Imagine this.

You are running in the New York City marathon, the distance of which is 26 miles, 385 yards. Things are going along fine, and then around mile 12, somewhere on Nassau Avenue in the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn, you stop, catch your breath, look around, begin to jump up and down while exclaiming “I’ve won, I’ve won!”

The Brooklynites witnessing this insanity look at you, then they look at each other (with mouths agape), then they look back at you and shout “Hey, you meatball, you ain’t  finished yet. You’re f_____g crazy!” (Remember . . . this is Brooklyn.)

And they would be right. They’d recognize that you were someone who was trying to claim victory when no victory was attained.

This is exactly what has happened in the latest Greenpeace declaration of victory. Greenpeace has declared victory in its “Unfriend Coal” campaign against Facebook. But is it a victory? You’re probably thinking “Well, Richard, if you’re writing about it, then it probably isn’t a victory.” You’re right. It isn’t.

Here is why it isn’t victory.

After Greenpeace launched this campaign against Facebook, Kumi Naidoo, Executive Director of Greenpeace International sent a letter to Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook. In the September 2010 letter, Mr. Naidoo asked Mr. Zuckerberg for five things:

Facebook should:

Commit to a plan to phase out the use of dirty coal-fired electricity to power your (Facebook’s) data centers;
Use your (Facebook’s) purchasing power to choose locations that allow you to rely on only clean, renewable sources of electricity;
Advocate for strong climate and energy policy changes at the local, national and international level to ensure that as the IT industry’s energy demand increases, so does the supply of renewable energy;
Disclosure (sic) your (Facebook’s) greenhouse gas emissions inventory (through mechanisms such as the carbon disclosure project);
Share this plan for environmental stewardship publicly on your (Facebook’s) website so your hundred of millions of users know that your company is a climate leader.

These five things were the goals of the Unfriend Coal campaign. So, if Facebook agreed to these Greenpeace goals, then Greenpeace could legitimately claim victory. Let’s look at to what Facebook actually agreed.

In a joint Greenpeace / Facebook statement (which was posted on the Greenpeace Web site by the way), Facebook agreed to:

Adopting a siting policy that states a preference for access to clean and renewable energy supply
Ongoing research into energy efficiency and the open sharing of that technology through the Open Compute Project
Ongoing research into clean energy solutions for our (Facebook’s) future data centers
Engaging in a dialogue with our (Facebook’s) utility providers about increasing the supply of clean energy that power Facebook data centers

How does this Facebook agreement compare to Mr. Naidoo’s goals as shown above?

Did Greenpeace achieve Goal #1? No. Facebook made no mention or commitment about the nature of the power running their currently operating data centers.

Did Greenpeace achieve Goal #2? Perhaps, although Facebook said that they would adopt a “preference” for a renewable energy supply. A preference is not the choice of locations that Greenpeace wanted, nor

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