If we understand "green computing" in small-bore terms as such as turning off our computers when we're not using them, we'll miss opportunities for making a real difference.
According to IEEE, eighty-three percent of a computer's lifetime carbon footprint has been set in stone, as it were, before you ever open the box. The manufacture and transport of a desktop computer with a 17-inch monitor was estimated by IEEE (in 2004) to consume 290 kilograms of fossil fuels. What you get to cut down on in is the other 17%.
Instead of futzing over power settings, we would do better to view "computing" more realistically -- as a range of complex cultural, psychological and political activities which have effects on carbon emissions. The question should not be merely, "What power settings should I choose?" That's small potatoes.
The question should be something more interesting: "How can we use computers in transforming our ways of thinking and acting?"
Take for example Mitchell Joachim, an architect and a teacher at Columbia University and a partner at Terreform 1, a non-profit ecological design firm. He and his partners at Terreform 1 are working on designs to greatly increase the efficiency of cities. Their work would be unthinkable without computers to model and calculate.
You don't have to be an architect and partner in an ecological design firm to practice Joachim's brand of proactive green computing. Most of us don't have the skills or necessary partnerships to design a car, a city or an economy. But we are essential players in the game, and we can use computers to learn skills for making our lives more carbon-efficient.
Computing is not "computing". It's part of a much larger field of action. Page 2 explains...