Google and This Garden We Call Earth

I find that it is a rare that my day job crosses over to touch my hobby. I mean, after all, the day job involves wires and motherboards and, according to some, tubes. My hobby involves flowers and dirt and worms. Computers and gardening only touch, they never talk to one another. And if they do, it’s expensive and messy and normally involves talking to technical support in countries far, far away from here.

But apparently Google has decided that matters of computer and matters of environment should be paying a bit more attention to each other. They announced that they would like to see the entire computer industry revamp the way PCs use electricity. Less electricity means less drain on the environment. And you have to admit that this is a good thing.

*sigh* I have a friend who just bought a Prius to help ease his environmental footprint. I was impressed by that. My city requires us to recycle. I compost everything that I should. I try to be a good person.

Now I find out that my very livelihood may be as damaging as the entire SUV industry. It is kind of depressing.

But the big G has a point. We have to find fixes where they present themselves. Computers are powerhogs and power takes resources. Google should know, they use several hundred thousand computers to power the great Google empire.

Makes me feel a little better about the three environmental resource hogs I have in my house.

I suppose this just brings one more thing that we need to be conscious of. Something else we can use to make sure that the footstep we leave are a little smaller than before.