Should I Laugh or Should I Cry?

A couple of complementary items, courtesy of the New York Times: In his Dot Earth blog, enviro journalist Daniel Revkin notes the Onion’s latest bitingly comic take on climate change: a faux commentary titled “We Need To Do More When It Comes To Having Brief, Panicked Thoughts About Climate Change.”  Revkin asks: “Have you had your moment of climate dread today?”

While you’re deciding whether to laugh or cry, The Gray Lady’s Green blog provides a nifty roundup of power-monitoring devices, priced from $20 to $36, that enable you to audit the energy use of your various home appliances. (The best advice of all may be from the Readers’ Comments section: See if your local library lends such devices. After all, you probably don’t need to be constantly checking your power use, and a fair amount of energy goes into making them in the first place.)

-- Reed McManus

Image: Belkin's "Conserve Insight" energy-use monitor