Google Goes Environmental

Remember when Google was just a simple search engine back when it debuted in 1998? Well, now that it's grown into a giant corporation, expanding into applications, mail services, video platforms (including the purchase of video giant YouTube), it's also beginning to throw around a bit of political weight, especially when it comes to environmental conservation.

Earlier this week, Google announced that it was voluntarily reducing or offsetting all of its carbon emissions by the end of 2007. To make the cuts, Google has invested (this interactive link is really cool!) in the largest corporate solar panel installation to date on its Californian campus, with 9,212 panels generating enough energy to fully power 1,000 residential homes. Google is also launching programs to make its computers and servers more energy efficient, in addition to purchasing carbon offsets abroad, which supposedly reduce overall global carbon emissions in an attempt to slow global warming.

In addition, Google has unveiled plans to increase the amount of plug-in hybrid vehicles across the country, both by creating parking infrastructure at its California headquarters where employees can plug into the electrical grid as well as by funding similar initiatives across the country. "This is just a start," Google Chairman and Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said in a release issued by The Climate Group, an independent, nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing business and government leadership on climate change which is assisting Google in its transition. "We are actively looking for more opportunities to help tackle climate change."

Today, Google announced it's newest approach: heading to Capitol Hill, where it will try to persuade politicians and energy companies, as well as the average American computer user to work together to reduce carbon emissions.

Climate change has become a forefront issue both in the current U.S. Congress, within individual states, in the current presidential campaigns, and among young voters especially. Do you think the government should take more of a role in tackling the issue of global warming, or are private companies like Google doing a good enough job by themselves? Let's hear what you think!