Nature is the world around us, and it is often ignored. All that is seen anymore is the buildings and institutions that man has created everywhere. At the end of the day though, when all those man-made things are gone, all that will be left is nature, no matter what condition we leave it in. If we don’t take care of the world around us, and we die, which we all ultimately will, then our only legacy, as far as most are concerned, is the state of our environment around us.

The problem is, in most cases, that a lot of people love the color green, but not in the right spot. They will sacrifice too much just to make a few bucks. While yes, a lot of this in the past could simply be attributed to a chronic case of the “It won’t happen to me’s” or just plain ignorance, the fact is that so much information is out there these days on the subject, that it has now become an obligation and responsibility for everyone to stop taking our earth for granted.

The very idea of nature is so robust and consistent in our lives that a sense of safety has come over us all in regards to it. Thus, a procrastination the likes of which we have never known has overtaken the public perception of a clear crisis that really does threaten not only ourselves, but most importantly, the coming generations.

The nature that lies all around us, and below our feet as we walk has a great enemy. This enemy is another sort of nature, though: Human nature. For example, if an electronics manufacturer can shave some money off the bottom line by using materials that aren’t as environmentally friendly, do you think he would? What if his job were on the line, or he was on the verge of getting a raise, and he wanted to impress upper management? The chances of him using this less-friendly material would then go up even higher. I’d be hard-pressed to say that I wouldn’t do the same. When staring in the face of a few dead presidents, it’s hard to think of the grand scheme of things. The largest problem happens to lie in these small seemingly insignificant sacrifices, because any time you see any large violation, it’s spurns public outrage on a large scale. A few of these small sacrifices here and there don’t hurt anyone, or at least not enough for it to make a real difference, but thousands of them per day eventually sum up to what we are seeing today, especially when stacked upon the often steeper transgressions of the past.

A really great example of the small problem lies in the ‘Standby’ mode of many popular electronics devices, including plasma TVs, Game consoles, and computers. For those who are unaware, a Standby mode is a sort of ‘Not-quite-off’ mode that saves time when starting up a device, but also takes power every second that it is plugged in. I’ve seen studies that linked this to a very high percentage of the power consumption in the country, and for what? Most consumers don’t even know their devices are doing it, but manufacturers keep including things like these that can be easily omitted to help the environment. The quickly evident issue with this feature’s removal is that salespeople can no longer include it as a selling point on the back of the box, which could possibly hurt their bottom line (e.g., Game1 has standby mode for quick start-up, whereas Game2 does not, and thus, takes longer to start). Governments are starting to take notice of at least the Standby mode example, namely the British Government, who has put a bill into parliament for the removal of standby mode from electronics.

Other things, such as Green Computing (which is simply a study of using resources properly in regard to computers and electronics) are starting to take hold as well, with more and more standards coming out on the actual manufacture of computers, especially in the European Union. We’ve also seen the emergence of the “Energy Star” label on many consumer electronics, which has done well in making it’s appeal to the consumer’s checkbook, promising lighter electricity bills and other benefits. My point is, while the strip mines, logging and crazy large-scale environment killers of the past definitely need to be continually monitored and regulated, it’s often the little power hungry device in your pocket that is doing the deed.

We’ve started looking in the direction of the issue, as a people, but it takes more than government to make such a drastic change in how we look at small problems that plague our Earth. Consumers make the choices.