Greenpeace pushes Ballmer to intervene on climate
Hey Steve get offa that cloud
The efforts of climate activists to turn the CEOs of international IT megacorps into atmosphere-hugging greenies are having little impact, according to Greenpeace.
The results of the pressure group's Cool IT Challenge (geddit?), released today, awarded IBM's Sam Palmisano and Sun's Jonathan Schwartz top spot among green IT chiefs, each with a meagre 29 out of 100 points.
Er, Steve Ballmer, apparently
Greenpeace hopes to turn IT bosses into "climate advocates and solution providers", but has a long way to go lobbying the likes of Stephen S Ballmer (pictured, allegedly), who scored just seven out of 100, including a zero out of 25 for his political advocacy on climate.
The wisdom of encouraging Ballmer's involvement in climate policy perhaps remains open to debate, but Greenpeace is determined to pressgang him and other tech CEOs as campaigners.
"While governments across the globe are debating climate-saving policy, it is disappointing that innovative IT companies who stand to profit handsomely from tech solutions that reduce [greenhouse gases] are sitting on the fence when it comes to advocating for science-based greenhouse gas emissions cuts," said Zeina Al Hajj, head of Greenpeace's IT campaign.
Other low scorers include Sony's Howard Stringer, HP's Mark Hurd and Nokia boss Olli Kallasvuo. They were also rated on their public climate speeches, company emissions targets, use of renewable energy and "climate solutions", which apparently means pushing IT use to reduce carbon emissions in other parts of the economy.
Google's Eric Schmidt doesn't appear on the leaderboard, but that's because, as we all know, Google's globe-spanning network of massive data centres is powered by dreams and rainbows.
There's more about the Cool IT Challenge, including the full leaderboard here. ®
COMMENTS
@Ken Hagen
"Er, no. What's disappointing is that so-called 'green' organisations are wasting their time bullying the millions of consumers of electricity rather than effectively lobbying the few hundred producers and their governments."
Er, no. Electricty producers are in business to supply a demand. No matter how much lobbying you do to generators and governments, the bottom line is that demand has to be met or the supply collapses - a technical limitation of a grid based electricity distribution system. The only way to reduce demand is to encourage the user to use electricity more economically or less wastefully.
"Asking the entire human race to voluntarily lower their energy consumption to levels last seen in the 19th century is not unadjacent to asking the entire third world to either stay dirt poor or perhaps even die off."
Hmm. Your argument is a bit tenuous so why not just all-out lie? Greenpeace is not requesting anything of the sort. Maybe you should try reading their actual output rather than just relying on someone else's interpretation?
"If you are worried about global warming, choose nuclear next time you need to replace a power station and choose the electrical alternative next time you need to replace some infrastructure. By 2050, you'll find that there's bugger all left of that smelly fossil-fueled equipment cluttering up society and the national carbon footprint is less than half of what it is today."
By 2050, everyone will be panicking that there is no more U235 to put in those beautiful reactors and wondering why the thorium economy just hasn't happened. In the same way the plutonium economy never happened and technical failings were covered up by claiming that FBRs where a security risk - nothing to do with the fact they didn't actually work with breeding factors getting nowhere near the claimed 1.3 theory. Nuclear is a sort term strategy and effective waste management has been promised in 20 years, every 20 years since the 1940s.
As for the 'Cool IT Challenge', I just don't get it. I don't see a carrot and I don't see a stick so just how is pressure being applied to IT CEOs?
our green overlords
IT workers of the world
the time has come for change.
With statistical algorithms gathering data from the web our intellectuals have proved that our program is correct: we cannot fail.
No Blog shall go unrecognized.
No Tweet shall remain insignificant.
No tide shall deny the Wiki-edit when commanded to turn.
If it is Wiki-said then so shall it be.
For is it not writ that the geek shall inherit the Earth?
From their netbooks and Macs the e-crowd shall shape the world in their image and IT workers shall be their kings.
* * * * * * * *
From Greenpeace's FAQ, "The global IT sector is in the unique position of being able to provide wide scale solutions needed to cut greenhouse gas emissions..."
Apple
No Apple. I guess having Al God on your board gives you infinity greenie points.
http://www.apple.com/pr/bios/gore.html
But then Al did invent the internet so he should really pick up all the bad karma for Google and all the internet connected PCs in the world.
Being a long-time Greenpeace supporter it saddens me that they've dropped their broad environmental focus and throwing so much effort into the "me too" global warming game.
@Wade Burchette
But surely you should also provide evidence that it isn't happening?
As for Al Gore, I've no interest in listening to the "do as I say, not as I do" brigade which Prince Charles is a member of.
You also say that the job of a CEO is to make money, but this surely covers cutting costs and since energy is expensive it makes sense to waste less energy.
You guys
have so totally made this up. Haven't you? Is it April the first again?
