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When Sea Change Radio Executive Producer Bill Baue logged onto his computer Thursday morning, Skype immediately rang with a call from Don Carli, Senior Fellow of the Institute for Sustainable Communication, in Copenhagen for the UN Climate Conference (COP15). Don’s passion is to raise awareness about the carbon embedded in the entire lifecycle of every communication act – for example, the energy and emissions to power your computer to read and listen to this dispatch. He urges everyone, especially companies, to walk our talk, and reduce our emissions in how we communicate.
Listen to his take on REDD (reducing emissions from deforestation in developing countries) and REDD+, as well as on the corporate presence at COP15. You can also hear a funny story of him standing in line next to Environmental Defense Fund President Fred Krupp outside COP15, and meeting him by tweeting a picture he snapped from his cellphone, thereby connecting electronically. Unfortunately, we didn’t discuss the carbon footprint of this method, compared to just introducing himself in person!
Thanks to our COP15 Series Sponsor The Cloud Institute, as well as financial support from The ManKind Project and the Institute for Nature and Leadership, as well as other individuals.
If you found this post interesting, you might want to explore these topics also:
carbon footprint, COP15, Don Carli
Great discussion in this episode on the impact of different communication mediums. One way I look at it is with digital it is much easier, faster and lower energy use to transfer the electrons, which means the impact is much less. All we are really trying to do is communicate, send info from one place to another, if we remember that, then maybe we don’t get to hung up on the medium i.e. paper. We are not trying to send paper, we are trying to send info. As far as I can tell flowing electrons, electricity, is abundant and renewable from the sun. While Google uses tons of electricity, it can all be renewable. A forest takes much longer to renew and is not unlimited. Do we need to do any further calculations?
David
Hi David:
Thanks for your comment.
Forests are likely to be converting more of the Earth’s sunlight in to usable renewable energy (biomass) than photovoltaics will for several decades.
Your assumptions about digital media being faster, easier and lower in energy use ignore the importance of the cognitive and climate impacts of different media supply chains and their lifecycle impacts.
There are many situations in digital media are expedient,but there are also many in which print is a more effective AND more eco-efficient medium for communication than digital media alternatives.
According to the most recent reports from the EIA only 10.5% of the electrons generated in the US this year were from renewable energy sources and less that 3% from solar or wind.
Despite your assertion that all of Google’s power CAN be renewable, they ARE NOT and the majority of the electrons used by digital media in the US are predominately fossil fuel fired. While Google is making efforts to support the development and use of renewables, data centers in the US are primarily powered by coal and natural gas and use nearly as much electricity as the entire papermaking sector in the US.
On the other hand over 60% of the power used by papermills in the US is carbon neutral biomass power. In addition, sustainably managed working forests are continuously renewable sources of economic, environmental and social benefit as well as being a renewable source of biomass used to produce paper for communication as well as other uses.
I am all for use of digital media where a fact-based case can be made that it is effective and sustainable, but good intentions alone do not make the case.
Paper-based media supply chains are not without significant room for improvement in terms of their uses of energy and materials or potential reductions in waste, but digital media has been given far too much credit for being categorically “greener” and more effective than print without supporting evidence.
For example, the common misperception is that papermaking is a primary driver of deforestation in the US when far more deforestation is caused by agriculture, low density development and mountaintop coal removal land use change. Coal that is removed from deforested mountaintops in West Virginia is used to produced coal-fired electrons.
The fact is that both print and digital media need what the US demanded of China at the COP15 Summit in Copenhagen: MRV (Measurement, Reporting and Verification)
Do you know what the carbon footprint of your website is? ISC uses http://www.co2stats.com to track and offset the client, networking and server carbon footprint of our sites. It is one of the ways we are making efforts to walk the talk.
We need more and better ways to MRV the lifecycle aspects and impacts of print and digital media communication supply chains because the future of our species is contingent upon them being effective AND sustainable.
Thanks Don for your perspective. I’d love to see life cycle impacts of each medium. Do you know where that is available?
Regarding the trees providing renewable energy, sure but what is the pollution associated with it? I was trying to think of what is to come not what is? It’s good to know what is so we can measure progress. Thanks for championing that.
I look forward to the comprehensive data on what is so we can all do a complete analysis.
I’m not sure how a piece of paper is ever faster than an email, could you provide an example?
Maybe another angle to consider is, what is the communication trying to do? Is there piece of paper that can be written on over and over again and information sent in both directions?
I like your point about data centers using as much energy as paper making. I would like then to look at the impact of those electrons compared to paper. i.e. If a memory chip holds 2GB of info. how much paper does it take to hold that much info. and what are the carbon and other impacts of each.
I agree harvesting forests sustainably creates jobs but I think we need to reverse our harvesting fast and put those people to work doing something else. In other words we need a restorative economy, not just a less bad or carbon neutral one, in my opinion.
I look forward to your thoughts. Thanks,
D