It is a great day for the future of the IT sector.
Facebook announced today that they will be working with Greenpeace to move everyone closer to a world powered by clean and renewable energy and to, "use the Facebook platform to engage people on energy and environmental issues."
Over the past few years, we've campaigned hard against Facebook to get them to commit to clean energy -- specifically, we wanted them to change their siting policy -- the decisions that they make about how to power their massive football-stadium-sized data centers.
When you go onto Facebook or Twitter or iTunes, your stuff -- photos and music, status updates and party invitations -- has to be stored somewhere. It's not something we all spend a lot of time thinking about, but that's how we use computers and how we're going to use them in the future.
It's called "the cloud." It's growing fast -- right now if the cloud were a country, it would be the fifth largest country in the world in terms of global warming emissions. All that information is stored in massive data centers, which look like huge warehouses straight out of the Matrix. And more often than not those data centers are powered by coal.
Like anyone else, I love Facebook. It's changed the way we can talk to our supporters on the web -- I can log in and see how people are engaging with our campaigns, what excites them and what motivates them and what changes they want to see in the world. We've won historic victories by relying on the power of Facebook -- victories against major brands that happened virtually overnight. On our Facebook campaign, we set the Guinness Record for number of Facebook comments on a page in 24 hours. When I, or any of our activists, use Facebook, we want to know that we're not contributing to the very problems that we're fighting.
What we're asking of corporations like Facebook is actually pretty incredible -- we want them to be ambitious. We don't just want them to "not be evil," (as Google says) -- we want them to do good. In fact, with the failure of the recent negotiations in Durban and America's inability to pass climate legislation, we're asking companies like Facebook to look far into the future, think about what's good for their business and what's good for the planet.
We're asking them to be champions, and they're stepping up and doing it
Facebook has raised the bar for everyone, and we're now looking for companies like Apple, Twitter and Microsoft to make their next move. What's even more incredible is that now that Facebook is demanding clean energy, utilities, like Duke Energy, are going to have to supply it.
This is the future of campaigning - big business isn't going anywhere, so we want them on our side. We think corporations can be the good guys, if people demand it. We've asked them to step up and they've done it.
Since the beginning of our seafood supermarket campaign, along with other organizations, we've convinced 15 major supermarket chains around the country to improve their sustainable seafood policies.
Just this year we've convinced two of the largest toy companies, Hasbro and Mattel,to stop sourcing their paper from Asia Pulp and Paper, a major contributor to Indonesian deforestation. And just this week, GE and Ben & Jerry's were successful in pressuring the Environmental Protection Agency to make green refrigerants legal in the United States, a step that will make a huge difference for the climate.
There's so much more to come in 2012 -- we're working to get the major tuna brands, like Chicken of the Seato use better fishing methods.
We've got even more planned for the IT sector because we want to be able to use our gadgets, tweet and live our 21st century lives knowing that the cloud is cleaner. And, as we say at Greenpeace all the time -- no permanent allies, no permanent enemies. We're committed to standing up for the truth and pushing corporations to be their absolute best -- not just dollar-driven profiteers, but true members of our global community. Sometimes that means flying an airship over their headquarters (yup, we did that with Facebook too!) and sometimes it means standing together to ask for better solutions together. So here's to 21st century campaigning and unlikely allies.
And thank you Facebook for helping us make history!
Follow Philip Radford on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Phil_Radford
www.ecycleenvironmental.com
Data centers are uniquely situated to install heat pumps/CHP systems to re-use the enormous amounts of (waste) heat the servers give off as heat and even for electricity generation applications, and to use passive design to cool the space. Their large size also makes them ideally suited for well-planned and building-integrated (preferably tracking and concentrated) PV systems that can provide a substantial percentage of the electricity used onsite.
PLEASE don't greenwash the killing of ecosystems for Big Energy of any type, we can do better.
Watch "the Corporation" .
We need an un bought democratic republic to represent the citizens.
Business will always be one dollar one vote.
Schumacher is one of my "heroes" also
my recording of him at davis during the SIB tour
http://www.archive.org/details/Ef.SchumacherSmallIsBeautifulPressConferenceUcDavis1976
His intermediate technolgy group is now Practical Action
http://practicalaction.org/
His basic idea is every locale must become relatively economically self-sufficient
one of his disciples is Amory Lovins (Natural Capitalism) with Paul Hawken
http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=globalcooperativeforumDOTnet%20AND%20Amory%20Lovins
all "my" archive posts
http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=globalcooperativeforumDOTnet&sort=-publicdate
Schumacher's talk inspires me to get back to one of my proposals: let's get out of the radar of the big shots and do wonders with such little money that they wouldn't even consider blocking it. (But even that is awesomely hard to do.)
How did you manage to archive all your posts? Where does one go on HP to do this?
Everything that is wrong with the left in America is summed up right there. "Big Business" the very people who employ so many Americans and provide us with the goods and services we need and want are the bad guys in the eyes of many.
It's pretty easy to blame big business for all of those things, but they are only doing so to satisfy our needs. That "environmental exploitation" you refer to creates the very goods you and I need and want. The environmental pollution you talk about is a byproduct of the goods we all consume. What about outsourced jobs? Americans want high wages and cheap goods. Big business can't pay high wages and create cheap goods, so they move offshore where wages are cheaper. You ask the impossible of businesses and then hate them for being unable to fulfill your unrealistic and childish expectations.
Congratulations though, very exciting news. If corporations are going to rival governmental players for power it makes sense to engage them. If they are wise they will realize that the world is going to change and will put themselves in the right places to continue to succeed. I look forward to hearing more of Greenpeace putting on the pressure, your size and reputation are going to be a definite resource in these fights.