People are thinking green these days – no not just money, but about the environment too. People are analyzing how behaviors and activities they take for granted might affect the planet and this includes anything using a lot of energy like computers, web hosts, and even your personal environmental blog or chat forum. Dreamhost is thinking about this unintended environmental consequence of their business, and they’re putting their money where their beliefs are.
Dreamhost is totally green – and they have been since 2007. Part of this was accomplished by analyzing the efficiency of their systems and optimizing to use less resources and generate less waste. The other part was accomplished through the purchase of high quality carbon credits and re-usable energy credits.
Now, if you’ve seen my politics website you know that I’m pretty much a libertarian and I’m skeptical of anthropomorphic climate change. I don’t doubt that humans are messing up the planet, I’m just not convinced that we understand exactly what we’re doing to it or how we’re going to effect the weather 10 years from now since no one can even tell me if it will rain this weekend.
What I specifically object to in a political sense is mandates and financial subsidies for questionable programs. What Dreamhost is doing – using private money and private industry to make the world a cleaner place – is the exact type of solution I would hope for and expect to lead the way.
Ok, I’ve gone off on a little rant but what I mean to say is that I totally support environmental initiatives that don’t involve the government!
I’ve tried to do my own part, too. Since I’ve started working online, I can work at home so I have taken my car completely off the road. Since I’m not always on the go, I have time to cook my own food from whole ingredients – drastically cutting down on manufacturing, processing, and packaging. Single-serving-sized food and drinks don’t make environmental sense ever, but they don’t even make economic sense because they don’t provide any extra convenience when my own kitchen is just a few steps away.
So recently I discovered that half of my websites are also green! I had not really paid attention to this fact at the time I was setting them up but I’m glad to know now 🙂 Anyway, if you’re setting up an environmentally themed blog or forum, make sure you find some green hosting for your site! My environmental side says its the right thing to do, and the capitalist side of me agrees because a site advocating eco-friendly policies should demonstrate that sort of credibility and personal commitment to the cause.
I still think all these little things can add up, because if we all changed our behaviors then the “big picture planners” would have to adjust to the new demands in society.
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