Preserve Polar Bears, Don't Use Google During Copenhagen Week

A new search engine officially launches today, the same day as the World Climate Summit in Copenhagen commences. According to Ecosia you can help battle climate change by switching away from Google and here's how.

Not only will the new guy on the search block give 80% of the advertising revenue it earns to a World Wildlife Fund environmental protection project to help save the Amazon rain forest (and therefore reduce global warming and save polar bears in case you were wondering) but it also reckons each search will use much less electricity than Google

Ecosia will also be running on 'green' electricity and apparently will save up to 2 square metres of rain forest when compared to sites like Google which, according to Ecosia at least, produces that same amount of carbon dioxide when making one search as a light bulb does when switched on for an hour.

Search engines claiming to be green are nothing new, who could forget the Black Google for example? But whereas that simply changed the background colour from white to black and claimed to consume a whole heap less electricity as a result (a claim that was poo-pooed by many) Ecosia is doing something tangible by actually donating money to the climate fight.

The Berlin-based search start up is confident it will be the greenest search engine on the planet, with founder Christian Kroll arguing that thanks to advertising "search engines earn billions every year" and there can be an "eco-friendly way of using these huge profits" which is why he is donating 80% of all advertising revenue to the WWF Amazon project.

Great. Assuming that enough people switch away from Google to actually earn any advertising revenue in the first place that is.

Of course that's not the only problem facing Ecosia. Other green engines have been powered by Google and so the argument has always been that they actually leave a bigger carbon footprint as in effect people are using Google and another search farm to do the work, when just one would be better and less harmful. Ecosia does not use Google, but it does use Yahoo and Bing so maybe there is still something in this argument after all.

[boattraveller78]

Google is pretty green I think - please see www google com /green

[peterdublin]

Hmm... green search too eh?

Re Copenhagen,
These kind of gatherings generate a mass-hysteria for a common cause.

Like George Orwell’s Animal Farm book, where mass hysteria meant one pig
overtrumping another in self-sacrificial willingness
- except here it’s always someone else (not the politicians) who has
to make the sacrifice…
“We must all cut down to save the planet”

There is no energy shortage
(given renewable/nuclear development possibilities, with CO2 emission
limits set as deemed necessary)
and consumers – not politicians – PAY for energy and how they wish to use it.
Notice: If there WAS an energy shortage, its price rise would
– limit people using it anyway, and make renewable energy more attractive
– make energy efficient products more attractive to buy.
No need to legislate for it.
SNIP

And since when do light bulbs, TV sets etc give out any CO2 gas?
Not like cars.
And cars are taxed.
They could of course tax the bulbs etc, and lower the tax on energy
efficient alternatives.
Governments make money on the reduced sales, they can pay for CO2
emission processing and renewable energy, and consumers keep choice.
Taxes are unjustified, but better for all than bans.

Few seem to know about the industrial politics behind the supposedly
environmentally justified bans
SNIP

[MktgRob]

In Copenhagen at the Climate summit they are using so many private planes and limos that they will leave a carbon footprint the size of a small nation. Today a political action group put out a wanted poster for the head of the US Chamber of Commerce because he questioned global warming. And two weeks ago a mass of e-mails were released that show that one of the leading proponents of the global warming hysteria was doing everything possible to deny, cover up and hide evidence that shows that maybe global warming/cooling/whatever is a load of crap. Someone please tell me what the least green search engine is so I can use it!

[chandi786]

I just couldn't understand the logic and idea behind that? why not to use google ?

[MktgRob]

While I believe there is a need for conservation in the forms of protected areas and more intelligent ways of accessing and using the natural resources available, I view the whole Global Warming Hysteria as a bunch of crap. In the 70's Time magazine ran a cover story on global cooling and thirty years later they run a cover story on global warming. The two articles were essentially the same but with reference to cooling replaced with reference to warming. The same week Al Gore received the Nobel Prize for his work on climate change a british court ruled that of the 10 items he focused on in his Oscar winning movie, 7 were completely false and the other 3 were true but blown completely out of proportion based on the evidence available.
Use Google, the polar bears could care less.