[Foundation-l] Wikimedia and Environment

[Aryeh Gregor]

On Mon, Dec 14, 2009 at 8:50 AM, Tim Starling <tstarling at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> While the major program spending that Wikimedia performs should be
> defined by its mission, I think small spending decisions, relating to
> day-to-day operations, can be made without recourse to our mission.
> For instance, the office staff should be able use recycled paper
> without there being a Board resolution to put it in the mission statement.

If the sums we're discussing are so small that they can be reasonably
compared to the difference between using recycled and regular paper, I
don't think they're worth spending much time or effort on either way.
How much money would we be talking about to offset Wikimania alone?

> 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.

By that logic, Wikimedia is actively supporting war (or whatever other
government policy you dislike) by withholding income tax from its
employees' paychecks to give to the US government.  Sure, it has no
real choice about paying taxes; but it has no real choice about using
electricity, either.  If using electricity makes you personally
responsible for funding renewable energy, why doesn't paying taxes
make you personally responsible for funding antiwar organizations?

Of course, paying taxes funds war in a very direct way.  The money
goes to the feds and then straight to the military, where a large
fraction is immediately spent on guns and bombs, which are possibly
used to kill people within a year or two.  In contrast, by emitting
carbon dioxide, you're contributing to an effect that won't be a big
deal for at least a few more decades.  And that will probably become
no big deal again a few decades after that when everyone's adapted to
it.  And that won't directly kill anyone in any event, mainly just
cause economic harm.  And that might not happen anyway if some clever
soul comes up with a good enough fossil fuel replacement at any point
in the next thirty years.  Or if it becomes economical to pump
greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere.  Or if some cheap scheme is
devised to reduce warming some other way, like releasing particles to
block sunlight.  Or if some unforeseen negative feedback causes
warming to not get too bad after all.  And of course maybe we've
already hit a critical threshold and cutting emissions is pointless by
now.

Plus you can add the fact that Wikimedia's contribution to the affair
isn't likely to be even measurable, especially if the major damage is
from catastrophic changes (e.g., ice caps melting) rather than
incremental ones.  How much money do you owe for increasing mean
global temperature by a billionth of a degree fifty years from now?

All in all, I'd say Wikimedia has a lot more culpability for people being shot.