Wanna be a dot eco?
The green bandwagon continues to roll on, providing the ruthless and unethical with another opportunity to make money out of the growing environmental movement to create a more sustainable global economy.
Icann, the company that regulates overseas addresses, is easing up on some of its control over top level domains (TLDs) and, from next year, is releasing a new set of these TLD suffixes, one of which will be [dot]eco.
No sooner has the news been formally announced than 2 companies, Dot Eco LLC (a consortium backed by former US presidential candidate Al Gore) and another led by Canadian eco-labelling outfit Big Room, jumped into the fray to buy the rights to the [dot]eco suffix with assurances that part of the registration fee will be used to support green causes.
There are all the usual promises to make the suffix free to own for not-for-profits, but the amount of money both consortiums have already spent in launching their campaigns will have to be made up for somewhere, and it is my guess that any company that operates in the environmental sphere will be paying the price. You can purchase a [dot]co[dot]uk for less than £5 for 2 years ownership – don’t expect to pay this little for a [dot]eco.
It is interesting to note that the Dot Eco community is crammed full of not-for-profits, obviously hoping that their horse wins and they get a free TLD. The Canadian consortium, Big Room, has a page of supporters that represent the big ugly law firms, who have obviously spotted an opportunity to make a killing out of this, with barely a green credential among them.
What this demonstrates, regrettably, is that that the future of our economy still rests with companies that talk a good story but are, ultimately, concerned only with profit without any serious consideration for the creating change toward global sustainability. It is noteworthy that both consortia are North American (though the Canadians will not forgive me for saying so!).
One of the challenges that the global economy faces is that too many countries follow the North American lead, which has all too often been ‘greenwash’ without any solid foundation. This next episode in the green story is no different; the consortia have been firing broadsides at each other over costings, promised percentage contributions to green causes and more. Whatever the outcome of the on-going battle, we can be fairly certain that one loser will all those companies that are developing economically viable green technology who will have to jump through hoops and pay top dollar for the TLD they ought to have by right in order to broaden their reach.
So while the Americans continue to bicker and brawl over the next juicy profit opportunity provided by the global climate change crisis, perhaps the rest of us ought just to concentrate on doing ‘stuff’ to mitigate the consequences and publish the results clearly and coherently on our respective [dot]co[dot]uk or [dot]com TLDs.
At least that would be ethical… and if we’re actually doing something to reduce our carbon footprint, it’ll also appear positively on the bottom line.
