Craig Venter, American biologist and human genome mapper, recently announced that within the next 14 month his lab will have accomplished the task of engineering synthetic life forms – bacteria – that will feed on carbon dioxide. As a means to stop climate change. Other ”visionaries” have suggested the launch of trillions of small parasols into space between Earth and the Sun in order to block out a fraction the solar radiation otherwise reaching the Earth, and thus preventing global warming. Blocking out about 2% of the solar energy would apparently be sufficient to balance out the increasing amount greenhouse gasses.
By coincidence IT’s contribution to the global emission of anthropogenic carbon dioxide is estimated to just about 2%. Marvellous, all it will take to save the Earth from a meltdown is to turn off all computers and mobile phones. And think about all the positive side effects – no credit card fraud, no violence related to massive exposure to Hitman and Counterstrike, no annoying phone calls in the theatres and last but certainly not least, no spam. Utopia.
Unfortunately not so. The greenhouse gasses related to human activities have accumulated over the last 200 years. The climate models are very uncertain, but it is being suggested that we need to cut our co2 emission by up to 80 percent, just to avoid an increase in global temperatures of more than 2 degrees. That is, 2 degrees over pre-industrial temperatures, which is what EU considers an acceptable increase. In this contet IT can at best provide for a small fraction of the required cut in emissions.
So there is little point in turning off your computer. Indeed, I would suggest that it makes sense to switch it on – and apply it to the task of improving the effectiveness of the activities currently responsible for 98% of the carbon dioxide production. Without the use of IT it is likely that the production of CO2 would be much larger than it already is.
Next week OECD will host a workshop in Copenhagen on “ICT and environmental challenges”. I expect that the agenda will focus on ICT’s role as an agent with an impact on reducing CO2 footprint of the activities currently responsible for the 98%. Agriculture, housing, transports and energy which all are major contributors of CO2 can all benefit from intelligent applications of IT.
More efficient cooling in the server rooms will not save the world form heating up.