Watch Your Carbon Footprint

For John, BLUF:  Sorry, John.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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From Agence Press-Frnce, via Yahoo, we have an article by Joshua Melvin.  The point of the article, "What's the carbon footprint of an email?", is that if you do anything you are increasing your carbon footprint.

Sending even a short email is estimated to add about four grammes (0.14 ounces) of CO2 equivalent (gCO2e) to the atmosphere.

To put this into perspective, the carbon output of hitting "send" on 65 mails is on par with driving an average-sized car a kilometre (0.6 of a mile).

The culprits are greenhouse gases produced in running the computer, server and routers but also those emitted when the equipment was manufactured.

It gets worse when you send an email with a large attachment, which puts about 50 gCO2e into the air. Five such messages are like burning about 120 grammes (0.27 pounds) of coal.

Receiving a spam message -- even if you do not open it -- has an environmental impact of 0.3 gCO2e.

There you have it.  Opening a can of soda increases your carbon footprint.  Our best bet is to do nothing.  No EMail, no TV, no driving, no work.  Of course that means we all need to have an few acres on which to farm, so we can eat  Or we can just die—but no cremation and no trip to the cemetery.  Greenhouse gases, you know.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff