Are you like millions of others who assume that an online business, just by virtue of being online, translates to having a lower carbon footprint?  If so, then you are in for a shock. Although this is a fairly common assumption, the truth is that internet powered businesses often have a higher energy consumption requirements than offline businesses and so might have a long way to go before they can become green.

And the situation looks like it could get worse over the next few years. Get this….

• According to the EPA, over the next five years, power failures and limits on availability will stop operations at more than 90% of data centers
• Gartner predicts that early 50% of data centers worldwide will have trouble finding the electricity they need to cool and power their computing equipment
• 97% of respondents in a new survey conducted by the Business Performance Management Forum (BPM) said that it was important for internet and e-commerce businesses to reduce their carbon footprint.

But despite this, very little action is being taken by online businesses to reduce energy consumption.

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Last month, The Times said that two typical Google searches generate the same amount of carbon emissions that are generated by boiling a kettle, “about 15g of CO2.”  This week Zaproot focuses on this and other information in its stranger than truth show “That’s Just Weird.”

As much as you might think that living life online saves a vast amount of resources, the IT industry contributes to about 2% of carbon emissions (The Times). When it comes to companies like Google, the very fact that it generates more than 200m internet searches daily, provokes concern regarding electricity consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. Although Google claims to be committed to sustainability, the truth is that typing in a term into a Google search bar, offsets many competing servers to search for content related to that particular term. All too often the search is generated by the ‘fastest’ rather than the ‘most efficient’ server.

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See also:

From Second Life to Real Life: Global Warming Activism in the Metaverse
UN’s De Boer Warns of Devastating Impacts if We Don’t Act on Climate Change

[Editor's note: In a recent piece about the Poznan climate talks and their existence in the virtual world of 'Second Life' I ended with a plea for more information; a plea answered by journalist Richard Elen.]

Green Options readers are probably not the only people who will be struck by the irony of an intended attendee at the Poznan Climate Talks being unable to leave Stansted Airport on his decidedly anti-environmental RyanAir flight because of climate protestors closing the runway. In many ways, flying to an environmental conference makes you part of the problem, not part of the solution.

I was always very conscious, in attending the UN Climate Negotiations in the run-up to Kyoto (which were often held in Geneva) that flying to conferences was a bad idea. Even driving there, or best of all going by train where possible, was exacerbating a problem we were there to try to do something about.

In those days, some 15 years ago, however, there were few other options. Video conferencing existed but it required going to a specially-equipped location and cost a lot of money. You were limited to one small group making a presentation to another small group. And while the Internet made it much easier to get information out of a conference, it did not initially help you a great deal to get in.

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And maybe someone can tell me more about Second Life, how you use it, and how it might be used in the setting of environmental politics.

For those not in the know, Second Life is a virtual world that gives its residents incredible freedom, but at the cost of a clunky user interface and high learning curve. It took me about 5 hours of in world time to ‘get’ how cool Second Life was when I start playing a few years ago and it held my attention for a few months, but then I got bored with the lack of real community, slow loads, and lack of anything really fun to do.

So now the World Wildlife Fund has wasted a bunch of cash building Conservation Island, where you can chat with a virtual panda or elephant about how important it is to save the world.

What a big fat waste of money.

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