Resolution Revisited: Environmental sites have grown, but have a ways to go
Written by Andy Kazeniac (contact - e-mail) -- March 5th, 2007 | Recommend ThisWe are now two months into the new year, right about the time when many people see their new gym membership cards starting to collect dust and many others forget what their New Year’s resolutions actually were. But not here at Compete.
Our New Year’s Day post saw that traffic to a few major environmental sites has doubled in the past five years, but the climb was not a steady one. After that post, we received requests to look beyond the “old school” sites, and that’s exactly what we did.
With the help of The Earth Blog, we compiled a list of 125 relevant environmental sites and tracked their traffic as a whole over the past thirteen months. What we found was more of the same unsteady growth.
A 15% growth in aggregate unique visitors over last January is certainly a marked improvement, but with UV totals for this January just over 3 million for 125 sites, these aren’t Earth-saving numbers. Spurred on by the release of An Inconvenient Truth and now its Oscar win, the topic of global warming has been a popular one this past year, but with an increase of less than 400,000 unique visitors, all the fanfare doesn’t seem to be producing a proportional move to action.
There is reason for optimism though:
- These sites appear to be getting stickier: this January saw a 25% growth in sessions and a 59% growth in page views as compared to the same time last year
- Treehugger, a site I have been seeing everywhere recently, had 70% growth in unique visitors over last January
- I have replaced all the light bulbs in my apartment with energy-saving bulbs - every little bit helps
These growth rates aren’t breaking records, but it is encouraging to see the environmentally conscious movement gaining some momentum. We’ll continue to stick with our resolution here at Compete, doing our part to drive awareness. Now if only I could find my gym card.
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March 5th, 2007 at 12:31 pm
I have found that people think that just watching Al Gore’s movie is participating in the solution. Utlimately we are creatures of habit, so if the change is difficult we tend to avoid it. I would love to see some promominent services offer convenient forms of paricipation… Easy car sharing, recylcing delivery services, etc. There isn’t much money in it, so I assume it’ll take years before something takes off. I realize there are plenty of car sharing services, but adoption is low… What’s or who is going to be the catalyst?
I hate to say it, but I hope consumer gas prices double in the states. Money seems to be the great motivator.
March 5th, 2007 at 1:21 pm
Algore is using this whole scare just to make money. That has been proven.
The Truth about the Big Lie of the 21st Century is about to be revealed.
http://www.channel4.com/science/microsites/G/great_global_warming_swindle/index.htm
March 5th, 2007 at 5:22 pm
And here’s some more information in the “expert” referred to in that documentary. Read up before making such idiotic claims: http://www.desmogblog.com/tim-ball-ad-hominems-ad-nauseum
March 5th, 2007 at 6:12 pm
“whole scare just to make money”?
Wow, so you people really exist. I thought when the world economic forum got together and 99% agreed that global warming has officially exceded any reasonable cyclical cycle that you guys would have crawled into your bomb shelters to save yourself the embarrassment. I guess not.
I wonder who makes money if Global Warming is determined a farse…mmmmm…. who would benefit??? The hippies??? No…. Al Gore? No…. Bush, his oil croonies and big enery??? DING DING DING.. Nice try sucka.
March 6th, 2007 at 11:45 pm
Well, I can’t speak for every website, but ours has seen a tremendous growth curve in unique hits in the past year. In Jan. 06, we had 802 unique hits. The numbers rose steadily until in Feb. 07 we had 6,549 unique hits. And those come from all over the world. This morning, I got a call from a man in Ughanda who has asked for my organization’s help in environmental initiatives he is attempting to enact. I wrote the Go Green Initiative on my kitchen table in 2002, and it is now operational in 32 states, Europe and Cameroon, Africa. We don’t have much money or glitz, but the program is catching on like wildfire for a few simple reasons:
1. We do not believe that the best in people is extracted through efforts to mandate, regulate and legislate our behavior. The Go Green Initiative inspires people to be creative and innovative in finding ways to create a “culture of conservation” in their communities. There is no legislation or taxation driving the success of our program.
2. Unlike other enviornmental programs that seek to save the planet FROM human beings, we seek to save the planet FOR human beings…and that one word difference makes all the difference.
3. We produce tangilbe results that people are proud to join with. By combining the efforts of all our affiliates, we can demonstrate substantive environmental impact, so people can see the cumulative effect of their own individual efforts. We have over one million students and teachers involved in our program now, and in 2006 their recycling and waste diversion efforts resulted in the avoidance of the following:
• 22.9 billion BTUs of energy use
• 1,389 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions
• 10,234,000 gallons of water
• 555,560 gallons of oil
• 5,194 cubic yards of landfill space, due to paper recycling alone
The Go Green Initiative operates on a very simple premise…waste not, want not. Future generations will need the natural resources we either save for them, or take from them. You don’t have to believe humans are causing climate change if you don’t want to, but we can all recycle and preserve our national treasures.
March 8th, 2007 at 9:24 am
This is an interesting index and I look forward to seeing how it progresses. But do you know what would make it 10-times more interesting/helpful? A actual list of the “125 relevant environmental sites” you’re tracking.
Thanks!
March 27th, 2007 at 4:48 am
Jeff, you can watch that ‘movie’, and get more inside facts on it via the following links:
http://www.celsias.com/blog/2007/03/11/the-great-global-warming-swindle/
http://www.celsias.com/blog/2007/03/14/channel-fours-problem-with-science/
There’s a lot more to that ‘Swindle’ movie than first meets the eye. Don’t get sucked in.
October 24th, 2007 at 10:06 pm
I agree… we need to see the list of names for these websites… and won’t that help the web cause anyway??
June 16th, 2008 at 10:01 am
Kelly
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