPs price will eventually push them to sell off their addresses and move to v6.

In comparison, the parts of the economy dependent on oil/coal won't move until its more expensive to continue.

If only governments had some way of making it more expensive to continue using fossil fuels.

They could use further taxes but that would only negatively affect the poorer strata of population, as we are currently seeing with record high gas prices.

I have a hard time believing that big corporations can be pressured with this kind of policies, seeing that they can just pass on the extra costs down the line to the customers.

> They could use further taxes but that would only negatively affect the poorer strata of population, as we are currently seeing with record high gas prices.

Cut subsidies and give more money to the poor.

When do we base policy decisions on what's best for the poor?

No, I say it's the middle class: they can only just afford those big social signals they drive every day and don't want to give them up.