Maybe this is a good thing? Most local papers are just adverts with a few crappy news items, and owned by the big international media conglomerates like Murchoch's anyway.

I think the rise of the internet means most people get their news online, at least for the Evening Standard's readership, anyway. Means less financial and environmental paper and distribution costs. Though I realise the internet is quote bad environmentally itself.

to host such a publication on the bottom of my cage.

People have stopped buying the propaganda rags and don't get their daily dumbed-down does of TERROR threats, sport and porn, so it has to disseminated, for free, otherwise the sheeple will break out of their conditioning and see the real truth for the first time. This would set a dangerous precedent which could halt the proposed World Government in it's tracks.

I agree on the paper waste issue. It's grim seeing London covered in discarded free papers. There are problems with newspapers but the quality of reporting is much higher than what I see on sites like Indymedia. Newspapers are somewhat accountable to what they publish. Most Internet sites have little comeback on what they print. I rarely see blatant unthruths published in newspapers. On alternative news sites I see it all the time. I think the death of quality newspapers would be a sad day for news and journalism.

1) With more than 1.5 billion people online around the world, scientists estimate that the energy footprint of the net is growing by more than 10% each year...US data centres used 61bn kilowatt hours of energy in 2006 – 1.5% of the entire electricity usage of the US.

2) The internet is the fastest growing source of CO2 to the atmosphere...it doubled from 2002 to 2006.

3) The carbon footprint of the average Google search was 0.2 grams of carbon dioxide...more than 200m Google searches are made every day globally.

4) Martin Stabe ...gives the carbon emissions for one copy of the Daily Mirror as 174g of CO2.
[Equivalent to 870 google searches as part of Googles own carbon-footprint - not including all the other associated carbon costs like your access device, other servers you use, the interconnecting kit.]

5) One estimate suggests it takes a whopping 152 billion kilowatt-hours per year just to power the data centres that keep the net running. Add to that the energy used by all the computers and peripherals linked to it and the whole thing could be responsible for as much as 2 per cent of all human-made CO2 emissions, putting it on a par with the aviation industry.

1)  http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/may/03/internet-carbon-footprint
2)  http://www.nowpublic.com/technology/internets-carbon-footprint-server-farms-vs-your-desktop-pc
3)  http://green-pepper.org.uk/energy/growing-internet-carbon-footprint/
4)  http://www.wordblog.co.uk/2007/02/03/what-is-the-carbon-footprint-of-the-internet/
5)  http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227062.600-unknown-web-is-the-net-hurting-the-environment.html

Hi IPCC,

thanks for the detailed information on pollution caused by the internet. I wonder how that compares to what we had previously i.e. people travelling to meetings and using other methods of communication?

Are there environmental schools of thought who refuse to use the internet because of the damage it causes?

Should we shut down Indymedia and go back to printed paper (recycled of course!)