Personally, I’m probably more inclined to make a donation to my local library’s computer services department than to buy a REC, but that’s just me.

I just wanted to bring up the idea that donating to buy offsets isn’t core to that & thus might be an interesting ethical question.

My goal was more to bring up the issue as something to think about. Buying offsets certainly wouldn’t dissuade me from donating (since it sounds like it’d be a small part of the budget).

If this were a type of decision that became a significant line-item then my thought would be that I would like to donate to one charity at a time… meaning I’d like to choose how much I would give to making the sum of human knowledge free and how much I would give to climate-change concerns relative to how important I feel each one is to me.

Kind of a moot point now though since it appears that someone who actually objects to buying RECs has brought up the point (as well as my Copenhagen Consensus thought). I’ll let that thread carry the conversation since I’m more of a curious observer waiting to see what you decide rather than someone who actively thinks you should go one way or the other.

Frankly, I don’t see where the benefit to Wikimedia is if it’s done independently. It’s not within the mission, it’s money that could be used for other things, it won’t have a significant PR impact, et cetera. A better idea would be to get the environmental groups to push this: donate to us in this Wikimedia drive, and Wikipedia will be greener. Let the Foundation endorse it, and donors get a more straightforward idea of what they’re donating to: a specific fund to keep Wikimedia green.

is that kW per hour, day, month ?

If you think it’s both, then I chose my words poorly. My point was that there shouldn’t be a category of organisation which is exempt from ethical practice. If there was such a category, then society would be tempted to reduce costs by moving activities into that category — say, by shutting down for-profit websites and starting up non-profit ones.

You make the point that there may or may not be a “business case” for this action, in terms of the impact on donations. It seems that you are calling Wikimedia a company in order to make this point. I would say that, as a charity, Wikimedia’s overarching goal is not to maximise donations. Its goal is to do good in the world. So unlike in a business, ethical considerations can be weighed against financial ones on equal footing.

I think this brings up an interesting ethical question: should a non-profit company make non-core charitable donations that its thinks are ethical?

To play devil’s advocate for a minute:
Working off of the assumption that man-made global warming was real and imminent, the Copenhagen Consensus determined that it would not be worth addressing before any of the world’s other top 50 problems since so much money could affect the outcome so little. Here is a really interesting TED talk on that:
http://www.ted.com/talks/bjorn_lomborg_sets_global_priorities.html
(the talk is interesting on many other levels.. highly recommended)

Your last sentence says “we can’t continue emitting by moving economic activity from corporations to charities”. But isn’t Wikimedia a charity? Or is it a company? It’s really both which puts it in a very strange place ethically.

Wikimedia’s job is to try to sustain its project cost-effectively & many of the donors might think this is a waste of money and is buying offsets would essentially be a donation to a completely separate charity which they might not all agree is a worthwhile cause (because of the Copenhagen Consensus or outright denial of man-made global warming, etc.).

On the other hand, there is a reasonable level of power you just have to trust a company with if you chose to donate to them. I’m sure donors don’t expect you to use slave-labor for your programming team even if that would be less expensive.

In this sense, my personal take would be that you could treat this more as a built-in cost* of doing ethical business rather than a separate donation if there is essentially universal buy-in among the decision-makers at Wikimedia.

If that’s what the Foundation decides and the decision is made public (so that donors know what they’re contributing to) that seems reasonable regardless of it being controversial.

*: [Simultaneously, I wouldn't recommend it if it seems like it would turn off a lot of potential donors... lost donations (if there would be any) should be factored into the costs.]