Green from the roots up, Sustainable from the top down
Simon Wardley is a geneticist with a love of mathematics and a fascination in economics. Simon has always found himself dealing with complex systems, whether it’s in the behavioural patterns of ladybirds to modelling environmental risks of chemical pollution to developing novel computer systems to managing companies.
In this talk at the it@cork Green IT conference, Simon gives a superb whistlestop talk on the topics of commoditisation, utility computing, Green IT and ducks (!).
At the recent it@cork Green IT conference Gavin Starks of AMEE had an idea which he and Simon Wardley co-pitched to the audience, to change the carbon footprint metric from tonnes of CO2 to people!
The idea, as outlined in the video above was so well received that we decided to create a site to promote it and encourage anyone who also thinks it is a good idea to become involved. The site is at megatom.ning.com.
From the MegaTom about page:
The average European creates 10 tonnes of CO2 per annum.
The average American, 20 tonnes.
To avert the dangers of Climate Change, we need to drop our CO2 production to 1 tonne per person.
Problem: What is 1 tonne of CO2? How do you visualise it?
Answer: You don’t! You change the metric. 1 tonne = 1 person’s annual CO2 production.
1 average person. 1 Tom.Because it’s not about saving tonnes, it’s about saving everyone.
For example, a 15 minute shower is 0.1% of a Tom, driving 100 miles in a standard car is 4% of a Tom and producing 1 laptop computer is 45% of a Tom.
How many Toms have you consumed? Don’t waste your Toms.
Save Toms, not tonnes!
If you agree that we should be saving Tom’s, not tonnes, why not go to the MegaTom, join and please leave any feedback/suggestions. Thanks.
it@cork are holding their annual conference this year on the theme “Green IT: Reduce CO2, Raise profits”
We here in GreenMonk are sponsoring the event and as part of the sponsorship we are interviewing many of the speakers in the run-up to the conference.
In this interview, I chatted with Doug Neal, research Fellow at The Leading Edge Forum about his presentation.
We talk about how although IT is only responsible for 2% of the world’s carbon emissions, it can act as a huge lever on reducing the other 98%.