Throughout this last year I’ve had several experiences that make me really appreciate Dreamhost. In my opinion they are probably the best web hosting company gracing us with their server ninja skills. Granted, there are a few other companies that are a bit cheaper, but the ethos of DH completely draws me in - not to mention their stellar customer service, solid hosting service, and well-articulated rants via their blog.
Dreamhost announced a few days ago that they’ve become a “carbon-neutral” company. This basically means (and correct me if I’m wrong here) that they’ve calculated their carbon emissions output and are purchasing a number of Renewable Energy Credits… which is basically a donation to help develop renewable energy sources. The amount of credits they buy is proportionate to their carbon emissions.
Not bad.
If you read through some of the comments on the blog, you’ll find some criticisms about the decision to go through with all this - mainly Dreamhost falling sucker for the “scam” of global warming… that those energy credit things are simply a way to ease the conscious of companies… and ultimately leading to concerns about service rate increases, etc. I like Jeff’s (@Dreamhost) response to them:
The nice part about this whole thing is that we’re doing it on a completely voluntary basis - entailing no Federal tax hikes, extra regulation, etc. aimed toward you or anyone else.
While the costs to us are significant, they’re not so high that we’re going to raise our rates, either. At best, we do our own little part to leave a better environment for our children. At worst, we leave a somewhat smaller profit for ourselves every quarter. Either way, no skin off your nose.
I’m actually a free market kind of guy, personally, and hardly a fan of socialism - so if more and more private companies do their part voluntarily, the socialist dystopia you refer to can be avoided. Free market economy FTW! :)
On another Dreamhost note, I had to fill out their online form for customer support recently… I came across this:
