There is a better response to the accelerated consumption that goes on at Christmas time than to steal the Whos’ presents and dump them from the top of Mount Crumpit.
You can do that too, of course. But the best thing of all is to do put your money where your mouth is.
“I hate to say it. I know it’s a cliché but I am genuinely disgusted by the feeding frenzy that occurs at his time of year,” says Dave McLaughlin. He is referring to the season he still tries to love for the warmth and generosity it is supposed to engender.
He says there wasn’t one, but “probably three” straws that broke the camel’s back when he waded into the pre-Chirstmas frenzy to finish up his shopping: A customer on the cusp of physical violence at a lingerie store checkout, an altercation over a parking space, and the 30-customer lineup at Tim Horton’s. It was the lust for coffee that finally did him in.
“I thought hard over Christmas. I also watched an Inconvenient Truth and Who Killed the Electric Car? A big chunk of Ellesmere Island fell into the ocean. A farmers Market opened up 2 blocks from my house. The planets aligned for me and I decided I was going to take a year off.”
What that means for McLaughlin is the Year of Zero. What he’s taking time off from is consuming.
Dave will get all of his food from the local farmers’ market or the bulk barn and will by hygiene and health products as needed. Beyond that he will not spend money on anything. His wife will use the car for work and Dave says he will probably still accompany her on occasion, but he will walk or bike to and from work and will only use the car when it is essential to his employment.
“Diminishing my ecological footprint is only a part of this. I was the Green Party candidate in the last federal election and I build wind turbines on the weekend. I also used to be a TV journalist in Alberta. I am well-versed in the reality of the impending peak in global oil and gas supply. People will be powering down and downsizing their consumption in the future whether they want to or not. We are leaving a wants-driven economy to return to needs-driven one. I’m just trying it on”
Dave says our heedless march to the resource wall has been fueled by advertising revenue-driven media and corporate influence in politics to maximize consumption-driven economic growth. “Our governments have become one-trick ponies and have ceased to think rationally about anything other than economic growth. Unfortunately we can’t have infinite economic growth in a world of finite resources. This is a harsh reality that should have been considered all along and now journalists and politicians and CEOs are going to act surprised when (like global warming) it comes home to roost.”
Dave hopes people will take up the challenge to join him in their own personal Year of Zero (YoZ, as it has already been labeled)
“It may be too little too late. But I have a two year-old daughter, and I want her to know that some of us were doing something.”
You can read Dave’s Blog at http://yearofzero.blogspot.com/
Wednesday, January 3, 2007
The Secret Life of Computers
Below is an old post from Treehugger, which we came across in our ongoing efforts to green our computers. (The original is at http://www.treehhttp://www2.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifugger.com/files/2005/06/greening_your_c_1.php.)
Notice that the average desktop consumption is rated at 120W.
Also, here is a story from New Scientist that looks at the environmental cost of computing. The irony here is that while an information economy looks clean compared to earlier modes of industry, the fact is that computers merely hide their environmental costs, either in the countries where they're manufactured, or in the power it takes to run them. A computer chip consumes more than 800 times its own weight in fossil fuels in the cycle from manufacture to obsolescence. Moreover, to build each 2-gram chip requires an astonishing 32 litres of water and 72 grams of toxic chemicals. Add to this the toxicity and the sheer volume of e-waste, and our computers don't look as clean as they do at first glance.
Greening Your Computer
by Dominic Muren, Chicago, USA on 06. 3.05
Science & Technology (electronics)
For those of you who are power computer users (And for readers of TH, who isn't ?) you may not realize exactly how much power your little electronic friend is sucking down. With the average desktop power consumption cruising along at 120 watts, and laptops squeaking by with a lesser 30 watts, the global computer power load is enormous. On top of that, the shorter and shorter lifespan of computers, because of wear, and programs' insatiable hunger for more processing power, are making tons and tons of obsolete computers into waste every year. So what's a Treehugger to do? Hidetoshi Ohtomo, a programmer at the Nature Heart Laboratory, has some ideas...
In his documentation on Nature Oriented Computing, he focuses on a few simple rules that can make computers last longer, and use less power while they're doing it:
Use "lighter" programs - Software that takes up less hard drive space, and uses less system memory will keep the amount of writing and re-writing to the hard disk to a minimum, which will keep this vital computer piece in better shape. Also, programs which use less processing power to do the same work (like a simple text editor, verses Microsoft word) will use less energy in the long term.
Reuse hardware - Often, when companies upgrade their systems, perfectly good hardware can end up in the dumpster. If you consider the energy and materials involved in making a hard drive, or motherboard, then saving them from being junked can make a serious contribution.
Create "lighter" webpages - Websites are a great place to cut back on energy usage. Think about how much more processing power a flash animation uses than a simple text page. Then think about the thousands of people who could visit that site in a day. Obviously, high-powered content has its place, but this is still an interesting place to save some E.
Overall, greener computing is basically common sense. If it's harder for the computer, in memory usage, processing time, or website loading time, then it's probably using more energy. Once you see that, then you can save energy with your computer just like saving water with a sink. :: Nature Oriented Computing
Notice that the average desktop consumption is rated at 120W.
Also, here is a story from New Scientist that looks at the environmental cost of computing. The irony here is that while an information economy looks clean compared to earlier modes of industry, the fact is that computers merely hide their environmental costs, either in the countries where they're manufactured, or in the power it takes to run them. A computer chip consumes more than 800 times its own weight in fossil fuels in the cycle from manufacture to obsolescence. Moreover, to build each 2-gram chip requires an astonishing 32 litres of water and 72 grams of toxic chemicals. Add to this the toxicity and the sheer volume of e-waste, and our computers don't look as clean as they do at first glance.
Greening Your Computer
by Dominic Muren, Chicago, USA on 06. 3.05
Science & Technology (electronics)
For those of you who are power computer users (And for readers of TH, who isn't ?) you may not realize exactly how much power your little electronic friend is sucking down. With the average desktop power consumption cruising along at 120 watts, and laptops squeaking by with a lesser 30 watts, the global computer power load is enormous. On top of that, the shorter and shorter lifespan of computers, because of wear, and programs' insatiable hunger for more processing power, are making tons and tons of obsolete computers into waste every year. So what's a Treehugger to do? Hidetoshi Ohtomo, a programmer at the Nature Heart Laboratory, has some ideas...
In his documentation on Nature Oriented Computing, he focuses on a few simple rules that can make computers last longer, and use less power while they're doing it:
Use "lighter" programs - Software that takes up less hard drive space, and uses less system memory will keep the amount of writing and re-writing to the hard disk to a minimum, which will keep this vital computer piece in better shape. Also, programs which use less processing power to do the same work (like a simple text editor, verses Microsoft word) will use less energy in the long term.
Reuse hardware - Often, when companies upgrade their systems, perfectly good hardware can end up in the dumpster. If you consider the energy and materials involved in making a hard drive, or motherboard, then saving them from being junked can make a serious contribution.
Create "lighter" webpages - Websites are a great place to cut back on energy usage. Think about how much more processing power a flash animation uses than a simple text page. Then think about the thousands of people who could visit that site in a day. Obviously, high-powered content has its place, but this is still an interesting place to save some E.
Overall, greener computing is basically common sense. If it's harder for the computer, in memory usage, processing time, or website loading time, then it's probably using more energy. Once you see that, then you can save energy with your computer just like saving water with a sink. :: Nature Oriented Computing
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