| protean |
Posted
on 12-Nov-02 01:02 PM
Koko,
Thanks for the relevant posting.
It seems interesting that the majority of the respondents to this article were from the US.
What can be said is that just as with cars, the US market has a higher demand for computer products. In addition, just as cars, they are more frequently replaced in the US.
Gordon Moore, one of the founders of Intel, said that evey 18 months, the processing power of the chip will double. We're seeing that the computer speed and capacity has exponentially grown in the past 20 years, and the prices relative to the processing abilities, have come down.
I always wondered that if we're making inroads and gaining so much ground in the computing aspect, we must definitely be losing somewhere. The overall enegry has to be constant as is evident in the laws of physics.
And the more practical way of looking at it is economically , is to analyze it in terms of opportunity costs.
If so much computing power can be generated and embedded in a chip , the amount of electricity consumed, the fabrication plants processing capability increase-- and the environmental damage that results-- surely have to have occurred at the other end ,to make this development successful.
It is great that such an analysis has been conducted.
The government around the world have to raise standards, to curb this pollution. Lots of these big companies take their plants to less developed countries, where the labor is cheap, and the environmnetal standards are not that stringent. This way ,the can make the product,at lower price, and reap more benefits.
One way is for standards to go around the world. Another is citizen groups voicing their reaons to increase standards so that the companies follow a more disciliplined approach. To raise penalty for envrionmental polution level that goes beyond a certain level, is another consideration.
But if the countries such as the US goes on not adhering to the Kyoto protocol, and the adminstration favors big corporations( such as now), it will be difficult for such standards
to be implemented by the government. It then befalls on the public to do so. Pay slightly higher price for a better environment that can be enjoyed by the future generations.
Even if the price of the PC or technology slightly goes up as result of these earlier corrections by the large companies-- for having to adhere to the envrionmental code ,which causes them to add to the price to their product--, the prices will stabilize after a certain period of time ,owing to competition.
I think such research that portrays the other side to development is always critical.
Protean
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