On Mon, Dec 14, 2009 at 1:50 AM, Tim Starling tstarling@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.)