Green Wombat

Web 2.0 helped save Silicon Valley. Now will widgets help save the world?
The environmental movement and its corporate allies hope so. They’re tapping Web 2.0’s real-time, interactive technologies in an attempt to spawn a national social network for social do-gooding in the campaign to slow global warming. The past week saw the launch of two such efforts: Beat the Heat from the Natural Resources Defense Council and 18seconds from a coalition that includes NRDC, Environmental Defense, Yahoo (YHOO)
and Wal-Mart (WMT). Beat the Heat lets individuals put themselves on an interactive map of the United States, listing their global warming worries and what they’re willing to do to cut greenhouse gas emissions. For instance, Jorge, a retired Army sergeant in Texas, says he’ll buy energy efficicent appliances while Jenni,
a 35-year-old Ohio nurse, says she’ll consider purchasing a hybrid car. "NRDC is really wading into the Web 2.0 waters for the first time, but we think the opportunity the social web presents is enormous," NRDC’s Kim Ranney told Green Wombat, noting that nearly 1,300 people appeared on the map in the first two-and-half days after its launch. "The social web … lets us get the message to people directly that solutions to solving global warming exist now, and then it lets people carry that message forward and get ideas from each other."

Potentially more disruptive to the eco-political status quo are sites like 18seconds, which maps purchases of high-efficiency compact fluorescent bulbs in near real-time by state and metroplitan area. The data is supplied by major retailers to AC Nielsen.

As you probably know by now, CFLs use 70 percent less electricity than standard incandescent bulbs, and are thus, potentially a big gun in the fight against global warming. Australia last week banned traditional light bulbs, and in the U.S. there’s a push to replace incandescents with CFLs. (Which would be a bonanza for retailers like Wal-Mart and Home Depot (HD) as well as CFL makers such as General Electric (GE) ) It’s a quick – takes 18 seconds, in fact – easy, and a concrete, high-impact step every citizen can take to combat a global problem that often seems beyond the influence of the average Joe or Josephine. Thus the power of a Web 2.0-powered site like 18seconds, hosted by Yahoo. It tallies the consequences of the simple act of changing a light bulb: the nearly 15 million CFLs purchases since January 1 have eliminated 6.6 million pounds of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, the equivalent of taking 104,501 cars off the road. Better yet, to incite some good old-fashioned capitalistic competition, the site ranks states by CFL purchases per capita. Green Wombat was a bit shocked to see redder than red Texas – No. 10 in the rankings – kicking California’s green butt (No. 18). In fact, in another sign that green issues do not necessarily break along the red state-blue state divide, the top 5 CFL-buying states per capita are Arkansas, Wyoming, Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma. Ultra-liberal Massachusetts, mind you, came in No. 48. As far the as the metropolitan rankings go, how did the left-leaning, Mother Earth-loving Bay Area do? As I write this looking out at the lights – incandescent apparently – of San Francisco, we’re No. 103 in the per capita rankings with 396,755 bulbs bought. Silicon Valley, the green tech epicenter of green tech and home to enviro-friendly companies like Google (GOOG), Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) and Sun Microsytems (SUN), was No. 107 with 165,890 CFLs purchased. (The top spot went to Bellingham, Washington.) To make the campaign viral, the 18seconds includes a customizable CFL-tracking widget that people can put on their own websites and blogs to show bulb buys in their metropolitan area or state.

Now imagine other mashups that make planet-warming personal. Like combining vehicle registration records with auto emissions data and Google Maps to create a widget to show geographical concentrations of the "hottest" cars and trucks. In fact, one can even picture a pitch for a startup that makes green widgets……