Is Google Killing the Planet?

           

What if I were to tell you that you were hurting the planet more by driving an electric car rather than a gas fuelled one....

Yeah,you would probably react something along the lines of this guy. Well that is exactly the argument the Nature article “On the rebound” is trying to tackle.  The author’s thesis is researches have been critical about the benefits of energy efficiency. This argument has been fuelled by William Jevons, the late British economist. Jevons had suggested back in 1865 that energy efficiency could blow up in our faces. Resulting in increased resource exploitation, the exact opposite effect of what advocates of efficiency would hope for. Jevons argument consisted around the premise of the old adage “too much of a good thing”.

“Jevons paradox”, as it has been called, includes as its evidence that as society becomes more adept at converting more efficient fuel, the work itself will expand. Nature gives the example of an electric vehicle that I touched on lightly at the beginning. Consider this; what if fuel efficient vehicles were available and used by everyone in the United States. The drivers of these cars as a result may be more willing to drive more often. In what is described as the “rebound effect”, the positives of this efficiency of switching to electric cars is negated by their use.

This brings us to Google. Now you may be thinking, how could the search engine conglomerate possibly be less energy efficient then lets say....searching through an encyclopedia. The answer may surprise you. In the article “Stung by accusations its business harms the planet, Google discloses its energy use”, The Washington Post addresses claims that Google is bad for the planet. Amid criticism, Google recently released how much electricity the company uses and its production of greenhouse gases.

While watching a video on YouTube is more energy efficient that watching a DVD, the rebound effect explained in the Nature article produces questions of its own. How many YouTube videos do people have to watch for it to equate to watching a DVD? When you consider that YouTube handles three billion views a day, the rebound effect really has to come into question.

Larry Page has been a public advocate of energy efficiency since 2007. It is since this time that he has claimed Google removes enough greenhouse gases through projects to completely negate its own omissions. So while The Sunday Times (UK) claims a single Google search “generates the same amount of carbon as boiling a kettle of water[...]” Page is adamant the company is doing what it can to reduce or negate its carbon footprint.

The fact of the matter is energy efficiency is good for the environment to an extent. Its like eating an apple a day keeps the doctor away. Sure, one apple a day is great, but try eating twenty and you will probably get sick. The issue is not so much efficiency as it is consumption. No one can critically argue that energy efficient procedures and applications do not help the environment, its the people using them that need to cut back.

.

\