The so-called “Green”
First, this is a declaration of thought - my own personal opinion that I feel compelled to express at this time. While this post does not deal directly with computer security, it does have to do with my personal belief in information trust as well as the information that companies share with the third-parties and those they deem to be “trust-worthy”. This will likely not be the kind of a post you generally see on this website, but i just felt that i need to get this off my chest.
Trust, simple enough, is the reliance on the integrity, strength, ability, surety, etc… of a person or thing. Trust is sometimes given, and sometimes taken for granted. Like so many other things in life trust is easily lost and not easily regained. In the computer world, as well as the corporate world, trust is something that should be earned, and not freely given unless it is checked to be genuine. This is actually more of a call to people to stop blatantly trusting things that some website, or some commercial tells them because they believe that what they imply is true. To commerce, it’s a game of psychology, commercials tell you things that are not real, but they do it in a way that is honest and truthful.
As an example, Acme (and I’m not here to get sued, as you can imagine) aspirin commercial will say something like “Acme aspirin, no other brand will relieve pain better or faster then Acme.” If you hear that in a commercial, it is likely that upon visiting a store, you will pick up Acme aspirin, because you beleive that Acme acts faster and relieves pain better then other makers, based on the wording of a commercial; but in fact, that is not what that commercial says. Aspirin, or C9H8O4 is C9H8O4 no matter which company produces it, it acts in the same way, and takes approximately the same amount of time to dissolve (that depends on the size of the tablet, and it’s surface area). The wording is what is so deceiving, it does not say that Acme aspirin is better, if you read into it, it merely states that it is the same, it’s not better, but there isn’t anything that is better then it, because aspirin is aspirin.
Now to the main part of my rant, the “Green” part. Over the course of the last several years it has become prestigious to call your company green. It’s all a part of the global green initiative, or the green craze, but in actuallity, its another way for a company to increase the profit margin on their product by misrepresenting themselves to appeal to a target demographic. Now in many cases green actually means that something that was being done in the past, is more “environmentally friendly”, though once again the wording of that catch-phrase is tricky, but it is being done to a lesser extent.
Let’s first start with the “environmentally friendly” catch phrase. It is, after all, used to describe production lines of computer processors, and chemical factories, though what does it actually mean to become more environmentally friendly? In the words of agent Smith from “The Matrix”, ” You move to an area, and you multiply, and multiply, until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area.” Production lines are wasteful, many chemicals that are emitted through smoke, and other waste, are damaging to nature, such was the case in the processor industry, the solder used in the production of the units, contained lead. The excess solder was to some extent reused, to some, discarded, though the majority of lead in electronics production is released after the components are recycled. When the solder gets another chance to melt, and can easily leak out, or be burned up and released in the atmosphere, to come back down with rain water. Since then, major electronics production lines, have switched to lead-free solder, and have called that their environmentally-friendly initiative. They still produce damaging waste, but now that they produce less of it, they figure that they are saving the environment, and to an extent they are, but in no way can that action make your production line environmentally friendly. It is less damaging, yes, but in no way is it friendly. If you were growing trees, and replenishing the forests that have been cut down, you would be friendly, if you were cleaning the water of pollutants, or cleaning the air (using for example the Cobalt Ferride rings heated to high temperature by focusing sun’s rays on it, producing oxygen and hydrocarbon from CO2 in the air), or raising animals to be released into the wild. You would then be environmentally friendly, but as of the current state, the overwhelming majority of production lines, still pollute the atmosphere, so they are environmentally less damaging, and in no way friendly.
And this gets me to the part where I rant on the use of the word “green”, especially in the information techologies super-structures. Question, if a customer is faced with the choice of choosing a host that is a normal host, or a host that allows them to put a green badge on their website, most people would go towards the green host. This is simply due to the fact that “Green” is “In”. Very few poeple and/or corporation actually read and/or know what makes the host qualify as such. The problem that every hosting company faces is the fact that actually making hosting more or less green, takes signifficant monetary resources. Most people who know anything about datacenters, will know that there is a very small chance that it will move to a facility with dozens of acres of solar panels and wind generators with a green roof that creates an extremely small percentage of pollution in the course of it’s operation as compared to a conventional datacenter.
The bottom line of it all is that we live in a capitalistic world, where just about everyone is out to make money. At some point during the green initiative people decided to make money on this “Green” idea, created a form of eco-currency or what you and I would refer to as carbon credits, or carbon offset credits. While I do not fault this system as it’s way to draw money into research of alternative sources of energy, I firmly do not agree with the fact that after paying 15mill and not changing a single thing, an ISP or a datacenter should call itself “Green”, not even carbon neutral! There needs to be a term invented for a business that invests money into green research, but “Green” is not the right one, there is nothing in purchasing a piece of paper that says that you have helped finance the alternative fuel research, that allows one to call themselves “Green”, it’s missleading!
The photo above misleads people in beleiving that buying carbon offset will decrease their emission, thereby allowing themselves to be called “Green”, but it is only a piece of paper.
My point is don’t trust everything you read or hear! Check out companies claims for yourself and act upon your constitutional rights to question those who would tell you otherwise.
By now you may have noticed my little green logo at the bottom of the page, only to wonder “What in the world is that about?”. Well, the above are my thoughts and reasons for it…
-Niksoft-
