Using Less Power Good; Using None at All Better
The Simple Dollar, while making a point last week about how plugged-in gadgets can cost around $3 a month in unnecessary energy consumption, also suggested buying the Smartstrip LCG4 power strip with auto-shutoff for groups of devices. In turn, Gadget Lab asked if it's worth paying $40 for a strip that saves less than that in a year.
There is no clear answer; that there is no clear answer is one of my primary concerns about the best way the gadgets industry can help minimize power use. The last thing we need to address climate change are loads of new gadgets being produced, using up hydrocarbons for plastic and rare (and often poisonous) metals for the sole purpose of saving a few bucks in energy costs over a product's lifecycle. Better to just pay the extra power costs, even with their associated carbon cost. Better we focus on cleaner methods of power generation than replace loads of fully functional products.
(I'm also loathe, as a rule, to suggest items that have a "convenience sphere" of less area than a room. Is it really so hard, as you're getting up to go elsewhere, to reach down and flip a switch? I know it's not as easy as using a remote, but come on.)
It's this wariness (and cheapness) that worry when speakers here at the U.N. talk about the green economy being good for business. In some ways it will be, but just as Achim Steiner, Executive Director of the UN Environment Program, said in a press conference an hour ago when talking about fossil fuels, we will have to "capture the true cost" of these materials in their retail prices. That means we will have to accept more expensive products to do our part; can we trust the companies selling those products to be responsible with the extra money without oversight? Will these tarrifs be self-imposed by all countries unilaterally?
Where business will have great opportunities are in developing economies. The last thing the first world needs are more things, frankly. (And that I make my living indexing those things we don't need—a plastic pusherman—is something of which I am aware; that said, ain't nothing wrong with window shopping, except when it implants a festering seed of irrational desire.) By using our technological prowess to help poorer nations build sustainable solutions for energy generation and waste management, we can not only take a stiff slug of fortifying capitalism, but also use it to help those countries that are often most affected by global warming but have done the least to contribute to it.
It's hard not to hear about lakes in Africa drying up, in part because of rising temperatures, and look at all the stupid crap I own and wonder what part of my lifestyle has cost someone else part of theirs.
the latest
latest episodes
Something that might help me wrap my head around this would be to discover what the carbon footprint of common gadgetry might be.
I lived with family in Ireland for a summer and every time they left the house all major electronic devices (TV, soundsystem, computers) were unplugged. Although their reasoning was not to reduce their carbon footprint but a healthy fear of electrical fires in old homes, it goes to show how minor a task this is if they have been doing it since they can remember.
"Something that might help me wrap my head around this would be to discover what the carbon footprint of common gadgetry might be."
I can help answer this. It depends, of course, on the source of your power (varying by state / region / whether or not you pay a "green power premium" or comparable), but here are some rough numbers I ran over the summer for New York:
Approximate upstate CO2 emissions from power generated for NY statewide mix, per kWh: 0.89 pounds.
Therefore, let's say you have a 200W computer (incl monitor), the carbon footprint would be approximately 0.18 pounds per hour, or, if you never turn it off, 0.89 pounds CO2 / kWh * 24 h / day * 0.200 kW / hour * 365 days / year = just over 1500 pounds per year.
Hope this helps.
This point is lost on so many people.
i.e.
Why do you need to replace your 2001 gas Toyota with a hybrid toyota prius for 5-10 extra miles a gallon? Do you really think that you are going to make up for the environmental impact of producing another brand new car full of rare metals and copper that can barely be recycled? No the battery won't do that.
What will save the environment is if you get off your lazy butt and ride a bike those 5-10 extra miles a gallon. I live in a community where I could easily have consumed 20 gallons of gas a month in commuting alone. Instead I ride my 2 mile (ooo scarry 8 minute bike ride) to work everyday. In the past 6 months instead of burning down 120 gallons in commuting fuel I burned 30 gallons. That 30 gallons includes two 180 mile trips and a 300 mile trip. That's right I used 8 gallons of gas in commuting fuel in the past 6 months.
To finish that thought...stop using so much energy when it isn't necessary!
Buy a road bike from the 1980s $300!
Buy 70s stereo equipment for $50!
...new computers are deemed to be ok...maybe once every 5-7 years
Just recycle them!
Forget ipods, forget handheld anything. total trash. Pretty Pretty sexy Trash.
The thing I always try to remember when I'm yearning for messenger bags with solar chargers and other green gewgaws is that the most environmentally friendly product is the one you don't buy.
Unless you're replacing your Hummer with a bicycle.
Human societies have been exploiting, degrading, and at times accidentally destroying the environments they live in for millennia. "Collapse" by Jared Diamond goes into the details of how societies can and do bring about their own destruction, despite the best efforts and intentions of everyone involved.
We humans seem unable to learn from these examples.
Escaping from this trap before it closes may require some waste. Research and engineering are expensive. When their goals overlap or conflict, they can seem wasteful.
Rather than seeing all this new technology as pointlessly wasteful, though, I think that it offers us our best hope for providing some kind of solution to our self-inflicted environmental problems, probably from some quarter where we least expect it.
How will we know which gadgets are antithetical to human survival, and which have surprising, positive emergent properties until we try them?
Until we try a lot of them? In different combinations?
A century of experimentation with gasoline-powered vehicles has changed the world economy utterly. There are many millions who would probably start starving immediately if the gasoline stopped flowing for some reason.
Yet that same wasteful society, in part because of its high mobility, has been able to produce the most advanced tools, technology and medical care ever, far more so I think than would have ever been possible using only steam or muscle.
To Joel's point about always-on: we seem to be turning the modern home by degrees into a little data center. And telecommuting does seem superior to bicycles and SUVs.
If all the knowledge workers begin to stay home as a matter of common practice, I would expect the average period of employment to shrink from years, to months, and perhaps shorter than a few days. People who are unable to multitask will lose out, economically.
As with all new races, the rewards for the winners will be disproportionately large. As people gear up for this kind of hard-core competitive telecommuting, I would expect there to be a flood of new products, each pleading with me for my attention, promising to make my life an eensy bit more convenient.
I do see that flood of gadgets now. Many of them look completely useless to me. I'd like the luxury of letting the market decide which should be allowed to propagate, but I concede we may be running out of time for that.
-- Greg in SJC