[Foundation-l] Wikimedia and Environment

[William Pietri]

On 12/14/2009 05:50 AM, Tim Starling wrote:
> In terms of the ethics, there's a big difference between inaction on
> an issue, say poverty in Africa, and taking direct action in order to
> make things worse. Wikimedia is not paying people to take food from
> children's mouths, but it is paying people to burn coal for
> electricity. I don't think we can claim to be mere bystanders.
>    

I think that's the key distinction here. Our mission is to make the 
world better in a pretty specific way, and we should stick to that. 
However, that's not a license to make the world worse in other ways.

For example, when we get rid of old servers, we can't just dump the 
toxic components in the nearest river, even if that's cheaper. We have 
to dispose of them responsibly, even if polluting is nominally better 
for our mission. The same principle would seem to apply to the CO2 we 
currently emit. The tricky part is the extent to which it's practical 
for us alone to take action, as opposed to waiting for society to catch up.

Assuming Domas's number (which seems ballpark correct) and the numbers 
in our article on green tags, we'd be looking at an expense of circa 
$20k/yr. That's real money, but at 4% of our hosting budget, it doesn't 
seem crazy. There are definitely a lot of thorny questions about the 
quality of the tags, so good ones could be more, but perhaps not much more.

If we get interested in this, I know an expert in the field, and I'm 
glad to put someone at the foundation in touch.

William