we woke today to the news in Copenhagen:
Climate talks deadlocked as clashes erupt outside

Danish police fired pepper spray outside the UN climate conference on Wednesday, as disputes inside left major issues unresolved just two days before world leaders hope to sign a historic agreement to fight global warming.

While world leaders fight it out (negotiate) about what they are willing to do to contribute to stop global warming, there is stuff we can do locally. You can check out a graph that shows CO2 Emissions stats per country, which is very interesting.  The US & China are of course leading the race in CO2 emissions!

CO2 Emissions (most recent) by country

The Green Wikia has a great list about how to reduce your carbon footprint which I really couldn’t beat and which you can find here.

ReduceYourCarbonFootprint.com has a great diagram showing how greenhouse gases affect the Earth‘s atmosphere.

From the Times Online an interesting article Revealed: the environmental impact of Google searches written on the 11th January 2009 with an update on the 16th January part of which reads:

A report about online energy consumption (Google and you’ll damage the planet, Jan 11) said that ”performing two Google searches from a desktop computer can generate about the same amount of carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle” or about 7g of CO2 per search. We are happy to make clear that this does not refer to a one-hit Google search taking less than a second, which Google says produces about 0.2g of CO2, a figure we accept. In the article, we were referring to a Google search that may involve several attempts to find the object being sought and that may last for several minutes. Various experts put forward carbon emission estimates for such a search of 1g-10g depending on the time involved and the equipment used.

A recent report by Gartner, the industry analysts, said the global IT industry generated as much greenhouse gas as the world’s airlines – about 2% of global CO2 emissions. “Data centres are among the most energy-intensive facilities imaginable,” said Evan Mills, a scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. Banks of servers storing billions of web pages require power.

A separate estimate from John Buckley, managing director of carbonfootprint.com, a British environmental consultancy, puts the CO2 emissions of a Google search at between 1g and 10g, depending on whether you have to start your PC or not. Simply running a PC generates between 40g and 80g per hour, he says. of CO2 Chris Goodall, author of Ten Technologies to Save the Planet, estimates the carbon emissions of a Google search at 7g to 10g (assuming 15 minutes’ computer use).

I met some Danish guys on Linkedin.com who have a company called CO2 Neutral Website & as climate change is a subject close to my heart (& my health) I decided to promote them.  The use of the internet today is estimated to cause more carbon emissions than airfreight! This is due to the high energy consumption from servers behind websites and computers, monitors etc. at visitors.  When electricity is consumed, carbon (CO2) is emitted. This is because the production of electricity is partly based on fossil fuels, for instance coal.  The voluntary Danish climate initiative, CO2neutralwebsite.com has mapped these emissions and made a CO2 neutralization program that enables participating companies to go carbon neutral with their website. The result is climate friendly surfing for the users of the website – and the company gets a green profile.

The CO2 neutralization is done by carbon offsetting.  The initiative buys certified, European CO2-allowances and these are then cleared at the state institutions in EU. The result of these actions is fewer CO2-allowances, which directly reduces the allowed emissions for the companies under the EU allowance-system thereby forcing them to cut down on their emissions. This process of offsetting is independently audited by Deloitte. We also invest in the building of new renewable energy projects to further support the environment.  The initiative is partly owned by the Danish state.  Both large and small companies from many different countries participate in the initiative. In total more than 700 companies have joined.  They assure me that this is a global initiative and that it doesn’t matter where the CO2 is reduced, what matters is that there is a reduction.

So if you want a CO2 Neutral Website then check out their website and sign up to go green!

Disclaimer: I am so passionate about this issue & the difference that CO2 Neutral Website can make that I am becoming an affiliate.

In closing, for those of you that still don’t believe in climate change, here’s a video of the horrific environmental changes happening in Australia due to climate change.  We have choice to do something, don’t wait until its too late.

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