Waiting to exhale

Two words have acquired pariah status in a culture of always-on, always connected, anywhere, anytime, accessibility: Stop and switch off. We live in a world of go-go-go messages that see us constantly on the move and working, while running errands, doing chores, and living our lives.

Technology has enabled us to do more, faster, and with greater ease than ever before. Unfortunately, this demands that we do more, faster, with greater ease than before.

Practically, every device, service and product is about speed and convenience - the cessation of activity has become something incomprehensible to the modern, mobile working, multitasking humachine. While the tools we created to manage our lives better were initially designed to help free up time for other things, they're now consuming us as much as we do them.

People have begun to mimic the technology that makes their "uber-efficient lives possible. Like our devices, we must always be connected, whether via smartphone or tablet PC, and always available, accessible, and fully functioning - on multiple levels. And as expected of our gadgets, we must run faster and recharge quicker, with zero downtime and faster delivery. We are always plugged in or on standby.

What's this got to do with the environment? Well, in a culture where our technology is never switched off, we never switch off, and because we never stop working, our equipment doesn't either. It's a frenetic cycle that results in the continuous sucking of energy, round-the-clock CO2 emissions and 24/7 demand on resources that are quickly diminishing.

Allianz tells us a single computer left on all day emits about 680kg of carbon dioxide a year. It may not sound like much, but it would take 100 to 500 trees to absorb the extra CO2 released into the atmosphere. Think about the number of PCs in your office, and in all the offices on your block, suburb, city... it's a verifiable army of machines munching their way through megawatts of power, sometimes while sitting perfectly idly displaying a snazzy screensaver. Not exactly efficiency personified.

This energy appetite has spread from the workplace to the home, with the line between the two increasingly blurred. And even when we leave the drudge at the desktop, downtime is often filled with even more electronics. High-res LED TVs, iPods, gaming, social networking - these are the new ways of unwinding - plug in and zone out.

The New York Times reports the number of consumer gadgets in American households has grown from three to 25 in the past 20 years. Also, these devices still draw small amounts of electricity while in standby mode or even when switched off, in what's aptly dubbed vampire power.

People have begun to mimic the technology that makes their "uber-efficient lives possible.

Lezette Engelbrecht, online features editor, ITWeb

As Tip the Planet writes: “All around the house we bleed power. The modern home is permanently on standby, full of equipment that sits 'half on', waiting to spring immediately to life when we ask it to.”

This love affair with all things digital is not doing the planet any favours. The International Energy Agency (IEA) reports consumer electronics are now responsible for 15% of the world's energy demands. To put things in perspective, transport accounts for around 25% of global energy consumption, and the buildings sector for 20% of total delivered energy consumption.

The IEA adds that by 2030, our iPods, Macbooks and BlackBerries will drain as much as energy as the US and Japan's current total residential electricity consumption combined. It puts a little less spring in one's 'ping'.

So what's a highly-connected, in-demand member of the digerati to do? Sure, our gadgets are becoming less energy-hungry and wasteful - companies introduce smaller, hyper-efficient devices practically daily, and there are software programs and smartphone apps that keep track of energy use and turn systems off automatically. Our mobiles now boast longer battery life, reduced recharging time and some even run off solar power.

But the fact is, more of us are using more gadgets, efficient or not, more of the time, with no signs of this slowing down in future. There are already more than a billion people using PCs, while around two billion TV sets are in use worldwide, and cellphone subscriptions hit the five billion mark this year. With these figures likely to balloon as developing countries get hooked up, it doesn't matter how low-power devices are, because their use is increasing at an alarming rate.

We can create machines that produce less heat and noise, introduce power-saving modes and energy monitors, but unless there's a mindset shift in the way consumers use energy, this is just patching over a far greater problem. And at its heart is something much harder to change than equipment settings - a willingness to reduce how much we use.

If we're to curb the growing hunger for energy and rising emissions that go with it, society will have to overcome its obsession with always being connected, and realise that sometimes it's best, both for the earth's and one's own sake, to power down, switch off, and plug out.