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Taiwan hosts symposium

Patricia Pieterse
By Patricia Pieterse, iWeek assistant editor
Johannesburg, 01 Jul 2008

Taiwan hosts symposium

As a "young emerging economy", Taiwan cannot afford to remain outside the global community in combating climate change, president Ma Ying-jeou said this week at the first sustainable green technology symposium in Taipei, says Taipei Times.

The forum was hosted by the National Taiwan University, which invited Taiwanese specialists who work both abroad or locally to discuss the trends in green technology.

Ho Chih-ming, director of the Institute for Cell Mimetic Space Exploration at the University of California, Los Angeles, said that 200 years ago, humans never had to think about sustainability, as the ecosystem was balanced and could sustain human activity without much change.

Green interest wanes

Hosting provider Rackspace surveyed 3 000 customers this year and last year, and found some results suggesting businesses are losing interest in green technology, says Network World.

Sixty-three percent of customers this year said they are not willing to sacrifice any server performance to lower carbon emissions. Last year, only 41% of Rackspace customers were unwilling to sacrifice performance to reduce global warming emissions.

In last year's survey, 8% of customers were not willing to pay a premium for green products and services, such as renewable energy, recycling, conservation or carbon offsets. This year, 30% were not willing to pay a premium for such environment friendly products.

Cisco goes green

As part of an ongoing commitment to environmental responsibility, Cisco has set a goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions from its worldwide operations by 25% over the next four years, reaching its goal in absolute terms by 2012, says CNNMoney.com.

The company will deploy a multipronged approach focused on the power of technology to meet its objectives and to demonstrate how customers can do the same.

Cisco chairman and CEO John Chambers outlined the plan at Cisco Live!, the company's annual information technology and communications conference held recently. In his keynote speech, Chambers discussed the transformative effect that IT can have on the world's environmental challenges and demonstrated Cisco's commitment to sustainability in its operations, culture, products and customer solutions.

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