What is the environmental benefit of blocking email spam?

The benefits would be the elimination of the consequences.

According to a McAfee report about spam, the consequences of the worldwide spam emails sent in 2008, estimated at a total of 62 trillion emails, has the same footprint as 3 million passenger vehicles on the road for a year.

An important idea to get from the 12 page McAfee report is to clear up a misconception that electronic communications are a truly green method of communication, and this is because the amount of energy used to generate, store, and disseminate the electronic communications negate the positive effects of not using print media to communicate.

The report states, "Spam email accounts for just over one-third of the total emissions related to business and personal email globally because about 80 percent of all email messages are spam messages."

The energy required annually to create, send, receive, store, and view spam adds up to more than 33 billion KWh, approximately equivalent to 4 gigawatts of baseload power generation or the power provided by four large new coal power plants.

View the pdf report here:

http://img.en25.com/Web/McAfee/CarbonFootprint_12pg_web_REV_NA.pdf