Responsible Data Centers are Migrating to Mainframes

The New York Times not known for their coverage of the mainframe has released a  story prompted by McKinsey research on the inefficiencies of data center. They claim that data centers are about to surpass the airline industry as the largest greenhouse gas polluter.

The article mentions that the mainframe of old was more efficient than today's hardware populating data centers. A McKinsey researcher suggests bringing them back into the data center. So are we that close to a resurgence of the mainframe?

Certainly the beating Microsoft appears to be taking from Apple, combined with their unsuccesful attempt to upgrade everyone from XP may play into the resurgence of the mainframe. The minimalization of Windows and continue popularity of Linux as a server platform coupled with the balance of client machines provides the necessary environment to support distributed workload deployment on z10 hadrware.

What are you seeing? .... Has the mainframe become the talk of progressive data centers? Is there a chance? Or is IT management in denial clinging to Distributed Systems hoping the energy problems are temporary ... and that the chilled fluid rack mounted shower heads will avert the problem?