Archive for December, 2009

Response to mailing list posts about climate change action

Wednesday, December 16th, 2009

Aryeh Gregor has taken up an opposing position to my foundation-l post, which was copied to this blog under the title Should Wikimedia buy RECs. In the interests of avoiding offence to denizens of foundation-l, I am attempting to move that rather heated debate to here.

Aryeh attacks my views on multiple fronts, arguing (in my own words):

  • That Wikimedia should not spend money on causes unrelated to its mission;
  • That Wikimedia has no moral responsibility to take action on climate change, since it does not directly or voluntarily contribute to it;
  • That anthropogenic global warming (AGW) won’t have any significant effects for decades yet;
  • That AGW won’t directly cause human deaths, rather mere economic harm;
  • That future research may well make any present efforts redundant and, in hindsight, wasteful;
  • That action now may prove to be pointless since the impact of AGW may be catastrophic whatever we do;
  • That climate scientists do not understand the economics of mitigation and that serious economists, such as those behind the so-called Copenhagen Consensus, advocate alternative technologies such as albedo modification over mainstream approaches such as abatement and reforestation.

Quite a barrage. I’ve been taking these on point-by-point. Here are the archive links where you can read the full text of this debate:

I’ll post my latest response as a comment below. Let’s see if I can coax Wordpress into presenting a comment interface that’s usable for this purpose.

Should Wikimedia buy RECs?

Posted in Environment | 7 Comments »

Should Wikimedia buy RECs?

Monday, December 14th, 2009

Should the Wikimedia Foundation do something about climate change? Here’s what I said on foundation-l:

Given the lack of political will to make deep cuts to greenhouse gas emissions, and the pitiful excuses politicians make for inaction; given the present nature of the debate, where special interests fund campaigns aimed at stalling any progress by appealing to the ignorance of the public; given the nature of the Foundation, an organisation which raises its funds and conducts most of its activities in the richest and most polluting country in the world: I think there is an argument for voluntary reduction of emissions by the Foundation.

I don’t mean by buying tree-planting or efficiency offsets, of which I am deeply skeptical. I think the best way for Wikimedia to take action on climate change would be by buying renewable energy certificates (RECs). Buying RECs from new wind and solar electricity generators is a robust way to reduce CO2 emissions, with minimal danger of double-counting, forward-selling, outright fraud, etc., problems which plague the offset industry.

If Domas Mituzas is correct, and Wikimedia uses on the order of 100kW for its servers, then buying a matching number of RECs would be a small portion of our hosting budget. If funding is nevertheless a problem, then we could have a restricted donation drive, and thereby get a clear mandate from our reader community.

Our colocation facilities would not need to do anything, such as changing their electricity provider. We would, however, need monitoring of our total electricity usage, so that we would know how many RECs to buy.

I’m not appealing to the PR benefits here, or to the way this action would promote the climate change cause in general. I’m just saying that as an organisation composed of rational, moral people, Wikimedia has as much responsibility to act as does any other organisation or individual.

Ultimately, the US will need to reduce its per-capita emissions by around 90% by 2050 to have any hope of avoiding catastrophe (see e.g. table 9.3 in the Garnaut Review, and chapter 4.3 for more context). Nature doesn’t have exemptions or loopholes, we can’t continue emitting by moving economic activity from corporations to charities.

Posted in Environment, Wikimedia | 11 Comments »