ComputerWorldUK’s Green Zone has a new blogger, Cassandra, “a highly experienced IT manager with more professional certificates than any sane person would put down on a CV, and who no one listens to until the things they were warned about really do go wrong… ”

Here Cassandra points out that for all the talk of new green products, very few if any vendors seem willing to consider the environmental impact of the manufacture of their equipment. This is a fine example of an economic “externality” in action, and Cassandra is impatient with the approach.

Now don’t get me wrong I thing the focus on being green is great. However I asked the vendors themselves a couple of questions. What steps had they taken to reduce the carbon footprint of the manufacture of their product? It is not just the running cost of the power the causes the carbon footprint but the cost of the manufacture. The result? Blank faces. Servers consist of plastic and metals all of which required carbon to produce. But how much carbon they didn’t seem to know.

The column is I presume modeled after the Cassandra written by Sir William Neil Connor in the Daily Mirror for 32 years from 1935 onwards. Connor had some balls – he was on deck to take this picture from the British Hydrogen Bomb tests.

I try to avoid apocalyptic themes on Greenmonk but this one rather jumped out at me. To further the importance of Cassandra’s warnings- he made his name arguing against those that tried to appease Hitler in the run-up to the Second World War. And from that perspective the name Cassandra is incredibly evocative. Today’s appeasement surrender monkeys are climate change deniers. We need more irritant, more people asking tough questions of the status quo, so welcome to the party Cassandra.

Al Gore could yet emerge as our generation’s Winston Churchill: the guy that got it, a voice in the wilderness when times seemed easy, but someone to trust when the war really gets started. I wonder what the new Cassandra makes of Gore? I certainly look forward to hearing more of his views on all things green.

photo credit – the lorry blog says please don’t steal this picture. I don’t want to steal it, but consider this fair use. If he insists I will take it down. I would really like to see the Daily Mirror waive copyright for some of Cassandra’s articles so the author of the blog, Michael Lawrie, can do more justice to Connor’s memory.

I have written about BT and its sustainability efforts before, parts 1 and 2, but the firm is not resting on its laurels. Far from it. So I thought an update would be appropriate.

Firstly BT has decided it needs to invest more in its own power generation capabilities with a wind farm program aimed at generating up to 25% of its existing UK electricity requirements by 2016. BT already has some capability in this area for peak times, when national grid electricity hikes in price – but stepping it up makes sense. Certainly as oil looks to hit new highs, and its only 2007 – forward thinking makes perfect sense.

Secondly I really like what BT is doing over at Bigger Thinking. The data center section shows Steve O’Donnels trademark agressive stance on BT’s capabilities.

“We’re really very far out ahead in thought leadership on this,” says Steve O’Donnell, Global Head of Data Centre and Customer Experience Management for BT, adding “We want the market to follow us, and reduce the global carbon footprint for IT services.”

Thirdly it would be easy to dismiss Steve’s claims as so much hot air (yet more carbon emissions…) were BT not walking the walk when it comes to transparency. How many organisations would have the nerve, and the data at hand, to show their energy consumed per million pound turnover?

Its this last area that most impresses me about BT. A core tenet of GreenMonk thinking is that open shared collaborative data will be essential for better environmental outcomes. So well done BT for being so clear on your KPIs, successes, failures, and the economics of sustainability.

At the opposite end of the spectrum- all mouth and no trousers is John Hutton, secretary of state, who is quoted in the story above. John- the government is doing NOTHING to help the UK meet the targets that the government itself set in its usual hand-waving, no delivery, style. How businesses can contribute? Can contribute? Well we’re seemingly not getting any help or leadership from the current UK government, so praise be to the private sector.

Other organisations I would like to big up on a Friday afternoon are British Medical Association (BMA), Ford, Sony UK, John Lewis, E.ON UK, CQS, the University of Cumbria and Lloyds TSB. You all deserve a lot of credit for your work together at the Environmental IT Leadership Team (EITLT).

thanks for the picture use, phault.

Luis Suarez reminded Dennis, who re-reminded me, that yesterday was Blog Action Day. Luis works at IBM. He is a social software maven, an all round good guy, and an obsessive twitterer. But he also has a life-its always great to hear him planning a weekend of first life activities-he really loves Fridays. Really loves them.

Luis says:

“So, while I have been thinking what I could blog about on the subject for Blog Action Day!, I mean, trying to establish the relationship between the environment and Knowledge Management along with Social Computing, it just hit me big time! And here I am. Putting together a few thoughts on how I think both KM and Social Computing could help out bring forward the conversation on how to preserve what’s been given to us so that we can pass it on to later generations in best of conditions.

They say that both KM and Social Computing are all about having an impact. An impact in the way you share knowledge, you collaborate, you connect and innovate with others. An impact that, if anything, has always been notorious for taking action, your *own* action, into wanting to change things and make things happen the right way.”

Blammo, as Cote might say. Luis is talking to exactly why I started Greenmonk-that is, green from the grassroots up, where open source and social software modes and methods lead to better environmental outcomes. One good thing about blogs and such-no paper! Back to Dennis.

“Professionals have a long history of attempting to reach the Nirvana of the paperless office. VersionOne recently won a gong for its paperless office product. I hope this might inspire firms to consider how new technologies might help in the fight to reduce our carbon footprint. It doesn’t stop there. If you use data centres or data services (don’t we all?) then it’s worth asking just how green the supplier really is.”

Now this is a conversation i am more than happy to be involved in.

I was more than taken aback when I read this headline today – Oracle mulls vote on open source at upcoming shareholders meeting.

Apparently its not a joke. According to Matt Asay:

“What is the proposal? That Oracle adopt a resolution that the company consider the social and environmental impact of using open source. The underlying intention, I believe, is to nudge Oracle to take on a more protective approach to open source. Oracle wants the resolution axed.

The language of the shareholder proposal is fairly vague, which may be one reason it’s not getting much love from Oracle. However, as Jonas Kron, the attorney representing Lawrence Fahn (Oracle shareholder), told me, SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) rules significantly restrict what they can ask for in the proposal, forcing them to file a proposal that focused on social and environmental impacts – a very safe area within the SEC rules.”

Given that a group of us has begun to ask the question: What Is a Green API?  this is really big news. Basically everything has an environmental impact, even open source. But I expected dorks to lead the conversation, not shareholder activists. We can surely expect similar resolutions to be put forward at other vendors, so this one promises to get more interesting over time. I will be tracking it. The velocity here is stunning. Anyone would think the planet had some problems needing to be dealt with or something. Let’s see what way the vote goes.

Sun has just launched OpenEco.org, which it describes as a “new global on-line community that provides free, easy-to-use tools to help participants assess, track, and compare business energy performance, share proven best practices to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and encourage sustainable innovation.”

It’s good to see this. Solved problems are going to be shared problems, so it makes a huge amount of sense to also share the fixes. GreenMonk was set up with the idea that shared problems are the only kind that get solved.

I forgot to hit post on this one, which is cool – because I can add a special bonus segment from my good friend Thomas Otter of vendorprisey fame.

I think it high time to add the role of the software vendor into this discussion.  I believe the software industry ought to do three things.

1. Start designing software that has a lower energy consumption footprint. After all people buy hardware to run software.  The equation is a simple one.  I like the concept of the Green API. (tip James)

2. Build software that helps others reduce and measure energy consumption. I’m thinking here of supply chain monitoring,  for instance, enabling customers to make buying decisions based on green criteria.  When I buy my next car, I’d be prepared to wait longer for delivery if my order was optimised for lower energy consumption in the production process.  I’m probably not the only one.

3. Ditch the fallacy that software is a clean industry without externalities.

I couldn’t agree more Thommo – funnily I recently wondered about your employer SAP as a green API.

What would be the opposite of green? On my recent’s travels I think I may just have discovered the answer. I have just got back from Las Vegas, and as anyone that has been there knows its a pretty weird place. From the slot machines in the airport terminal as you arrive, to the constant stink of cigarette and cigar smoke throughout the hotels – it hardly feels like America at all. Or any other country for that matter.

I was with Michael Prosceno, who heads up SAP’s industry changing Blogger relations program, when we had a particularly weird moment. Sitting outside at a place called the Border Grill, we lit up a couple of cigarettes to go with our drinks. A waiter came over and politely asked us not to smoke in the area. When just feet away, inside the hotel, people were happily puffing away.

In Vegas you can get some of the freshest seafood. You want oysters in the desert- no problem. And I don’t mean prairie oysters.

I was talking to Rich Green, Sun’s software guy yesterday, and when I said I couldn’t see Vegas as having much a future, he pointed out that with the Hoover dam nearby, it would always have enough electricity. The reason I don’t think the city is sustainable though is actually more to do with water. There isn’t any. You fly in over desert and then suddenly golf courses appear.

Vegas is a city powered by ultra consumption. Every cubic meter is air-conditioned, whether there is anyone in the room or not. The light on the top of the Luxor pyramid is apparently the brightest on earth.

I really don’t like the city much- at least not the strip, which is certainly not to say it can’t be great fun. But I think it represents the kind of unsustainable living we need to start paring back on if we want some kind of future. With that in mind, I would say tech firms that are truly concerned with corporate social responsibility should think about having their events elsewhere.

Just because the hotel rooms and conference centers are “cheap”, doesn’t mean they don’t extract a high price. If I feel so strongly about it shouldn’t I just personally boycott events there? I am not sure. What do you think?

Picture courtesy of gribiche and the creative commons Attribution 2.0 license. Thanks gribiche!

This piece by Amit Singupta, The colour of blood is saffron, argues forcefully that repression and abuse of natural resources go hand in hand. You might think its not the place for greenmonk to say anything about repression in Burma, but this article makes it clear why we should be thinking about the links between extraction and use of natural resources, and the regime there. We should all be signing up to the Burma Campaign.

These nations, and the western nations including Britain, which controlled Burma as its administrative territory in the early 20 th century, still use the colonial metaphor. They have ignored all pleas for justice, for democracy, against mass detentions and torture in jails for decades, against the elimination and disappearance of hundreds of students and dissidents, against killings of innocents, against organised State repression. They have allowed a little country and its condemned people to die a living death in abject suffering and imprisonment, in abject poverty.

Why?

This is because they are part of the loot and plunder of the natural resources and gas reserves of this pristine country on the borders of India’s northeast. All these countries are using, extracting and eyeing the natural riches of Burma. Hence democracy can be damned, long live the junta.

Its good to know IBM, HP and Oracle are on the clean list. Tech for obvious reasons is less exposed. Extractive industries on the other hand are more likely to support odious regimes because… that’s where the resources are. What does that mean? The less oil and gas we consume the less likely we are to support tyranny. Saving the planet is not the only reason to moderate our carbon -based behaviours. Obviously you might want to avoid Teak too.
Support Free Burma.

Enough said. From Treehugger, via Statistics Monster.

I came across an excellent commentary from David Hall in the Guardian today, responding to an article by Mark Lynas, which sums up a lot of my thinking on environmental issues and how we’re going to deal with them. Is the “greening” of Big Business a bad thing? Some people argue it is.

Arguing that we can’t shop our way out of disaster makes obvious sense. Can Shopping Save The Planet? Of course not.

But then again- trying to somehow exclude Big Business as part of the solution is just facile. We need consumers to change their own behaviours sure, and a little less conspicuous consumption wouldn’t go amiss (said the man who has flown to the US and back twice in the last two weeks, to work with IT suppliers). But if Tesco gets us all using long lasting light bulbs that is a good outcome.

By caricaturing this business response as “more shopping”, however, much positive work is misrepresented. When it joined our campaign, Tesco made a commitment to sell 10 million energy-efficient lightbulbs this year (up from 2 million last year), and has slashed prices and transformed its range in order to do so. How can that be a bad thing when a single low-energy bulb saves on average 11kg of CO2 and £8 in energy bills per year?

Tesco has turned a green product from an expensive niche buy into a mainstream choice. And by incentivising other green behaviours such as insulating your loft (B&Q) or holding on to your mobile handset (O2), our other partners are promoting alternatives that actively reduce emissions. This is not pure altruism; the desire for competitive PR advantage is certainly a factor. But, as recent Climate Group research shows, the most powerful impetus is coming from customers. People want companies to play a bigger role in tackling climate change and judge brands on how well they rise to this challenge – provoking some serious thinking within business.

IT may only account for 3% of the world’s carbon emissions, but it can certainly help mitigate the other 97%. We need to pressure our suppliers to do better, not just dismiss them for trying to attract the green pound. I have absolutely no problem with someone that wants to Save the World or Get Rich Trying.

Economics may be the least scientific of “sciences” but it provides the only arguments that matter when trying to persuade business to change. And business has to change.

Or as Hall puts it:

We cannot afford to stick to old divides. If defeating global warming requires us to defeat global capital too, I would suggest we all give up now and start building our arks. But if we can harness the power of a Tesco or an M&S to our cause, we may just have a chance of keeping our heads above water.

I for one am really glad to see our industry gearing up to take on some really important challenges. IT vendors love hyperbole (Windows as a moonshot), but this really is the big one. If we don’t reboot the system it will crash.

photo courtesy of Breibeest