Spam the Polluter
We are all aware that spam pollutes the Internet, but did you know it also pollutes the planet! That’s what a new McAfee-commissioned report produced by green consultants ICF says. Check it out for yourself:
http://img.en25.com/Web/McAfee/CarbonFootprint_web_final2.pdf
It’s a fascinating read, and you’ll find lots of data on the coherent behaviour of spam. For example, I didn’t realize that 62 trillion spam emails were sent in 2008! The world population is around 6 billion, so that means an average of 10,000 spam e-mails for every man woman and child on the planet!
Managing the spam – deleting the junk, and finding e-mails falsely filtered as junk – is a black hole for energy. Each spam message averages out to the equivalent emission of 0.3 grams of carbon dioxide – that’s the same as driving a car for a metre. Scale it up, and the annual cost of spam is the same as driving a car around the globe 1.6 million times.
But why stop at spam. Feel guilty every time you log onto the web!
Related posts:
Heh some probably biased studies have found that the average Second Life avatar emits as much carbon as a Brazilian.
Have you ever seen the calculations about the carbon emissions caused by Meat production? Check here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/jul/19/climatechange.climatechange
Well… if you think about it, since humans are about 6 billion… human production is the main polluter.