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who's behind your website?
it's a good question. three friends this month have asked me what's involved in putting a website together and i started wondering what i would do if i were to start all over again.
i started to question everything, from my webhost to my weblog service to the image and text editors i use. my next big project was to quit using Blogger for publishing this journal (the "what" behind my website) and migrate to WordPress, but as it would happen i ended up switching webhosts (the "who") instead.
this website used to be hosted by Dixie Systems, a bargain bin webhost that i paid about US$20 a year. it was a great deal, i thought, until two server crashes, lost data, really bad technical support and finally a mysterious suspension of service (which i've written about in an earlier entry) helped me realize that i was getting only what i paid for. so i switched, and i've begun moving my clients off of their servers, too.
parahuman is now hosted by Sustainable Marketing, a company i learned about while reading a Wired News article, This Blog is 100 Percent Solar. it's an interesting article, and i recommend it to anyone who operates a website. i've talked a few times with Sustainable Marketing's owner, Ivan Stork, and i really like what he's up to. it turns out that he and i have quite a bit in common, too, including an interest in Tuvan music.
Sustainable Marketing is "100% carbon-neutral" and offsets all of its energy use by purchasing renewable energy credits, or green tags (PDF, 236k), from their regional power utility. in Sustainable Marketing's case, the renewable energy source is wind power.
about ten years ago i read somewhere that half a pound of coal is burned in order to power all the computers involved in transfering just one megabyte (1MB!) from here to there over the internet. i dearly wish i could remember the source since this factoid has stayed in my mind for quite some time (does it sound familiar? please contact me or leave a comment below). considering that we're really doing no better today with energy efficiency ~ an increase in efficiency usually leads to a proportionate increase in energy use ~ companies like Sustainable Marketing (and others such as Whole Foods Market and Kinko's) are helping build the infrastructure of a greener energy economy by ensuring that a larger portion of the electricity flowing in national power grid is being produced cleanly from solar and wind farms. i want to support this as much as i can.
i also nominated Ivan recently as one of the people who i think is changing the world. we really need to think about the resources that are consumed by the seemingly out-of-sight and out-of-mind data centers (it's the other side of Moore's Law, where the cost of buying computers decreases but the cost of powering and cooling them increases) and how there are "green" webhosts right now like Sustainable Marketing. just take a look in Eco Business Links or the National Green Pages.
i do believe the system of using energy credits is a step in the right direction, but a small part of me wonders if this is just another way for people to feel better about themselves. it may be different from how wealthy Northerners paid a commutation fee to avoid military service during the American Civil War, but how different is this from SUV owners purchasing emissions credits to make their Hummers "pollution-free"?
these are good questions to think about. in the meantime, parahuman is "100% carbon-neutral," too.
~ Christefano, 09 November 2005
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Alan Coman wrote...
I think that you concern yourself here too much with global warming. There is no evedence that CO2 produces warming, but there is evedence that Mars is warming as well, sign that martians are polluting their air as well.
I aggree with wind power and solar as long as they are cheaper than conventional, otherwise they are a waste of money. I also think the govt should allow descentralized production of energy. This way there is a real market for energy. "Investing" in energy production that is more expensive than the conventional one is like selling stuff below cost.
There is enough technology out there, but if oil is cheap, why bother? For example if the energy in a barrel of oil can be produced at 100$, why bother when oil is at 55$?
Also consider the fact that the price of producing oil is about 6-7$ a barrel in the Gulf area, it is just that they are selling it so high because they have monopoly power (OPEC).