The time has come to start switching off

While digging for something to watch on my computer last week, I found a copy of the 1954 Japanese film Gojira.

When I downloaded this from iTunes last year, it seemed very retro. Last week, the movie took on a decidedly darker tone. Gojira, which is better known to Western audiences as Godzilla, is a classic monster movie, but it is also seen as a Sum-of-All-Fears — albeit irrational fears — tale about the dangers of nuclear weapons. The movie was made only nine years after the country was hit with two nuclear bombs and still offers some insight into Japan's fear of radiation.

Watching the events in Japan last week, you can't help but think of Godzilla. In the movie, nuclear radiation releases a Jurassic-age dinosaur, which rises up out of the ocean, resulting in death and destruction. In the real world, the ocean causes the death and destruction, followed by the release of radiation.

The real difference, other than the radioactive lizard, is the cause. The Nagasaki and Hiroshima bombs were the end of a long war between two Pacific powers. Today's crisis is a combination of the planet reminding us who's boss, our world's ever increasing need for energy, and, if some reports are to be believed, corporate greed and corner cutting.

That scenario sounds suspiciously like last summer's Deepwater Horizon oil spill, which brings to mind another 1954 horror movie classic, The Creature From the Black Lagoon.

Refusing to learn

There just isn't much that can be done about corporate greed. When my grandparents where children, they lived through one of the worst economic meltdowns ever. Despite efforts to ensure that type of thing never happened again, it took only 80 years for everyone to forget the lessons of the past. Sometimes, we just refuse to learn.

There just isn't anything we can do about earthquakes and tsunamis, either. It doesn't take a 1950s super-scientist to see the problem. Our demand for power is pushing energy companies into more and more dangerous areas of production. It's incredibly expensive and in an attempt to control costs, corners are being cut. Unlike many other industries, where cost cutting means jobs losses, in energy production it means oil spills and nuclear crises.

The only solution left is to use less energy. This is where it hurts the most. If I look around my desk, I see two computers, two mobile phones and an iPod. At every desk around the office, I see the same thing, although you can also see iPads, video cameras and some 42-inch televisions. It's the same at home. On one wall alone I have two power strips, each a web of tangled cords snaking off to speakers, DVD players and other assorted gadgets.

We use too much power

But that's something I can fix on a personal level. It's something every one of us, especially those hard-core geeks out there, needs to learn. The numbers tell the story. Some industry observers estimate that 540,000 smart phones are sold every day. Sixteen million iPads have hit the streets in the last year. By 2014, the number of personal computers in the world is expected to reach two billion. In our quest for technology, we use too much power.

Now, I'm not suggesting that we unplug everyone and try to leave no carbon footprint, but there are a few things we can do. Turn off that 72-inch plasma television when you're not watching it. Don't buy a phone that requires you to charge it twice a day. No double or triple geeking, a.k.a using two or three computers at the same time. Just use the energy that you need. It wouldn't kill you.

The oil slicks and radiation, on the other hand, just might.