The Internet & ICT: Cutting CO2 Emissions

when DIY manufacturing takes off we can go even greener with plans being downloaded to  sites where you can manufacturer an object right next to its consumer.

I researched what you mentioned about the H3 being less expensive than a hybrid and found the actual report done by CNW Marketing Research.

The report has some flaws but at the moment it was release it made sense. It showed the "dust-to-dust" energy or cost - as they refer to it - of the planning, manufacturing, selling, driving and disposing of a list of cars.

The Prius came out as being more expensive than the H3 - but it's mostly because of the manufacturing cost, that we can assume will go down as production numbers increase.

The actual numbers were $1.949/mile for a H3 Hummer and $3.25 for the Toyota Prius.

You can find their website here.

Other considerations have to be made about how these green solutions are produced and manufactured.  I may be speaking out of turn but there's probably less hazardous materials in making an incandescent light bulb versus a compact flourescent (mercury) or an LED (gallium arsenide).

The selenium cells used for photovoltaic arrays are not without a production concern as well.

I remember a sound bite that it was less of an environmental impact to produce a Hummer than it it was a hybrid.  Not sure of the quality of that sound bite but it is a consideration.  Lets make sure we aren't creating new problems to eliminate old problems.

Dave

Theoretically, I think it's not possible to become carbon-positive, maybe carbon-neutral. But in practice we certainly can go a long way towards that goal - seeing how far we currently are from it.

But we, as a society, have yet to embrace that idea - simple facts I see everyday like leaving your computer on after you go home makes no sense! having offices at 60F temperature, what's the need? having a hybrid car is not your ticket to heaven - there are many, many other things to work on.

Mr Roques,

Thank you for stating the obvious flaw with telecommuting, someone has to do physical work sometime.

My job is maintaining computers, networks and process control machinery.  I've heard one concept after another that was going to give our plant a "lights out" processing environment.  It hasn't happenned and it probably won't.

I wish I could repair my "network" from home, its awfully expensive running a 3 shift 7/24 maintenance department.

Dave 

I agree that telecommuting is a great way to reduce CO2 emissions, for various reasons. But it's not that easy, first there are jobs that right now can't be done effectively from home (maybe the technology is too expensive).

Second, companies should give an incentive or some help to the employee to prepare a work environment at home (so that the only place available isn't in the couch in front of the tv).

Third is the fact that many companies have made a huge investment in real estate and having the "perfect" work environment, should they abandon it? what if they need to meet a couple days a month?

Those are things we should take into account, but I think that overall the pros overcome the cons.

I couldn't agree more with you Bill, actually I've been thinking about it. The most interesting thing is about virtualization.

Basically, VPS, in conjunction with internet can enable people work from home (reducing commute emissions), give rest to many personal computers at homes -which download or upload data from and to internet 24/7- thus reducing idle capacity of many computers to none.

So what I propose here is that every house should have a dumb terminal that connects to broadband internet with a powerful server at the end that serve thousands, maybe hundred of thousands people. These servers, enable people to do their job at home, collaborating using teleconference, and many more. With this scheme, actual reduction of CO2 emissions can be achieved.

The aspect of giving people incentive (rebate, discount and free options for example) is good. One might hope that there is enough incentive for people to want to do the right thing whether they directly benefit or not. In other words that “for the children of our children’s children and future generations beyond”, would be enough incentive. For many this however may not, so the aspect of giving people further incentive is good and may help the planet in other ways at the same time (e.g., create more oneness and perhaps even somehow contribute to growing peace and financial security for all). Creative means of helping all to rally around a major planetary crisis may generate various positive waves that increasingly help address other realities that could also be referred to as a crisis. Increasing the intensity around climate stabilization may help in various ways to increase stabilization intensity for the home we call earth.