Such a trend would reduce the inventory of available ad space, probably making AdSense more profitable for those who stayed in the game.

Sounds okay to me ...

I doubt it. the internet is not like real estate or green economy, it's a meta-thing. you work those other trendy things ON the internet, possibly having adsense on your "I'm so aware of global warming"-page. I guess we'll see a shift in topics of new sites that are being created that will mirror the zeitgeist, but people won't just close their websites and try to make easy money by selling whateveritmaybe offline.

I worry about the footprint of having a server on the go all the time just to serve my sites. I can justify most of my sites in a green way - most of them can help people save energy. I'm not especially green myself but I'm an engineer and can't stand inefficiency.

I can see the green trend increasing the price of hosting a lot in the future. It isn't great having servers like mine running all day in air conditioned datacenters and I'm sure they'll be taxed by greedy (sorry green) governments. Possibly the increase in price will cause some unprofitable adsensers to quit?

Interesting comments. I didn't think about hosting companies charging more money to run our servers. I'm still not convinced that people won't dump their websites and run to the nearest thing that offers a 'quick buck'.

The "Internet boom" is like the Gold Rush: When the Gold Rush began, a few prospectors made a lot of money from the easy-to-find gold, and a lot of wannabe prospectors followed in their wake. Pretty soon, there were too many prospectors competing for a finite amount of gold, and a lot of the wannabes ended up broke. The survivors were (a) those who made money selling equipment and supplies to miners and (b) mining companies that relied on professional skills and economies of scale instead of relying on luck and the generosity of Mother Nature.

On the Internet (and more specifically on the Web), there are a lot of people who still have the Gold Rush mentality. Somebody tells them that datafeed affiliate sites for hotels or made-for-AdSense sites built around "mesothelioma" or "debt consolidation" will make them rich, and they join the wannabe prospectors. Pretty soon, the river is so filled with prospectors that the gold is being shared with a horde of other get-rich-quick dreamers. When nuggets or even flakes of gold become harder to find, the wannabe gold miners blame Mother Nature (a.k.a. Google) for their own greed and lack of foresight.

There's plenty of gold left to be mined on the Web, but wannabe Web prospectors who rely on a perpetual supply of easy-to-find nuggets are doomed to disappointment.

those who made money selling equipment and supplies to miners

That reminds me, be sure to buy my next ebook on how to make money online, available at a MFA site near you.

those who made money selling equipment and supplies to miners

That reminds me, be sure to buy my next ebook on how to make money online, available at a MFA site near you.

But before you do that, make sure you buy MY e-book on how to avoid get-rich-quick Internet scams, available at another MFA site near you. ;)

I think everyone who is concerned about the environment should immediately cease displaying AdSense ads so as to reduce my competition ... er...I mean... to make things better for the polar bears and stop the oceans from rising. It's the right thing to do if you care about the planet.

FarmBoy

Next step is to start moving your content, i.e. displaying via iPhone, ebooks etc. and getting some € from it.

If I had to fax the content of my site to everyone who requested it, instead of displaying it electronically, I think the planet would be worse off.

I worry about the footprint of having a server on the go all the time just to serve my sites

Some hosts such as 'Thinkhost' claim to be green. Perhaps you might want to look into this type of host.

I hope for an intense green movement. My sites are all about this.

There must be such a thing as green code, optimised to use the least energy. Has anyone thought to benchmark popular scripts in this way?

I think greening the web by creating energy-efficient scripts is the way to go, rather than abandoning it altogether. You can't discount the energy you can save by shopping online rather than driving to the nearest city, not printing out pages of a newspaper you won't read, using TV catchup and movie download services instead of manufacturing and shipping all those DVDs and Blurays, and so on.

As far as energy consumption goes, I think your usual goal to make your site as fast as possible will take care of that - optimizing your scripts makes you need less servers for more visitors and thus saves energy.
Has anyone ever heard of studies that estimate energy costs for different techniques (is there more computing power needed for html4 vs xhtml? that'd be a thing, especially with modern power saving technologies where power consumption depends on the speed necessary.). It's not much for a single page view, but if, say, google changed their site so each client will have to use a tiny bit less energy, it has a massive impact.

And there is also the option of installing voltaic cells on your rooftop, an option I have been considering lately.

As far as energy consumption goes, I think your usual goal to make your site as fast as possible will take care of that - optimizing your scripts makes you need less servers for more visitors and thus saves energy.
Has anyone ever heard of studies that estimate energy costs for different techniques (is there more computing power needed for html4 vs xhtml? that'd be a thing, especially with modern power saving technologies where power consumption depends on the speed necessary.). It's not much for a single page view, but if, say, google changed their site so each client will have to use a tiny bit less energy, it has a massive impact.

I am a notebook user. I feel on my skin, when a software uses to much energy.

Maybe 8 years ago as I had MS office new installed, I noticed a warm feeling, and found out that the background indexing task was running.

Flash is a terrrible software, to much CPU usage for simple tasks.

My notebooks from 2003 are loud running the fan, when there is flash used.

Static pages are for the server fast to deliver,
dynamic pages use much more electric power.