It is excellent to see a mention of green gaming issues on
The Escapist.
Green gaming has been an issue for a while for some of the ideologically green people who also happen to love gaming, like myself. We ask ourselves: how do we make this hobby, which does, let's be honest, a lot of environmental damage (such as plastic packaging, vast waste and recycling issues, dangerous chemicals, and electrical use leading to bigger emissions), greener?
At the very least, I think that naming and shaming the people who cut the most corners and thus do the most damage is a great start to making gaming a more ethical hobby. This gives us consumers buying power to choose the future, which we should all be thankful for. Therefore, it is a good deed to republish this.
While Greenpeace, like any organisation of people, no doubt has its flaws, I think that here, they are making a real contribution to society by looking deeply into the impact made by these technologies and communicating that information to wider communities. Every industry has benefited from their input and become more ethical as a result.
Hopefully, companies cutting these corners as Nintendo appears to be will realise that becoming more ethical doesn't even have to mean a loss in profit - after all, if someone with green political beliefs notices information that says a company has done a bunch of things to reduce or negate their environmental impact, then there is a much higher chance that they will buy a product from that company. There is a LOT of profit to be made here, and that profit potential will only increase in magnitude during the 21st century, as environmentally conscious thinking becomes more a part of common sense than anything else.
Monkeytacoz said:
you hear that?..... i think its the sound of no one caring greenpeace
Your statement that "no one" cares misses the fact that
I do, so it's time to stop pretending the problem doesn't exist, other people are sensible enough to notice it. Not to mention most of the political world, which is getting its act together on the environment at a much faster rate than ever before.
RanD00M said:
Greenpeace can shut it.
I might take them seriously if the din´t go to such drastic measures to try and "save the earth".
No. They can't, shouldn't and won't "shut it". They will keep speaking because they have the right to do so. This type activism forces people who would otherwise be complete bastards to review their actions thanks to public outcry. This makes an essential contribution to society.
With respect, it would seem that you're new to or have never touched on ecological science, particularly regarding how easy it is to imbalance a food web. If you had serious knowledge in that area, you'd actually understand why groups like Greenpeace use a slogan that seems so hyperbolic as "saving the Earth".
They reason (rightly, as very bright people like David Attenborough would tell you) that the rarity and value of the Earth is in the diversity of life that exists here. When you lower that diversity, you lower the value of the planet, and thus you ruin the value of being a steward, caretaker or leading species on that planet, like humans are today. That means that when Greenpeace campaigns with a slogan like "saving the Earth", they mean "saving the value of the Earth". After all, devaluing a thing is a lot like destroying it, therefore preserving that value would be a lot like saving it.
So you see, it's not hyperbole at all, but a short hand phrase for something that makes a lot of sense. Don't be too quick to judge a group on the basis of its slogans, there is always more to what they believe in than that. This doesn't mean that they believe that they are superheroes, or "holier than thou", as another person in the thread crudely put it. Merely, they are pointing out that destruction is occurring and doing whatever is necessary to stand in the way.