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I just saw an article over at wired.com on "solar powered" data centers, and the profits they are making because it makes people feel good to use them. To quote: "But the end result for the companies' clients is the same: They feel better about themselves at the end of the day."

It's funny, because the idea that using a "green" data center to host your web page of a company that you drive your SUV to every day is better for the environment than actually trying to make substantiative changes in your life style is one that can honestly be described only as making people "feel good." I am reminded, strangely, of a scene from a book I was read as a child, The Phantom Tollbooth. A character was told to move a mountain of sand with a pair of tweezers which, more than being tedious, was a pointless task.

Getting back to the point, the data centers are not a bad thing. People deciding to use them, however, simply because of their green status, is. The environmental movement would change tremendously once it was shown that environmentally friendly strategies saved money on their own, but as it stands, it is only economically viable because of the prejudices of a small crowd of overly-rich, yuppy Americans; not exactly the way to win over international corporate opinion.

Now, one might argue that this in no-way diminishes the possible need for such data-centers, as a part of the solution to problems of pollution. The only problem with this attempted arguement is that the total resource use is not changed significantly, and it is moving the sand on the beach with a pair of tweezers. Tweezers, however, are better than nothing, one might think. They would be correct, if there were no shovels or bulldozers around, but in their presence, the use of green data-centers only saps the energy of the people dedicated enough to this cause to do anything, and leaves the bulldozers of international treaties, and the shovels of local legislative change lyying by the wayside.


This may seem like a significant variation from my typical "party line" of libertarian thought, but after a bit of introspection, I have come to the conclusion that even though the right of a person or corporation to make decisions is clearly limited by the right of others to continue to enjoy natural resources. Because of the fact that the balance must be maintained, some sort of system will be implemented to distribute this equitably, ideally a laissez-faire capitalist one such as pollution vouchers.


PS. and then I see THIS. I guess I win.