The Earth Hour is approaching fast. On March 28th, 2009- at 8.30 PM everyone is implored to switch off their lights for an hour- no matter where they are.

Which is good. This was an opportune time for this post.

Now- I am a web proponent. Yes it is an almost cliched claim now. But have always been one.  A child of the dotcom era and stuck with it. I love it, evangelize, debate and make a noise about it. Using it for about 12 hours a day. Well, make that 14.

And what has that got to do with the Earth Hour?

Here’s the deal: the energy that goes in firing up your computers isn’t exactly zero carbon footprint. And actually the points that I will make- might as well give you a jolt without external power supply.

This is ironical people- most of the early adopters (of the internet and computers in general) are the guys that have a slant towards being more socially and environmentally conscious. And still there are some thing that escape us information overloaded “Don’t be evil” folks.

With the rise in “Internet Sociability” – people are relying more and more on the web – Search, Email and Networking have always been on the rise- and lately multimedia content has exploded- computers are becoming the stand alone infotainment centers of everyday people. Not to mention the myriad portable chargeable devices (Kindle 2 anyone?)

That brings me to a few questions for you:

Do you know that you use the internet – you are using energy at two levels- one powering up your computer- and the other- using the server side resources- that is the resources used in powering up the servers. That’s twin sources of  carbon footprint.

Your Answer- I know that

OK Second question: How many times do you search on an average- in a day?

Your answer: Erm..Maybe like 20 times

Third question: What’s your carbon footprint when you conduct just two searches on Google?

Your answer: Duh?

Here’s the real answer: Two search requests on the internet website Google produce “as much carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle”. That’s about 14g of CO2!

A recent report from BBC mentions many sources that have similar claims. Like the Gartner study that claims that IT now causes two percent of global emissions.

Specially activities like search- that have to rely on multiple servers to get faster results- do end up leaving a larger footprint.

Surely enough- Google disputes the study. It has traditionally been a very conscious company and they claim that efforts are already in place to identify and mitigate. Here’s a cool response from them:

“In 2007, we co-founded the Climate Savers Computing Initiative. This non-profit consortium is committed to cutting the energy consumed by computers in half by 2010 and so reducing global CO2 emissions by 54 million tons per year. That’s a lot of kettles.”

But the point is that with all aspects of our life becoming digital, there are times when we need to sit back and have some energy off-time. Or take some simple measures I guess.

I run another blog on natural lifestyle- on a site that I set up some half a decade back. One of the most popular topics have been two posts about “Top 5 analogue things to do- Part 1 and Part 2” – which is in the spirit of this post. Check the posts out. Maybe I could have put this post there.

Which means there is a lot of uptake on this topic with the eco-conscious generation of today.

At my end- I recently did this experiment- I turned down my computer screen brightness by one point and set the screensaver to be on within 2 minutes. I will also be more educated on knowing how to use search better. So I can get better results in lesser searches.

Till now- it works. My battery life has improved a good deal and I get better search results- faster!

And if it has worked for me, it will work for you as well. Nothing complicated- simple stuff should do.

Happy Saving Earth.

Thumbnail courtsey: http://www.flickr.com/photos/psd/2731067095/