Erssa wrote:
Like I said earlier I keep it on, mostly to stay in contact in irc.
IRC is an evil addiction, a bit like watching TV
Erssa wrote:
It's my money to spend and my choise.
Yes, but it's everybodies environment.
Erssa wrote:
It draws the same amount of power as a light bolb,
Then you should get economical light bulbs
Erssa wrote:
that you leave on in your kids room, when he/she is afraid of the dark.
At least that light is serving a real tangible purpose (being able to sleep through the night without being disturbed)
Erssa wrote:
I don't feel that people should be responsible about the power consumation, when it is the industry that can make the biggest savings here.
Granted. But that doesn't mean that you can't do any savings. In fact if everybody optimised their power usage by turning things off (not standby) when they don't use them, if people use only economical light bulbs, if people don't use electric heating and water chillers, it could save a serious amount of power, even on the scale of a small country. You must also remember that / The Industry / is run by human beings, and if all of those human beings save resources at home, why shouldn't they do it at work?
With ecology you cannot just say that there is somebody that uses more energy than you and that wastes more than you. There will always be somebody worse just like there will be somebody better than you. There is also the "chicken or egg" situation where everybody is waiting for everybody else to do something (also on an international scale, for example the USA's excuse not to sign the Kyoto protocol).
I know how it feels that you can do nothing these days (somebody I know has a theory that in the 70's people thought they could change everything for the better, and nowadays people think that they can't change anything). I sometimes also feel helpless, like when I was out on the street outside of the US embassy when they declared war on Iraq... But I like to believe in the "snowball effect", at least where ecology is concerned. I can tell from my personal experience that I influence other people around me, for example I started cycling into town, even though I live outside of the city, and I have noticed that some of my friends and neighbours are getting interested in cycling, while they had never thought of it before. This can also be applied to what you do in your home (friends notice it when you invite them over), including *turning your computer off*
PS: I know how you have the habit of having long and furious debates with people in the off topic section, I don't feel like getting into one since I do have some work to do this week
In any case, we're probably both just as wrong.