>I love the Internet of course, but any idea of how much that has caused greenhouse gases to go up? It seems that everyone has a computer now, largely due to the Internet. Guess how much electricity those computers (and especially, big CRT and LCD monitors) are using? Also, take a look at the greenhouse gases that airplanes add to the atmosphere. We all love our far off vacations, don't we? Chances are we fly there... and to our computer conferences :).

OTOH, what do you think would have happened if we didn't have the internet? I'd probably have to drive around to find things that I can google out (specially thanks for the maps! saved me hundreds of miles), or visit a dozen stores to buy something I can buy online.

Not to mention the amount of information that never gets printed, because it's onscreen. I hope I've saved a few trees by making all my reports (in DOS days) viewable. Previously, it was quite common to have a few hundred pages printed so the big boss could look at the totals. Now he was able to look the totals on his own screen, without waiting for operators to print them.

Four of us use computers here, and two out of four are programmers. We're so used to electronic storage (some files on my disk are more than 15 years old), the largest cause for printing is the youngest daughter - and that's only because some of her teachers demand printouts and won't accept homework on a thumb drive. At least nobody's asking for floppies anymore :).