Gore's ethical paradox

BBC News reports that Al Gore has been accused of "energy hypocrisy":

Former US Vice-President Al Gore has been accused of hypocrisy for apparently guzzling energy while he lectures the world on climate change.

A Tennessee-based free market think-tank said Mr Gore's home used more than 20 times the national average of gas and electricity.

An integrated personal identity requires having the humility to walk one's talk. And the biggest challenge for the global warming movement is getting each concerned individual on the planet to reduce our carbon consumption—rather than just worry about the big picture.

Then again, if Gore hadn't been jetting round the world evangelising his Inconvenient Truth these last few months, the whole climate change movement would have gathered significantly less momentum.

Sometimes, life can be paradoxical.

Weaving a greener web

Alan Patrick reports a discussion at the London Social Media Club about the potential positive contribution of the web to green issues. Alan mainly focuses on the web's failures to date in this regard—such as not actually reducing demand for business travel, as some had predicted.

The web is, of course, already making a huge contribution to the green cause, simply by allowing us to share and find knowledge across geographic boundaries. Without knowledge, we are helpless to act effectively in any sphere.

Moreover, the web is allowing non geographically-limited community (albeit often still geographically-rooted community) to blossom, by enabling people to communicate in a relatively unmediated way with others, regardless of location. This is fostering a tangible sense of global citizenship in millions of people who weren't necessarily thinking of their identity from that perspective before.

No web, no global green consciousness shift? It's certainly hard to imagine how we would have reached the critical mass we seem to have without even the humble email. And witness Al Gore's new Save Our Selves project, with LiveEarth concerts planned on seven continents (including Antartica!) on July 7th.

All this said, given the huge and growing power consumption of web servers, the web will do well to go net carbon-negative, at least in the aspects of its environmental impact that are auditable. The web is at the heart of green activism. Ironic, then, that it's also sucking oil like a goodun.

My provisional conclusion? The web is here to stay and grow, so we may as well use some of those power-hungry processing cycles for the good of the planet.