YOU are the worlds biggest producer of CO2

Question: What is the single fastest growing cause of CO2 in the world? Apparently despite being the focus of many an environmental news story it's not aviation. Nor is it the humble motor car. Nope, not even all those SUV's or Porsches.

No it is in fact The Internet. Hardly surprising if you think about it. All those millions of personal computers drawing power from the electricity grid which gains the majority of it's energy from burning fossil fuels in power stations. Then there are the data centres, with their huge energy requirements not only to power their servers but to keep them cool (which requires about the same amount of energy as just keeping them turned on). Add to this the communications networks that hook them all together and you can see how it all adds up.

So what can we do? Well until true Green IT takes hold, which in my experience will require a massive change in the way IT, Facilities and Finance teams work together in most organisations to gain a meaningful foothold, all we can do as individuals is to apply similar principles as we do to other environmentally damaging areas such as driving.

1) Drive a more economical vehicle. In this case if you still have a clattery old desktop or tower PC the chances are it's drawing more power than it needs to. It's the computing equivalent of driving a Hummer to work. Replace it with a sleek efficient laptop.

2) Reduce your usage. If you use webmail services such as GMail with their massive storage limits you may have forgotten what it's like to have to delete spam, junk and stuff that you just plain don't need any more. It's a good habit to get back into though, if we all reduce our storage on our webmail providers servers it will slow the rate of growth of their data centres and therefore the rate of increase in their carbon footprints. Don't forget to unsubscribe from unwanted newsletters to stop it building up so quickly too.

It's not much but it's a start. Maybe enough of you can delete enough e-mails to offset the carbon footprint of this blog?