House of Commons accelerates global warming

A PARLIAMENTARY reply shows the House of Commons has a staggering number of PCs and printers in use, making us wonder whether it's maybe time the MPs got out and started planting thousands of trees to offset the carbon thing.

The hot air spouted there probably doesn't help the overall picture.

MP Susan Kramer asked Nick Harvey how many desktops, laptops and monitors are in use in the House of Commons and the daily energy usage of these devices.

Answering her, MP Nick Harvey, on behalf of the House of Commons Commission, said there are 250 servers; 1,300 printers, and 2,670 desktop computers.

Most of these, points out Nick, will have a monitor. But it's not possible to give the total energy used. Maybe it's time too for them to line the Houses of Parliament with solar panels or something. Nick didn't say which brands were in use, and didn't enumerate notebooks separately. Nor was he asked about Blackberries. µ

* MEANWHILE the "Carbon Fooprint" calculator is still being bombarded with too many people and not enough capacity - see here. Otherwise we'd have used it to try and calculate the House of Commons' "footprint"