ICF recently released a document entitled The Carbon Footprint of Email Spam Report that was sponsored by a well-known security company. Some key findings include:

• Globally, annual spam energy use totals 33 billion kilowatt-hours (KWh), or 33 terawatt hours (TWh). That’s equivalent to the electricity used in 2.4 million homes in the United States, with the same GHG emissions as 3.1 million passenger cars using two billion United States gallons of gasoline.
• The average GHG emission associated with a single spam message is 0.3 grams of CO2. That’s like driving three feet (one meter) in equivalent emissions, but when multiplied by the annual volume of spam, it’s like driving around the Earth 1.6 million times.
• A year’s email at a typical medium-size business uses 50,000 KWh; more than one fifth of that annual use can be associated with spam

Hmmm. Interesting. But so what? I mean, is the report going to stop spammers from spamming? Will it give them pangs of guilt? Will it cause them to say, “Gosh! I didn’t realize that my actions were contributing to the global warming problem. I need to stop scamming people and find a real job!”? Or will they start paying to be “certified green” by a body such as CO2Stats? No, I don’t think that any of these things are at all likely to happen. So, if the report isn’t going to stop spammers spamming, what’s the point of it? There are already a multitude of extremely good reasons to block spam and there’s really nothing to be gained from adding another one to the list.

So, the question I’d be inclined to ask is: how much energy was used/CO2 produced in the creation and distribution of this report?