More on the Definition of Green Media

I try to avoid controversy unless, of course, I'm the cause of it. But the Doc knows a good fight when he sees it, and there's an ongoing battle these days between the proponents of print and those who favor digital media.

The latest round from the print side comes in the form of an entertaining article by Richard Romano on the Print CEO Website.  Among many other points worth reading, Richard concludes that:

"First of all, we need to disabuse ourselves of the notion that pixels are somehow pure and and holy and that that paper is the spawn of Satan. (Although some mills do have a grade they refer to as Satan Uncoated, used for printing really evil documents like insurance forms and Ayn Rand novels.) Let's be clear about this: electronic media do have a carbon cost. In fact, earlier this year, a Harvard physicist made headlines when he managed to calculate the "carbon cost" of a Google search."

"The BBC, among others, reported: US physicist Alex Wissner-Gross claims that a typical Google search on a desktop computer produces about 7g CO2.

"Furthermore: The Harvard academic argues that these carbon emissions stem from the electricity used by the computer terminal and by the power consumed by the large data centers operated by Google around the world."

"Oh, and a 2007 Gartner Group report warned about the "carbon cost" of all the servers that comprise companies' intranets and the Internet in general: The intense power requirements needed to run and cool data centers now account for almost a quarter of global carbon dioxide emissions from information and communications technology."

Read the entire article here. You go Richard. Print isn't dead!