It was, in short, a thriving software multinational with a somewhat Californian culture. There was, for example, a dress code: "clothing must be worn during office hours," which was imposed in the wake of an incident when it wasn't (which unfortunately coincided with an on-site visit by some major investors).
Which sounds appalling but, on the plus side, I bet the person concerned didn't asked for the air conditioning to be up to planet destroying levels...
Among the problems that could result from the internet's voracious hunger for electricity are website failures and communications disruption costing millions in lost business every hour – as well as power cuts and brownouts at plants which supply data centres with electricity.
All of which would be familiar to anyone who's ever lived in Bracknell, the blackout capital of Britain — or at least, that's how it seemed back when I lived there...
But there are other kinds of denial that are worse yet. There's a response that says I'll never admit I'm wrong and if it comes to a choice between admitting I'm wrong or destroying the whole world, then bring it on. This is the Götterdämmerung, in which the doomed gods decide to tear down the world as they lose the big battle. The god-damning of the world. It's a term sometimes used to describe what Hitler did in the last months of World War Two, after it was clear Germany was going to lose the war.
Of course people are offended by any comparison to the actions of Adolf Hitler. But consider how many species have died already, and how many more might die if we keep doing what we're doing. It might not be genocide, but it is ugly. Speciescide. As if nothing else matters but us, and specifically the subset of us that agrees with everything we say. When you take a look at our own Rapture culture, these people pretending to expect the end of world any time now, you see that we have our own Götterdämmerung advocates, all very holy of course, as world destroyers always are. And it's an ugly thing. Countries can go crazy, we've seen it happen more than once. And empires always go crazy.
Robinson, K.S., (2007), Sixty Days and Counting, Harper Collins, p.162
If new Labour became a "limited liability party", it might be possible, he says - not entirely jokingly - to "sell non-core policies, from a customer perspective, as three-to five-year options on implementation in office". These could include policy sales to the nuclear industry or to the green lobby. "This," he points out, "could help ensure that national policies achieve the highest returns. And that could only benefit the shareholders - or, as they used to be known, the party members."
Here's an intriguing idea — going green by observing the Sabbath — from Michael Pollen's piece Don't Give Up in the Guardian:
The idea is to find one thing to do in your life that doesn't involve spending or voting, that may or may not virally rock the world but is real and particular (as well as symbolic) and that, come what may, will offer its own rewards. Maybe you decide to give up meat, an act that would reduce your carbon footprint by as much as a quarter. Or you could try this: determine to observe the Sabbath. For one day a week, abstain completely from economic activity: no shopping, no driving, no electronics.
I like the idea — more time for reading! — but until I'm clear on what the rules are on cooking on the Sabbath, I'm not sure whether I can commit or not.
"I think the US is in a terrible state of denial," he says firmly. "Worse than that, we seem to be caught in a kind of Gotterdammerung response: we'd rather have the world go down in flames than change our lifestyle or admit we're wrong. Even here in California, 50% of cars on the freeway are SUVs, and they're political statements: they say, we're going to take the rest of the world down with us because we don't give a damn. Essentially they're Republican vehicles: when you see an SUV go by, you know the driver voted for Bush."
Testify, brother! Testify!
...when employees at one [ tetraethyl lead ] plant developed irreversible delusions, a spokesman blandly informed reporters: 'These men probably went insane because they worked too hard.'
Shockingly Bryson also cites a publication from 2001, inevitable written by the same company, which claimed that, "research has failed to show that leaded gasoline poses a threat to human health or the environment."
Yikes. It's a bit like claiming that fags are just healthy lung snacks or that uranium is just nature's way of giving you a nice green glow.
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