They might be (a lot) less bad than other data centers, but unless these google data centers have a neutral carbon footprint, they are not clean, and unless they have a negative footprint they are not "environmentally friendly".
Google's datacenters are already carbon neutral. This is about going one step further and using locally-generated renewable energy to power the datacenters.
No they are not. They use energy, a lot of it. They want to run their data centers off of renewable, "carbon-free" energy sources and made some great strides towards that. But they aren't there yet.
On top of that, renewables aren't carbon neutral per se, either. And the hardware you put into those things isn't free either.
Now you might argue the services google is able to provide with them warrant the environmental costs, but that's another question entirely. And you might argue that google did a lot of things to reduce their footprint (and they did) but it's hardly close to zero, let alone negative.
As long as there are always more humans on this planet, we will have to serve them. Factories, food, electricity can’t be decreased if every decrease per person is followed by an increase in headcounts, which is what’s happening of all western countries since we invented ecology.
In other words, do you have a plan for decreasing actual footprint without having it followed by: “Hey guys, we can afford increasing our population!”
>As long as there are always more humans on this planet, we will have to serve them.
Sure, tho youtube cat videos are not a basic need in my humble opinion, and neither is tracking my every digital move so you can sell me to advertisers.
>Factories, food, electricity can’t be decreased if every decrease per person is followed by an increase in headcounts
Well, food demand will increase, but can we and the comparatively fragile system that is our planet afford that people eat a big chunk of cow every day? How about a big chunk of cow every few days instead?
We can actually decrease factories or rather their ecological footprint, and we can use less electricity (a new fridge uses less electricity than an old fridge, and there is technological advancement to be had, and a lot of low hanging fruits still) and we can can produce energy with less pollution. And we can plant some fucking trees. And then even cut down those trees and bury them in the ground, putting back some of the carbon we took out before. And regulate polluters into oblivion.
A lot of changes would be "hard", like taking away people's daily burgers, and punishing corporate polluters. So they probably will not happen because politicians are chicken shits, scared they will be voted out of office if the price of meat goes up, or some coal mine closes and loses some jobs.
But we can at least regulatory incentivize good behavior and better products.
But yeah, my plan would also include tackling the population issue as a major part of it. Not in a "one child" Chinese way, of course, but I'd strongly deincentivize having many children, starting with no more tax breaks/credits after birth two and creating harsh prison sentences for people who are not willing to pay their child support (which is different to not being able to pay, of course), but also investing heavily in making access to free contraceptives and education about contraceptives available to everybody. But sadly there are far too many evil morons running around preaching abstinence-only, because their imaginary friend in the Heavens doesn't like the feel of latex on the skin or something.
And a lot more out there, I'd also invade the Vatican and try the pope and his flunkies for crimes against humanity. If we can put Serbs and African "leaders" on trial, we should be able to do the same to the pope.
