The Ampere Strikes Back
Thursday, July 12th, 2007 by Nigel
Great headline, eh? I wish I’d thought of it. It’s actually the title of a new report by the Energy Savings Trust on the proliferation of new home entertainment devices and the way they eat electricity, often when we’re not even using them. They calculate that by 2020, our love of DAB radios, flat-screen TVs, laptops and electronic games will mean that these things will be accounting for a horrendous 45% of our domestic energy consumption - equivalent to the total output of 14 power stations.
I love the new phrase “vampire power“. It summons up such great images, doesn’t it?
Which reminds me. Another recent report from Scotland blamed teenagers there for wasting almost a third of the energy they consumed by leaving their stereos and DVD players on standby. I’m all for blaming teenagers for everything. It’s usually an excellent policy. But in this case I think it’s the manufacturers whose poor design encourages this to happen who should be grounded/made to sit up straight/tuck in their shirts/stop mumbling/loitering etc.
Photo of eco-revellers at the Berlin Carnival of Culture by Roy Wichert-Gonsalves.
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August 31st, 2007 at 4:13 pm
I am 14 years old, and I am quite insulted by your take on how teenagers should be blamed for everything - I understand that some people who are of the age to be classed as “teenagers” are careless about our planet etc, but you should not genralise about it for all of us. I am the main environmentally concerned person in our household, and am constantly on to my mother to be more aware and careful when it comes to things like grocery shopping and replacing lightbulbs. Also, at school I am on to using less paper and resources and have recruited, of sorts, a lot of my classmates to the environmentally concerned ways.
Do not doubt the teenager, as we are not all of one ingnorant mind.
Lila B