[Foundation-l] WMF-projects: Carbon neutral/low/aware website?

Wed Jul 11 06:25:00 UTC 2007

Hi!

> As discussed, to begin with we can ask donors if it's ok to use part
> of their contributions to offset our emissions, until such a time as
> we become comfortable with budgeting it as a normal expense.

I might look shortsighted, but... the only way foundation emits CO2  
directly, is by breathing of people involved. Everyone stop  
breathing! OK, at least avoid burning calories - don't do any sports.  
And don't fart - lots of greenhouse gases are produced that way.  
Should I mention, that every Wikipedian should stop eating meat? Not  
only meat farms produce lots of greenhouse gases, but also consume  
lots of agriculture products, that could feed everyone. Oh, and don't  
eat rice - the way they're grown produces greenhouse gases too.

The other, indirect emissions - travel and electricity by servers.

Now, we don't travel as insane, and the only issue is probably  
wikimania (where we even manage to boast that 50 different country  
representatives come). Should we do not do inter-cultural or inter- 
national socialization? Should we travel in sailboats?

As for the servers, we're not in business to produce energy. We're in  
business to provide platform for sharing the knowledge. I'm not sure  
how much we're efficient at the level of cpu-power-per-watt, but I  
think we're incredibly efficient at how much cpu power we need.  
Before that it just could be shown as advantage in terms of how many  
servers we purchase (nearly none, compared to other platforms), but  
now I can put that in your face - we don't have many servers,  
therefore we don't suck too much of energy.

> As I mentioned before, uranium is not a renewable resource.  
> However, as we're not trying to debate specific carbon-offsetting  
> methods or technologies at this point, I will try my best to  
> refrain from starting a debate about nuclear's environmental,  
> economic, and proliferation issues.

So why do you talk about carbon-neutral/low/aware website, and you  
deny the obvious way not to do any carbon emissions at all? Also,  
there's also fusion, not only fission. Simply by doing our task and  
providing the world with knowledge at hands, we may build the society  
that will solve all the small technological details about producing  
vast amounts of energy. Also, as only 20% of US energy is nuclear  
(will increase some day in future), we could move our servers to  
France (80%!) :)

Anyway, should we change anything? Probably not much. Really, just  
ranting about that, without looking at actual operations, doesn't  
make sense. Do you, dear interested Wikipedians, use yourself energy  
efficient light bulbs? Do you ride bike instead of a car? Do you buy  
local production instead of far-made stuff? ...
Can we call ourselves carbon-aware website? Yes - we have articles  
about it, and in my opinion, we're efficient enough. We were forced  
to be by tiny budgets for all that energy-consuming equipment..

-- 
Domas Mituzas -- http://dammit.lt/ -- [[user:midom]]