If I turned you off back there

[j4]

"On televisions, for example, we would like to see labels saying 'if you watch it, it will cost x pence per hour, if you leave it on standby, it will cost y pence'. Then you can present the environmental cost in monetary terms"

But that's not actually presenting the environmental cost at all, really, is it? Unless you add "WHICH MEANS that when you sink into drooling oblivion in front of the flickering forms of minor celebrities bonking in a bath of baked beans you are not only wasting the product of several thousand years of human evolution but also SYSTEMATICALLY RAPING THE PLANET and leaving it an UNINHABITABLE WASTE LAND, you selfish cretin." Really. Is it. I mean.

That's before we get to the question of how in the name of -- well, frankly, anything you care to name -- an electric toothbrush can be regarded as "essential".

I think I'm just in a bad mood today.

Comments

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

Hmmm.... Barclays have poster up telling the happy commuters of Canary Wharf that you can 'Offset' the carbon emissions of a flight to Shanghai with twenty-two quids' worth of tree planting.

I'm not convinced that you can monetise environmental damage but it seems reasonable to try costing a preventative effort.

So the warning would read:

If you watch this, it costs x pence per hour, and y pence on standby; if you had to pay to prevent the environmental damage it would be another x_c and y_c. But as nothing is being done to prevent the environmental damage it'll end up costing some poor bastard his home, his crops, and his access to safe drinking water; that poor bastard might not be you but the economic disasters of Global Warming will probably cost you your job and a fair bit of your pension.

Actually, I think the best thing is to keep watching: a population of clinically obese couch-potatoes is probably a valuable carbon sink (assuming they are buried rather than cremated).