All the anti-tech curmudgeons and doomsayers have leapt all over Greenpeace’s new campaign attacking cloud computing and the forthcoming Apple iYawn for their carbon footprint. (Fans of irony should note that the campaign documents can be downloaded in the ubiquitous PDF format from Greenpeace’s website.)
Of course, the energy appetite of any technology should be under scrutiny, but Greenpeace’s sloganeering is disproportionate when you actually look at the real numbers:
Computing accounts for a bit less than 3% of U.S. energy usage, according to Lawrence Livermore Labs. The global IT industry as a whole generates about 2% of global CO2 emissions.
Cars, on the other hand, which the vast majority of the people Greenpeace is trying to target also own, are the single largest contributor to climate change, according to NASA, exceeding all other sources in their impacts, and exceeding computing’s global impacts by more than a factor of ten. Greenpeace (I’m a supporter) has made a lot of noise about computing’s climate impacts, while the average commute or drive to the mall is likely far, far more a threat to the future than the average month’s Google searching…
That said, suggesting people drive less is an old tactic that’s had little success, so I suppose you can’t blame them for chasing a target that’s a little more trendy and newsworthy. Seeing this story bouncing around the blogs of the world is akin seeing “Drive Less, Walk More” billboards at a monster truck meet…
In other internet news, the rapid viral expansion of Chatroulette suggests that the internet’s cultural clock is running faster and faster… which means more irritating memes per year, I guess, though if you extend the logic they probably won’t last as long. Mixed blessings, AMIRITE?
And finally, Jeff Jarvis has penned a Cyberspace Bill Of Rights over at The Guardian. It’s all very sensible stuff, carefully worded… and hence lacks all of the naive flash and glorious geek bravado of John Perry Barlow’s Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace from back in 1996. Amazing how we’ve gone from wild frontier to corporate federation in just fifteen years, eh?
