GreenMonk: the blog

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