Mischief Managed

Because of the advances in communication technology it is estimated that 40% of people could work at home. If they did, it would be the equivalent of removing 10 million cars from the road. This would reduce carbon emissions by 53 million metric tons a year. Only 2% of the workforce actually works at home, but they have increased productivity of 25% to 40%. This means there is 5.5 million more man years of work annually in the U.S.

On the other side of the coin, one Google search generates 0.2 grams of CO2. This equals driving a car three inches. One month of Google searches produces the same CO2 as powering a U.S. freezer for 5,400 years. It consumes 3,900,000 kWh of energy which is the same as 5.57 million loads of laundry.

The worst aspect of all this CO2 emission is spam. One spam message produces 0.3 grams of CO2. Every year 62 trillion pieces of spam fly around the world. This is the CO2 emission equivalent of driving around the Earth 1.6 million times. This month, Sophos has published a report that listed the capitals of spam coming from various countries. India and USA send the most spam. Russia and Brazil send about half as much. South Korea, along with the European countries of UK, Italy, France and Spain send less, and the least is sent by Germany. The thing about spam pollution is for every email address harvested by a spammer, 850 spam messages are sent. These messages are generating CO2 emissions for no good purpose.

There are other useless things online that emit unnecessary CO2. Online jobs are one. For every real job online there are 48 scams. Those scams create a lot of traffic until people realize what they are. Online gambling is another. The number of people who gamble online has doubled every year and 75% of them admit they are problem gamblers. And what about the 40% of the 12 million online players of the World of Warcraft who admit to being clinically addicted?

The question if the Internet carbon footprint is too big still remains. The Internet has the potential to reduce carbon emissions if it is used wisely. Working at home alone saves tons. However, the Internet is available to anyone who can access it, and they are not all using it wisely. There are more than 1.5 billion people online around the world and the carbon footprint of the net is growing more than 10% per year. Not only is the demand for electricity more, but the carbon debt is drastically increasing from just a few years ago when it was minimal. The question that should be asked is:
Is there any way to take advantage of the great potential for the Internet to reduce carbon emissions along with phasing out the scams, spam and worthless traffic that produce so much?

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