[Foundation-l] Wikimedia and Environment

[Philippe Beaudette]

I strongly encourage those who are interested in this to create a  
proposal for strategic planning consideration... Http://strategy.Wikimedia.org 
.

The strategic planning initiative is thinking about the wmf's next  
five years... This type of conversation is very welcome there.

----------------------------
Philippe Beaudette
philippe at wikimedia.org

On Dec 14, 2009, at 12:50 AM, Tim Starling <tstarling at wikimedia.org>  
wrote:

> 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
>
>
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