Greenpeace, modern society's conscience in khakis, has largely re-invented itself in the last decade. While it continues to focus on the plight of obviously threatened specifies and habitats, it's raised its ambitions to a whole new level - driving action on macro problems facing the planet as a whole, in particular IT.
This week they published the fifth annual "Cool IT Leaderboard" ranking technology driven companies by their consumption of renewable resources, advocacy and solutions aimed at helping reduce the impact at the source.
The big surprise of this report was the rapid ascension of Google to the top of the charts, driven in large part by their strong advocacy but even more so by their shift to sourcing 20% of their energy requirements from renewables. With every leader board there has to be a laggard, and Oracle took home the gong in Greenpeace's words for "failing to disclose either renewable or dirty energy use."
While Oracle bashing has become something of a cause célèbre, the real news was those companies that failed to even make the list, notably Apple and Facebook, Apple in particular being singled out on the basis of failing to use it's famously large cash war chest to make a clearer statement to the markets and regulators.
How is this relevant to the boundary spanning audience of this blog? Simply put, "less" truly is "more". As mammals so ably demonstrated to the dinosaurs, and as recent disasters have tragically brought home, the smaller your footprint - whether that's capital, time, energy, physical space or all four - the better you're able to deal with change.
I'm curious, what's the reality in the trenches of corporate IT - does anyone care about Green IT at all or is it seen as just another distraction?
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