[Foundation-l] Wikimedia and Environment

[Tim Starling]

Teofilo wrote:
> You have probably heard about CO2 and the conference being held these
> days in Copenhagen (1).
> 
> You have probably heard about the goal of carbon neutrality at the
> Wikimania conference in Gdansk in July 2010 (2).
> 
> You may want to discuss the basic and perhaps naive wishes I have
> written down on the strategy wiki about paper consumption (3).

Paper production has a net negative impact on atmospheric CO2
concentration if the wood comes from a sustainably managed forest or
plantation. As long as people keep their PediaPress books for a long
time, or dispose of them in a way that does not produce methane, then
I don't see a problem.

> Do we have an idea of the energy consumption related to the online
> access to a Wikipedia article ? Some people say that a few minutes
> long search on a search engine costs as much energy as boiling water
> for a cup of tea : is that story true in the case of Wikipedia (4) ?

No, it is not true, which makes what I'm about to suggest somewhat
more affordable.

Given the lack of political will to make deep cuts to greenhouse gas
emissions, and the pitiful excuses politicians make for inaction;
given the present nature of the debate, where special interests fund
campaigns aimed at stalling any progress by appealing to the ignorance
of the public; given the nature of the Foundation, an organisation
which raises its funds and conducts most of its activities in the
richest and most polluting country in the world: I think there is an
argument for voluntary reduction of emissions by the Foundation.

I don't mean by buying tree-planting or efficiency offsets, of which I
am deeply skeptical. I think the best way for Wikimedia to take action
on climate change would be by buying renewable energy certificates
(RECs). Buying RECs from new wind and solar electricity generators is
a robust way to reduce CO2 emissions, with minimal danger of
double-counting, forward-selling, outright fraud, etc., problems which
plague the offset industry.

If Domas's figure of 100 kW is correct, then buying a matching number
of RECs would be a small portion of our hosting budget. If funding is
nevertheless a problem, then we could have a restricted donation
drive, and thereby get a clear mandate from our reader community.

Our colocation facilities would not need to do anything, such as
changing their electricity provider. We would, however, need
monitoring of our total electricity usage, so that we would know how
many RECs to buy.

I'm not appealing to the PR benefits here, or to the way this action
would promote the climate change cause in general. I'm just saying
that as an organisation composed of rational, moral people, Wikimedia
has as much responsibility to act as does any other organisation or
individual.

Ultimately, the US will need to reduce its per-capita emissions by
around 90% by 2050 to have any hope of avoiding catastrophe (see e.g.
[1]). Nature doesn't have exemptions or loopholes, we can't continue
emitting by moving economic activity from corporations to charities.


[1] <http://www.garnautreview.org.au/chp9.htm#tab9_3>, and see chapter
4.3 for the impacts of 550 case.

-- Tim Starling