Doing What You Can, Whenever You Can

The other day I split open my friend's laptop for a Saturday morning ritual that I've come to dread. I had to check my account balance. 

But I noticed something different about her Google home page. It was completely black. I figured it was just one of those clever daily themes gone wrong. Was today some obscure Norwegian holiday celebrating extended night time hours? She explained that it was in fact an energy efficient search engine that yields identical results to Google. 

Aha! Just as I suspected! Once again another calculated step that Google has made toward world domination. (See my Google post on 2/06/08)

As a firm believer in small-scale, innovative approaches to addressing the global energy and climate crises, I strongly recommend using a new search engine called BLACKLE.

Simply put, by using a predominantly black template this search engine (powered by google custom) significantly reduces the amount of  white light needed to display the regular google home page. This in turn reduces the amount of energy used by the computer. 

Admittedly the energy saved by an individual user (even if used over a lifetime) are small. However the idea is that with the popularity of the search engine the differences will eventually add up. 

The fact is that by using BLACKLE we are reminded that everyday we are faced with opportunities to make wiser decisions in consideration of our environment.