Eco Geek: Why Gaming is Green

Hank Green of EcoGeek.org is sick of people saying that geeks adversely impact the environment, and he’s telling us why in a series called ‘Why Geeks are Greener’.  Geeks are often accused of being less than environmentally responsible because of ‘power-sucking computers, toxic game consoles, and general disinterest in the outdoors’. But, in the first installment of ‘Why Geeks are Greener’, Hank’s telling us why gaming – a popular geek activity – is greener than you think.

From Eco Geek:

1. Children don’t need boyscouts to care about global warming. I will fully admit to have been affected greatly in my experiences in the outdoors. But saying that caring about the environment is dependent on experiencing nature is like saying that caring about sex is dependent upon talking to girls. Just because you haven’t experienced it doesn’t mean you don’t want to do all you can to protect your chances at having a healthy future with it.

Protecting nature isn’t about loving nature anymore, it’s about liking the idea of life continuing on the planet.

2. Gaming isn’t that power intensive. Depending on what kind of system you have, your console might draw as much power as a CFL, or an incandescent lightbulb. Yes, the Wii is far more efficient than the XBox 360, but even the 360 only pulls a maximum of 150 watts. It’s just not that much power, especially because neither pull much power at all when they’re off. And the act of gaming itself, it turns out, is quite good for the environment.

That’s just a taste – get the rest at EcoGeek.org.

Well said, Mr. Green. Three cheers for geeks!

Link [Eco Geek]
Photo credit: Nerdfighters

Will Oprah’s Endorsement Help Kindle E-Reader?

Traditionally, anything Oprah touches turns to gold. Get your product into her ‘favorite things’, or even mentioned in passing on her show, and you’re in for a tsunami of sales.  So, the makers of electronic reading device Kindle are undoubtedly salivating with the sales prospects after she recommended their product last week and offered a special $50 discount with the promotional code “OPRAHWINFREY”.

From Eco Geek:

But can Oprah do for the Kindle what she’s done for her book club selections?  Even with the promotional discount, the gadget costs more than $300 and the e-reader has had a tough time catching on.  The environmental benefits are obvious, but it’s hard to justify the purchase when checking out books from the library is also an eco-friendly choice.  And that’s free.  Plus there’s the fact that most people are holding their dollars pretty close right now.  All this could equal a moderate increase in sales, but not an overwhelming response.

That does seem awfully expensive, but as Hank Green mentions in his overview of the Kindle, it’s a virtual pocket library. For a bibliophile like myself, the idea of having literally hundreds of books at your fingertips at any given moment is incredibly attractive. The EV-DO wireless broadband lets you download books anywhere, too – so you’re never without reading material. Ultimately, I’m too much of a romantic to give up buying actual books – especially since I collect old, used ones. But it seems like a cool idea nonetheless.

We’re definitely in an economic downturn where people are less likely to run out and spend money on frivolous things, but I think that with Oprah’s endorsement, the Amazon Kindle could still get a huge bump in holiday sales.

Link [Eco Geek] + [Amazon]

ABC Blocks a Renewable Energy Ad

The ‘We Can Solve It’ campaign is dedicated to promoting clean energy legislation and education, and they’ve been very effective at demonstrating to the world all of the options we have available to us right now.  We Can Solve It has run ads on many major television networks – even Fox News.  Yet, ABC recently refused to air one of their ads, even though they run ads from oil companies that mislead the public about the role fossil fuels play in the climate crisis.  Here’s the ad:

From Eco Geek:

So why on earth would ABC refuse to air one of their ads? That’s right, the above ad (which contains far more truth than either Obama or McCain’s ads have of late) has been rejected by ABC.

It is absolutely true that America’s oil and coal lobbies have consistently blocked legislation and mis-represented facts about global warming to the American people. The travesty was when the oil lobby aired the “carbon is life” advertisement, not when the We Can Solve It campaign tried to set the record straight.

This is straight up, ABC protecting it’s big-oil advertising revenue…I don’t think there’s any other way to look at it.

We Can Solve It needs your help – send a comment to ABC about why you think they should run the ad.  It takes just a minute at the We Can Solve It website.

Link [We Can Solve It] + [Eco Geek]

Eco Geek Says It’s Time to Stop Sending Letters

Yesterday, the price of stamps went up again by a penny. It wasn’t all that long ago that you could send a letter for 25 cents, and now it’s 42 – a pretty sharp increase in such a short amount of time. Of course, part of that is due to the fact that we now use electronic communication so much more often, and that is a good thing for the earth – it means far less waste ends up in landfills.

Eco Geek thinks it’s a fine time to stop sending letters, and they’ve provided a list of ways you can avoid using stamps: through scanning, online bill pay, e-cards, video letters, choosing postcards instead of letters when you do have the urge to do it the old fashioned way and finally, avoiding air mail at all costs. Makes total sense, right? Especially the air mail bit – what a waste of carbon emissions. People are very impatient these days.

So why is my eyelid suddenly twitching? Why do I feel a sense of dread, like something is terribly wrong? Oh, right – I was an English major. I’m a literary and history dork. I have a passion for all things romantic and old-fashioned, and that love of parchment paper and quills and envelopes sealed with wax is completely at odds with my desire to be more ‘green’. I am a collector of old, dusty, well-worn books and a lover of language. I am a scholar of the Italian Renaissance, and wrote my thesis on a long-dead European daughter of a pope. I hate acronyms and techie newspeak (or what nervous parents refer to as NetLingo) like ‘LOL’, ‘BRB’ and ‘AFAIAA’. When I use them, I do it with sarcasm, but despite that, a little part of me dies every time.

In this way, I represent the resistance to change that’s making it difficult to get a momentum going in this fight against global warming and everything that goes along with it. I treasure old things, and mourn the loss of the art of letter writing. I’m sad that kids are no longer taught cursive handwriting in school. I think it kind of sucks that typing has taken over as the dominant form of nonverbal communication. But, I don’t want to be one of those people that holds us back from moving into an age that could save us from ourselves.

I think it’s okay to write handwritten letters every now and then. We just need to make up for it in other ways. For example, I’m funneling my love affair with old things into a sort of recycling effort. I choose second-hand before new, any time I get the chance. I keep odds and ends like pretty soap wrappers and nicely printed cardboard product packaging to use for handmade cards. I don’t like the idea of a future where kids don’t even know how to write words out, and can only type them – so I want to make sure that those kinds of skills get passed down. I’m afraid of the truth in fiction like Fahrenheit 451, 1984 and even the action film Equilibrium.

Essentially, I will be one of those people who fights to preserve some of the personality and history behind written communication, but I’ll do it in such a way that prevents me from being part of the problem.

What say you? Will you give up hand-written communication for the environment?

Link [Eco Geek]
Image credit: Ballantine Books

If We Said Sayonara to the Penny, the Earth Would Thank Us

If you’ve got pennies in your pocket and a way to melt down metal, you might want to go ahead and do that: the metal made to make them is worth more than the pennies themselves. One hundred pennies could get you $1.40 worth of zinc. Seems like a big waste of money, doesn’t it?

Furthermore, zinc mining is, as Eco Geek put it, “an environmental disaster”. From Eco Geek:

The demand for zinc, mostly due to growth in China, has skyrocketed, and wasting the metal on a coin that is, in general, a nuisance, is foolish economic and environmental policy.

Unfortunately, there’s no quick fix. Switching to the nickel as our cheapest unit is confusing, especially in places with uneven sales tax. Transactions would, according on a bill proposed by Representative Jim Kolbe (R – AR), be rounded to the nearest five cents. But people aren’t a big fan of paying more for a certain amount of stuff…even if it’s just cents.

If we did make the switch, it would only affect cash transactions; credit card purchases and interest payments would still be made to the penny. Many other countries have dropped their lowest coin without much trouble, but Americans would undoubtedly raise a ruckus about occasionally paying a few cents more than they would otherwise. This, regardless of the fact that most of our pennies are sitting in fountains, jars and between our couch cushions, and when we drop them, we rarely bother to pick them up. That’s America!

Link [Eco Geek]

Photo credit: Flickr user totalAldo