Actually, now t hat I think about it, I truly don't understand the drive to "conserve power" or how,say, your computer using less power will cut down emissions.
It will undoubtedly cut a few dollars off your electric bill every year, but the thing a lot of the penchants don't understand is that no electric power plant "stores" the energy it generates; it generates the power, it goes into the grid, and it either get's used, or not. Wether your computer is taking 650 watts or 1000 Watts doesn't make a difference; for a coal power plant, the same amount of coal will still be burned, and the same amount of emissions will still go into the atmosphere. In fact it's utterly ridiculous to think that using less power directly translates into reduced emissions because First, a lot of power plants don't even HAVE emissions, and second, the aforementioned fact that the power is either used or wasted.
The power that isn't used because of people "going green" isn't "saved", it's wasted. And isn't the entire point of the "green" initiative to reduce waste?
The only incentive to use less power is to reduce your electric bill. Anything else is just superfluous "feel-good" nonsense that gives people a false sense of fulfilling some ecological responsibility.
What makes this most curious for me is that there are in fact people who think that "conserved" power is literally conserved- that it somehow "prevents more emissions" from going into the atmosphere. This is no different then the nonsense about "buying books kills trees". Cutting down the trees kills them. The fact that the tree is then used to create pulp and then paper and then that paper is used to create books doesn't make the purchase of the end-product in any way an acceptance of responsibility for any ecological fallout from the first few; and I might point out also that most of the people that have a problem with paper books seem to have no similar issues with their parent's heirloom dresser or china cabinet. They don't say "sorry father, I cannot accept this; I just cannot stand the guilt of the fine cherry tree that was cut down to make this table". It's nonsense. The tree(s) is/are already dead. Not buying a book doesn't magically save a tree. It just makes you look stupid for not understanding basic logic. Besides, the industries themselves are not evil clearcutting chainsaw weilding maniacal lumberjacks who fell a mountain worth of trees in a single day on their own; trees are this thing known as a "renewable resource". The magic of a "renewable resource" is that they grow back. They aren't gone forever.
