The subject of climate change – whether it is real, and if so what to do about it – has unfortunately become a political issue and a victim of the culture wars.
We are a private company, not a political campaigning group, but we think that it is important to stay informed about global issues of such importance and to align the values of the company with what seems to be true.
Today there is a very broad consensus that climate change is a serious problem and that the whole world needs to take action to address it. If you would like to inform yourself better, the 2022 report by the IPCC is huge and rather overwhelming but is broken down into sections for different types of readers. We suggest you dip into any parts that grab your attention.
At OP-Training we have made the decision to only offer our courses online because this removes the need to travel, reducing the carbon footprint of a training course and each of the attendees substantially. Fortunately, in the field in which we work this makes little difference to the quality of the training because little interaction between participants is needed. We don’t need to use breakout rooms or have discussions standing around whiteboards.
In addition to reducing the carbon footprint of courses up-front by only offering them online, we also spend a small proportion of profit on carbon offsetting through the organisation Ecologi, in order to offset the CO2 generated by running the computer servers we need to deliver the courses. The effects of OP-Training’s carbon offsetting contributions so far are summarised here. Ecologi have also provided a helpful blog article on greenwashing here.
Many other training companies that cover our syllabus of Microsoft courses also offer online training, but it is usually offered as an option at the same price as a physical class in a classroom. Although there might be marketing reasons for this, it doesn’t make a lot of sense in terms of cost because we can save money by only offering courses online: we don’t need to pay for the substantial cost of premises and there are no hotel or travel costs to reimburse to the trainer. So if you do an online course with us rather than an online course with another provider you can be sure that the price you pay is not subsidising a place for an attendee in an expensive classroom who has travelled 5,000km in a plane to get there.