Can a Greener Internet Help Us Moderate Climate Change?
High Definition Remote Presentation to the Monash Undergraduate Research Projects Abroad (MURPA) Program Located at Monash University, Australia From Calit2@UCSD May 13, 2009 Dr. Larry Smarr Director, California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology Harry E. Gruber Professor, Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering Jacobs School of Engineering, UCSD • Abstract This year marks a turning point in the debate on global climate change. The focus of the discussion is rapidly moving from a scientific analysis of how human activity effects climate change to a political process on how best to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. The Climate Group’s Smart 2020 study reveals that the global Information and Communication Technology (ICT) industry produces greenhouse gases equivalent to that produced by the aviation industry (~2-3 percent). Furthermore, the ICT sector’s emissions will nearly triple, in a business-as-usual scenario, from 2002 to 2020. On the other hand, the Cli
