The BBC reports today on the environmental cost of a single Google search. According to a Harvard University academic, each two searches on Google have the same carbon footprint as boiling a kettle. So each day, Google is wrecking the environment to the tune of 200 million searches, or 100 million cups of tea.
Google may not be the worst offender. A report on Trendsspotting last October compared the carbon footprint of Facebook with that of major US cities. Based on the remarkable statistic that there are now 10 billion photos hosted on Facebook, Trendsspotting calculated that the carbon footprint of Facebook was around half that of New York City - and Facebook is piling on more servers all the time to keep up with user demand.
Right now, we're all so obsessed with the credit crunch, but it can't be long before environmental issues come to the forefront once more. And perhaps digital can't maintain it's smug "we're paper-free, so we don't contribute to global warming" stance for too much longer.
Looking further ahead, maybe we will see steam-powered server farms in Iceland and have websites showing a "Hosted on recycled energy" badge.