Could the Internet be Earths greatest ally in the fight against carbon emissions? I believe so. This may seem absurd at first thought, but really take a second and try to wrap your mind around it.
It wasn't long ago that the Internet was the new kid on the block and the so-called coup de grace of modern society. Fast-forward to 2011 and it seems that our society couldn't exist without it. You see, technology really is a 'Tale of Two Cities', the best of times, the worst of times. It's the beauty and the beast all wrapped up into one pollution-filled package. For example, just look at the automobile. The advent of the car is arguably one of mankind's greatest achievements. On the flip side, has any other invention led to such large-scale pollution?
Now, I'm sure one can drum up some intriguing arguments about the evils of the Internet. For example, how much pollution is being generated by those enormous warehouses that hold Google's servers? You know, the ones containing all of our online data. Well folks, as in life, we must take the good with the bad. Much to our dismay, we don't live in a Utopian society. Sometimes we have to learn to live with the lesser of two evils. This doesn't mean we shouldn't aspire for perfection, but it does mean that we have to find the joy in the small battles won.
With the rise of telecommuting, such as working from home, online school programs and online shopping, how much pollution is being sequestered by the Internet? Need a real-world example? Let's say a nationwide clothing store is having a sale. Twenty years ago, 10,000 people (numbers are arbitrary) would have hopped into their cars, driven 'x' amount of miles to the nearest store (some may have used mail-order, but the percentage was generally low). Fast-forward to today. With the click of a button, your purchase will be shipped from a warehouse, to a shipping company (UPS, etc.), then to your house. How many gallons of fuel and oil were saved? Lets say that it took 1,500 vehicles (again, numbers are arbitrary) to deliver all those packages. Now, the numbers I'm using are fictitious, but we know that less vehicles will be used to deliver the packages compared to consumers driving their own cars. This alone leads to an astonishing amount of fuel saved, thus pollution avoided. More fuel is saved by these retailers utilizing large warehouses instead of countless 'brick and mortar' stores. By shipping items directly from these warehouses, they're basically taking the middle man out of the equation.
Another carbon emission-cutting measure is currently taking place at some of the largest companies in the world. The United Parcel Service (UPS) utilizes resource-saving software and techniques that not only save them time (time is money), but large quantities of fuel as well. An example of this is UPS's logistical rule of only allowing their drivers to make right turns. This saves time and money, as well as being better for the environment. How many people do you know follow procedures like these when en route to the local shopping mall?
Need further proof that the Internet is our greatest ally in the fight against carbon emissions? How many people close to you have taken an online class or worked from home via the Internet? The numbers are quite large and still on the rise. I recently read an article about a middle school allowing students to take their ENTIRE curriculum online. How many cars and school buses will be kept off the road due to this? Now, is this a good idea for students? That's a social issue to be discussed at another time.
The bottom line is that the Internet is here and it's not going away anytime soon. Although it's not the solution by itself, the Internet may very well be the greatest asset in todays 'Green Revolution'. With the addition of clean-tech, such as renewable energy and green building, we finally have a foundation to build upon. The only question is, where do we go from here?
Please feel free to comment and/or ask questions. Thanks for reading.
