Electricity guzzling computers, Priuses, and social responsibility

Posted Sep 27, 2007 23:23 UTC (Thu) by giraffedata (guest, #1954)
In reply to: Looking for Algae--the Next Voyage (Linux Journal) by cpm
Parent article: Looking for Algae--the Next Voyage (Linux Journal)

It's crazy to consider consumption of any one resource when buying something. There are thousands of costs to the world we all care about, transferred ad infinitum through a great economic network. We should consider all of them when buying something. Fortunately, in a society with a free market economy, there is one number that sums up all those costs: the price.

Sometimes the costs aren't perfectly monetized. For example, I don't think taxes today sufficiently monetize the cost to the atmosphere of driving a car. But over time, they'll get there. (Or I'm just wrong -- maybe the air is worth more to me than to other people).

A co-worker recently made a proposal to replace a lot of CRTs with new LCDs based on the electricity savings. His numbers showed the world is actually better off with us keeping those CRTs (the reason he made the proposal is that he misunderstood the time value of money and thought the figures showed the opposite).

When the world gets serious about global warming, electricity will cost more, and some of these decisions will go the other way.