Photo credit: Brave New Films

The well-known Oscar and Emmy-winning director Michael Moore says goodbye to GM today as the failed auto company files for bankruptcy. Moore says the “big three” auto companies in the USA are responsible for their own demise and that they have created “some of the greatest weapons of mass destruction responsible for global warming”.

“We are now in a different kind of war — a war that we have conducted against the ecosystem and has been conducted by our very own corporate leaders. This current war has two fronts. One is headquartered in Detroit. The products built in the factories of GM, Ford and Chrysler are some of the greatest weapons of mass destruction responsible for global warming and the melting of our polar icecaps. The things we call “cars” may have been fun to drive, but they are like a million daggers into the heart of Mother Nature. To continue to build them would only lead to the ruin of our species and much of the planet.”

But Moore says he feel “joy” about the fact that the American people now owns 60% of GM and that he is confident “we can do a better job”. He is also calling for a swift transformation of GM into a modern and environmentally-friendly company that produces cars for the future, and that the old GM factories start to produce windmills and solar panels. In short Moore is suggesting the following:

1. Convert the auto factories to factories that build mass transit vehicles and alternative energy devices.
2. Don’t lay off more workers. Instead use them to help build the new modes of the 21st century transportation.
3. Invest in high-speed railway across the nation.
4. Put light rail mass transit lines in all our large and medium-sized cities, and build those trains in the GM factories.
5. Make GM produce clean and energy efficient buses for the rural areas of USA.
6. Have some factories build hybrid or all-electric cars (and batteries), it will only take a month to re-tool the factories.
7. Transform some of the empty GM factories to facilities that build windmills, solar panels and other means of alternate forms of energy.
8. Provide tax incentives for those who travel by hybrid car or bus or train.
9. Help people switch to a more energy efficient car or use the public transportation system more by imposing a two-dollar tax on every gallon of gasoline.

Moore has loads of good ideas but somehow I doubt we will start seeing common sense in the US auto industry some day soon.

Also read:
- Let GM and the other failed auto giants go under
- “There is no need to spend a penny of public money on greening the motor industry”
- Uneven Development and Northern Imperialism in the making of Today’s Ecological Crisis
- Al Gore: The whole auto industry needs to be transformed
- Obama on 60 Minutes: “We go from shock to trance and that has to be broken”

According to Tangent the Evergreen 17 only consumes 24 watts, which is 72% less than the Energy Star 4.0 rating requires.

“Not only do users experience computing with a touch screen LCD in a space-saving form factor, they also get industry leading power efficiency at 24 watts and 72% less energy usage than Energy Star 4.0 limits,” said Douglas Monsour, Tangent’s President. “This translates into cost-savings while, at the same time, helping the environment.”

The Evergreen 17 comes with the Via Eden 1.0 GHz (fan-less) processor or the ViaC7 1.50 GHz (low noise fan), hard drive capacity from 60GB to 250GB and up to 2GB RAM memory. Each Evergreen 17 is equipped with a high brightness TFT panel and resistive touch. It weighs15.8 lbs. and is only 2.25 inches in depth. The operating system is either Windows XP Professional (or Windows XP Embedded for server and web-based computing) or a Linux operating system.

The Evergreen 17 starts at $1,195 and comes with a one-year parts and labor warranty. The computer is available now over at www.tangent.com.

The Advent Eco PC is made from 75% recycled plastics, comes with electronic manuals, uses 25 watts when idling and is said to save you £35 (about $65) a year on energy. The computers specs are surely enough for the average computer user: 1.5GHz Core 2 Duo T5250 CPU, 2GB RAM, 160GB hard drive, 802.11b/g, and Vista Home Premium.

But, the Advent Eco PC is almost one year late, it should have been released last Christmas. And this is a disadvantage for the computer. The design and specs are not as “mind-blowing” as they are on Dell’s new eco-friendly computer. To be fair, the computer looks like an ugly wifi router, and it’s a bit more expensive than similar green computers.

But if you want to have an eco-friendly computer that will save you money on your energy bill the Advent Eco PC is a good option for you to consider. The Advent Eco PC starts at £599.99 (about $1100).

But of course this low power drain has some downsides. DecTop comes with 128MB memory, a 10GB harddrive and a 366 MHz processor. Not much to brag about. But if you are only browsing, checking your emails or RSS feeds and doing some small amount of writing this computer is enough for you.

DecTop doesn’t come with a preinstalled operating system but it is Windows CE and/or Linux ready. The best option for this computer would probably be a Linux version.

So what is the price for this little piece of computer you may ask? Well, DataEvolution sells it for $99.

Lenovo recently released the ThinkCentre A61e, a brand new green computer. The ThinkCentre A61e uses few hazardous materials, consumes little power and is easy to recycle. Because of that it has received the desirable EPEAT Gold status.

Peter Schrady with the really long title of vice president and general manager, Emerging Products Business Unit says that “the importance of maximizing energy efficiency and being environmentally conscious is touching all aspects of our daily lives, from the light bulbs we use to light our homes to the hybrid cars we drive to the green technology we rely on to run our businesses.”

Un-customized it uses an AMD Sempron LE 1150 processor, 512MB ATI Radeon X1200, 512MB Memory, 80GB hard drive and costs $399. Not too shabby. Sure the computer is ugly (or shall we say retro?) but it’s still one of the more high performing green computers out there.

According to Lenovo using the energy-efficient AMD Athlon X2 dual core and AMD Sempron single core processors can help save up to 50 percent in energy costs annually.

Another good thing is that Lenovo ranks high in the Green Electronics Guide from Greenpeace. They are currently on the 4th place being beaten only by Dell (on third place).

Press Release: Lenovo Raises Energy-Efficiency Bar with Its Smallest, Quietest Desktop PC

But it doesn’t really matter if you use a laptop or a desktop computer if you don’t activate the computers power saving settings. And don’t think for a second that your computers screen saver saves energy. Unless the screen or backlight on a laptop or desktop screen actually turns off, a screen saver uses as much power as word processing.

So the best way to save energy is to activate your computers power saving features. Activate your computers sleep mode so that your computer goes to “sleep” while you are (afk) away from keyboard. But don’t worry! Activating the sleep mode doesn’t mean that the computer shuts itself off while you’re not around. All the work and things you were doing before will still be there when you return.

You can also choose to switch off your monitor or spin down the hard drives after a certain amount of time away from your computer. Your power settings also allow you to completely shutdown your computer if you haven’t used it for a while.

But doing all this can be tricky if you aren’t an experienced computer user. So the easiest way is to use a program called LocalCooling. It’s a neat program where it’s only downsides are that it only works on Windows computers.

LocalCooling let’s you easily decide what kind of power saving mode you want to use on your computer and it shows you how much energy your computer uses. The best part is that it shows how many trees, gallons of oil or electricity you have saved when having these power saving settings on. It’s really neat!

If you want you are welcome to join Green-Blogs very own LocalCooling group. This is how you do:

1. Download Local Cooling for free from http://www.localcooling.com

2. Install and set everything up as you like it.

3. Create an free user account over at http://www.localcooling.com

4. Login to your account in the program you’ve just downloaded. If you don’t you will not be able to track how much power you have saved.

5. Login to your account over at http://www.localcooling.com

6. Once logged in go to “My Account” and customize your account. Over at “Edit Your Account Details” look for a form called “Join a Group”. In this form you need to type in: “green-blog.org”

Now you have joined the Green Blog group!

I have posted about the new tower server Primergy TX120 from Fujitsu Siemens Computers that is said to be the world’s most energy efficient server. Not everyone can afford to buy a server, so here is something for us more ordinary bloggers.

Western Digital, one of the most well known hard drive companies, has teamed up with Kanguru in marketing a green hard drive for consumers and businesses. These GreenPower Hard Drives are all internal drives which are available in capacities from 320GB and up to 1TB (1000 GB).

Western Digital claims that these new GreenPower Hard Drives is saving up to 40% in power consumption. Western Digital says they accomplish this through several technologies such as balancing spin speed, transfer rate and cache size; automatically unloading the heads during idle to reduce aerodynamic drag and calculating optimum seek speeds.

These new GreenPower Hard Drives goal is to be “Energy Star 4.0” compliant. That means a minimizing their carbon footprint while realizing savings in electricity costs.

According to Western Digital data-centres that use “10,000 drives can save $100,000 in annual energy costs, and reduce CO2 emission by 600 metric tons”.

Also, don’t forget to check out Kangurus eco-friendly hard drives. These eco-friendly hard drives have three power modes that allow you to save up to 75% on the energy usage. The drives are fully RoHS compliant (no hazardous substances).

http://www.wdc.com/en/company/greenpower.asp
http://www.kanguru.com/35ecohd.html