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Back in February 2010, Greenpeace called on Facebook to unfriend coal and embrace renewables to power their massive data centers, giving them a deadline of April 22 (Earth Day) of this year.

Since then, over 600,000 Greenpeace supporters have called on Facebook to take action and according to Greenpeace International Executive Director, Kumi Naidoo, Facebook is listening (atleast the founder’s sister, Randi Zuckerberg is).

Even if you overlooked coal’s impact on climate change, and the levels of mercury it emits (along with a laundry list of other harmful effects), the American Lung Association found that coal-powered electricity alone caused “over 13,000 premature deaths in 2010, as well as almost 10,000 hospitalizations and more than 20,000 heart attacks per year.” Considering that many of these people are current or would-be Facebook users, Randi would certainly do well to sway her brother before Facebook triples their current energy consumption (by 2020) to a level higher than that of France, Germany, Canada and Brazil combined.

To view Greenpeace’s recent TV ad, and to get info on how you can help convince Facebook to unfriend coal, visit the Greenpeace blog.

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