[Foundation-l] Wikimedia and Environment

[Aryeh Gregor]

On Mon, Dec 14, 2009 at 1:50 AM, Tim Starling <tstarling at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> 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.

Even accepting the premise that subsidizing renewable energy is a
moral duty, that doesn't mean Wikimedia should fund it, any more than
it should be spending its budget on feeding starving children.
Wikimedia should not be spending any significant amount of donated
money on things that do not directly advance its mission, because
people donate to fund its mission, not unrelated causes (however
important).  It's very different from a private individual or company
in this respect -- Wikimedia has a duty to spend its money on the
things it's accepting donations for.

(If anyone else wants to spend money on this sort of thing, though, I
entirely agree that subsidizing renewable energy makes much more sense
than trying to cut power usage.  Society is not just going to cut its
energy usage by 90% -- the resulting drop in quality of life would
probably exceed any caused by global warming.  The only way to achieve
drastic cuts in CO2 emissions is to stop using fossil fuels for power,
and that will only happen when there are economical alternatives.
Widespread private subsidization of renewables is a relatively direct
and reliable way to help make that happen -- although breakthroughs in
fundamental research would obviously be preferable, they're
uncertain.)