Stop Spam and Save The Planet?
Dec 31st, 2007 by Shaun Carter
With the environment taking center stage here in the US amidst the presidential race I got to thinking about how the advent of the Internet has affected the environment and how it has contributed to global warming.
The first thing that comes to my mind when I think about computers, servers, and electronics and how they relate to the environment is that they consume copious amounts of electricity, much of which is derived from heavily polluting fossil fuels. Now obviously the advances we have made as a society with the help of electronics are immeasurable, but there is one lingering sore within our technological advance and it goes by the name, SPAM.
Spam, or unsolicited bulk e-mail, is a cancerous growth within the Internet and the servers that power and route information across the vast information superhighway. The question on my mind is how much global computing capacity is wasted on spam and what is the environmental impact of that excess capacity?
It turns out my own webhost, DreamHost, has “gone green” by offsetting their emissions with REC’s, renewable energy credits. The validity and effectiveness of REC’s have been disputed because they don’t actually reduce emissions, they simply buy excess emission credits earned by low-emission manufacturers and retire them. Dreamhost’s CO2emissions are equivalent to that of 545 homes. I imagine that in order to process the world’s spam it would take many more servers than what Dreamhost has and thus even more CO2 is emitted in order to send you the latest bulk advertisement for male enhancement and prescription drugs. I’d imagine that the global environmental impact of spam is likely on the scale of pollution generated by a small or medium size country.
By one estimate, in 2003 spam accounted for about 1/3 of all e-mail sent over the Internet in North America and the worldwide IT cost to corporations for dealing with it will have hit almost $200 Billion by 2007. In addition, lost productivity due to spam was over $20 Billion in 2004.
So, my question to the political candidates vying for my vote… What will you do to stop spam in order to help the environment?
Technorati Tags: spam, e-mail, shaun carter, environment, server, candidate, political, president, us, dreamhost, global warming, pollution
