Olly Zanetti: Greening Facebook
Greenpeace's recent work with the social media giant may just offer some hope for tackling climate change.
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As someone who often works from home, I spend a lot of time – perhaps more than is healthy – on Facebook. Judging by the green blobs in the chat sidebar, I'm not the only one. But the problem isn't just wasting time, it seems that the not-hooked-to-Facebook crowd is now very small.
Which is why the recent announcement from the Zuckerberg empire is pretty interesting. In February 2010, it emerged that a new Facebook data centre that was to open in Oregon would be powered, not by the renewable hydro electricity which makes up 60% of the energy generated in the state, but by coal. Why? Because it was cheaper of course. Days later, Greenpeace responded. They launched a campaign demanding that Facebook be run entirely on renewable energy. Nearly two years later, Facebook and Greenpeace have come to a collaboration. Facebook hasn't booted out the coal yet, but in a joint statement they've agreed to at least show a “preference” for greener energy, and to start thinking about how they might get the green ball rolling.
But hang on a minute! Greenpeace is better known for driving boats in front of whaling ships or lending its support to radical campaigns like Climate Camp, not cosying up with with a corporate behemoth worth billions! And about that joint statement, it's nice but it's hardly ground breaking stuff. A document stuffed with solid plans and binding commitments it is not. So what's going on here?
It wasn't so long ago that climate change was at the top of the agenda. Sure, the vocal but scientifically illiterate crowd of deniers were out in force, but something productive seemed to be happening. Then, the recession hit. Trillions vanished from the global economy, jobs were lost and government finances in chaos. In that context, for many climate change has become irrelevant. The latest climate deal struck in Durban has caused some excitement. A game changer it may be, but the game was in such a bad way before the talks that anything would have been an improvement.
In short, after a fortnight of talks, the world's nations have agreed to arrange some more talks. According to the Durban agreement, by 2015 there needs to be a plan for carbon reduction which must come into force by 2020. The Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012 and, as Canada's recent withdrawal from it shows, it was pretty toothless anyway. So between now and 2020, the only thing driving down emissions will be a few voluntary targets. We could be in serious trouble.
So with governments falling at almost every hurdle, Greenpeace's action is pretty logical. If legislation isn't going to force the necessary carbon reductions that one way or another we're going to have to make if we want our planet's climate to remain at least vaguely stable, then someone else is going to have to lead the way. And the hook up of Greenpeace and Facebook shows how this is likely to progress.
Once upon a time, personal responsibility was the line being pushed. We were all to change our light bulbs and drive less, and that was going to solve the problem. Of course, reducing the emissions for which we're personally responsible is a good thing, but it'll never be enough to make any real impact (plus, I reckon, there are some unsavoury politics behind it). Then direct action campaigning went into overdrive with things like Climate Camp and Climate Rush. But although most of what the activists were demanding made sense, mainstream culture wasn't ready for their message – the cave-dwelling hippy myth will take a long time to shift.
Which is why the Facebook thing is such a good idea. In almost all cases, law reflects pre-existing cultural values. Murder and theft, for example, were culturally unacceptable long before they were illegal. So Greenpeace are playing a tactical game. Getting a big corporation like Facebook to change their energy policy will make a tangible difference to emissions. But it'll also prove that being green doesn't mean huddling around a candle for warmth while gnawing on home grown turnips.
We need a massive cultural shift to deal with climate change0 and, after a few false starts, it looks like Greenpeace is on to something. Like it or loathe it, there's little that's more universal right now than Facebook. An unexpected starting point maybe, but with a new year on the way I think our prospects for actually dealing with climate change might just be looking up again.
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Greening Facebook (text) by Ed Andrews is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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