Greenpeace has again called Nintendo's commitment to saving the planet into question.
Greenpeace has again called the business practices of Nintendo into question, claiming that the company is inadequate on many levels and that the Japanese game-maker is totally unwilling to talk about the issue.
Greenpeace spokesperson Iza Kruszewska spoke out to
Edge on the topic and said that Nintendo showed a complete refusal to take the topic seriously and would not have any contact with charities like Greenpeace.
"
We're in continuous dialogue with all the companies we speak to, apart from Nintendo," said Kruszewska. "
The company has an incredibly poor standard of communication regarding this issue."
This isn't
the first time that Greenpeace has questioned the environmental policies of Nintendo either - the topic seems to get raised on an annual basis at least.
The good news though is that other console-makers are much better at this type of thing apparently, with Sony in particular being praised for it's chemical management and take-back initiatives. Microsoft too was praised for attempting to make their products as clean as possible - though Greenpeace was clear that the company
should have taken action far earlier than it has.
"
But really, [Microsoft] have it so easy because they only make two core hardware products - the 360 and the Zune - they should really be way ahead," he added.
Do you worry about how green your gaming habits are, or do you think global warming is a load of old hokey? Let us know what you think in
the forums.
Jumping to conclusions 4tw
Probably when the annual report and rankings are published by Greenpeace
All of them are making up their own stats to fit requests of whoever they send them to anyway. Except for Nintendo :D
But of course, nothing's ever good enough until we're living in Tee-pees without any 'need' for chemicals. What's that? 40-year lifespan? Oh lordy.
That said, for all its low power consumption in use, the Wii is in my view a bit environmentally unfriendly - if you want to use the Wii News channel, you have to have Connect24 or whatever it's called enabled, which keeps the wireless channel open so it can receive updates. All very well, but mine gets quite warm in standby with Connect24 enabled, so it must be using quite a bit of power. Why can't it just connect say every 30 minutes for updates, then shut down fully again?
I remember that a certain petchem plant in my country(plant owned by foreign oil and gas company not to be named), that planted grass on top of an area where some chemical spill occurred, just to hide em from the eyes of ISO auditors.
Simply, those standards are nothing more than decorative badges you put on every employee's business cards.
That said, if this is anything like last year, Nintendo is actually on par with everyone else but doesn't talk to Greenpeace at all, so they presume they're the worst.... presumptions like this don't earn any respect for either party, kinda stupid of both of them imo.
Still not as bad as either of the other consoles. I wouldn't have connect24 enbled anyway. Whats the point? I can downlaod updates when I'm actually using the console.
My dad actually did some environmental consultanting for the PS3 before it was released.
1. Dont arse about throwing a few pence at it over 10 years. The energy market is worth $3 trillion per year, $1 trillion of that being energy generation (thats 13.6TWs of power, or 2.2KWs per person) and we get 80% of this from burning fossil fuels. We spend less than 1% of this on R&D.......
2. Coal isnt bad. This is what the people at Greenpeace dont understand. Nobody cares how much CO2 a plant produces. All you need is carbon capture. Go find a big hole in the ground with a hole in the top like, oh, I dont know, an Oil Field maybe?
Tax the coal plants in such a way as they are only viable if they capture more CO2 than they emit. Grats, you just built a carbon neutral power source.
3. Nuclear isn't bad, this time the general public is just as retarded as the politicians, thanks journalists! (wtb journalists with a PhD in something not completely worthless.)
So, we have our clean coal but we cant go on burning that forever so we need to be developing our other clean sources too. Especially as global energy demands will have increased by 60% by 2030 (assuming 8.1Bn population). Hrm, what carbon neutral energy source do we have lying around thats carbon neutral, well understood, and is scalable enough to fill this energy gap. Yay Nuclear.
In the UK it would be nice if we could get 40% of our power from CANDU plants, and as use of nuclear (and uranium) ramps up, it would be nice if we could get some more R&D cash for Fast Breeders. They are though already a proven technology.
The sticking problem with nuclear is the media sensationalism, much like great whites they are perceived to be dangerous by morons who have never, nor will ever study their behaviour. The 1970s coal fired plants that we have in the UK kill 30 people per year per plant (and by that I mean shorten their lives by 10 or more years).
Modern nuclear reactors don't suffer from runaway reactions as they are designed to be thermally inefficient (unlike chernobyl...) and they kill a lot fewer people per anum so the real issues are contamination via fuel / effluent and safe storage of said same.
You know what, make a choice. Diversify and massively increase the use of carbon neutral power generation on a global scale. Now. Or shut up and enjoy global warming. Unfortunately because of 1. the only technologies that are viable to do this with are coal and nuclear. (Well done for not diversifying R&D cashflow you crazy politician cats!)
Ill write that once more. Get 40% of your energy from Nuclear for the next 50 years or give up.
4. On a global scale renewables are completely and utterly insignificant, they are more conscience easers for developed countries. But, round the fringes you can have a lot of things going on, like metal hydrides for H2 storage and making solar power suck a bit less, novel generation programs, reverse the disappearing of rain forrests etc.
5. If you arent completely brain dead you will be wondering what we should do in 50 years if our piles of uranium / plutonium and coal are looking a little small, and stockpiles of all the unwanted by-products are looking a little large. Well, thats a genuinely tricky one.
Astrophysicists will tell you that CERN is the most important experiment of this century. I would say that it will be ITER. If you were worrying where that ~25TWs of energy could come from:
Deuterium + Tritium => Helium + Neutron + 17.6 MeV
Or, 10 000 000 times more energy than you get from burning a bit of coal. Or if you prefer a 1GW fusion power plant would use 1KG of D+T per day, compared to 10 000 tonnes of coal in a 1GW coal station.
And for people who say 'Oh noes, not fusion! thats like, even worse than nuclear!!!' if I said that fusion reactors run at well over 100 000 000 Kelvin, use infinitesimally small moles of reagent per unit time, and told you to learn some GCSE Chemistry and go google the Ideal Gas Law you could work out just how dangerous they are on the back of an envelope.
(The energy stored in the ring at any particular point in time is necessarily very low, and because they use small molar fractions of D+T the pressure is never that far above atmosphere in order to make PV=nRT balance, its that simple. The potential for energy generation is driven by the ridiculous temperature gradient.
Worried about finding enough tritium?
Neutron (from reaction above) + Lithium => tritium + helium
1 Lithium laptop battery would provide enough energy for 1 person in the UK for 30 years)
ARRRRRAAAAHHHHGGGGGHHRRRGGGHHHHHhhhhHH!!!...... AAAAHHHHHHHHHGGGGGRRRRRR!! (5-episode-long charge up for their Special Greenpeace Beam Cannon!)
http://img179.imageshack.us/img179/8716/piccoloattackow8.jpg
PPPPPPSSSSHHHHZZZZZZHHHHHH!!!!! WOOOSH! BOOOOOOhHHhhoooommmMMM! And everybody goes back to their normal lives.
So what? we have a problem with overpopulation anyway. Sounds evil I know, but unfortunately it's the truth, all the people who had jobs that got otusourced to china or replaced by machines are not going to feed themself.
As for Greenpeace, Nintendo is no more or less evil than any other company out there and yes, that includes Greenpeace.
plain and simple, all any of these environmental companies are about is taking the money from the rich and giving it to the poor. they are just another propaganda outlet for those people who hate companies making money and people who want to spend it.
like has been said above, these terrorists won't be happy till everyone is wearing grass skirts (which i do not condone under personal choice) singing kumbaya and dying at 40 for the sake of the planet.
if you want to do that on your own then go ahead just stop trying to manipulate everyone in to your wacky beliefs. it is getting old and annoying. when you come back with conclusive and agreeing evidence then we will talk.