WWF 3 Dec 09;
Those people unable to make it to the Copenhagen Climate Conference this month can still contribute to stopping climate change – by using a new search engine from their own computers.
The same day the conference begins on Dec. 7, web users can start using a new green search engine called Ecosia. The new application, powered by Yahoo! and Microsoft’s Bing search engines, will allow internet surfers to protect about 2 square meters of Amazon rainforest just by clicking on sponsored links.
Although users do not donate any money themselves, the company behind Ecosia will donate at least 80 percent of its income from sponsored links to WWF’s rainforest protection programme in Brazil’s Juruena-Apui region.
“The green search engine is a very modern and inventive method of saving the world climate without a huge effort”, says WWF Germany’s director Eberhard Brandes.
“Every year billions of dollars are being earned in the internet only from advertising revenue”, says Christian Kroll, founder of Ecosia. “There is a more eco-friendly way of using these huge profits: the money should better be used to fight global warming.”
Each click on a sponsored link through Ecosia will provide WWF’s Amazon rainforest with a protected area of 2 square metres. Accordingly, 500,000 users and 1 million searches could save 2 million square metres of rainforest every day, the same size as Monaco.
“If only one percent of global internet users accessed Ecosia for their web searches, we could conserve a rainforest area as big as Switzerland every year,” says Kroll.
Rainforests are highly endangered and in the last 50 years more than a half have vanished. Every year a rainforest larger than England is burned or cut down. Deforestation is one of the most important sources of CO2 emissions in the world.
By using the green search engine internet users also reduce their own carbon footprint as the servers of Ecosia use eco-friendly electricity. The search engine will be tested starting Dec. 3 and officially launched on on Dec. 7t. On the website users can also check how many square metres of rainforest have already been saved by themselves and by the whole community.
Ecosia search engine fights climate change
Yahoo News 4 Dec 09;
SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) – An Ecosia search engine launching Monday is counting on the world's fascination with the Internet to help save Brazilian rainforests and battle global warming.
A brain child of "green-minded friends" in Berlin, ecosia.org is powered by Bing and Yahoo! search technology but gives at least 80 percent of its revenue to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) to protect rainforests.
Ecosia has timed its official launch for Monday to coincide with the start of world climate talks in Copenhagen.
"Ecosia will definitely be the world's greenest search engine," WWF said in a statement.
"Each search with Ecosia will protect a piece of rainforest, so by making Ecosia your search engine, you can actually help the environment one search at a time."
Ecosia is banking on the same online advertising tactics that have pumped a fortune into the coffers of Internet search king Google, with the funds benefiting nature instead of investors.
Advertisers typically pay search engines for each click on sponsored links appearing on results pages.
"Thanks to sponsored links, search engines earn billions every year," said Ecosia founder Christian Kroll.
"Ecosia believes that there is a more eco-friendly way of using these huge profits and that the money should better be used to fight global warming."
The WWF estimated that over the course of a year, a typical Internet user relying on Ecosia for search queries could protect a patch of rainforest about the size of an ice hockey rink, or 2,000 square meters (21,530 square feet).
A rainforest expanse the size of Switzerland could be saved annually with money generated by one percent of the world's Internet users switching to Ecosia, according to the WWF.
More than half the world's rainforests have been destroyed in the past 50 years and the amount of rainforest burned or cut down each year is greater than the size of England, according to Ecosia.
Deforestation generates climate changing carbon dioxide while eliminating precious wildlife habitat along with trees that produce life-sustaining oxygen.
Ecosia said it is following through on its green theme by relying on data centers that run on electricity from alternative sources that do not spew heat-trapping gases.
It will be taking on powerhouse Google, a search engine so popular that the California company's name is used as a verb to refer to searching the Internet.
Unlike Google and other search engines, Ecosia promises to dump all records of users' activities after 48 hours and not mine the data for marketing purposes.
