You think you are saving the earth by reading news online? You might be surprised. Mark Glaser in his Media Shift blog talks about the environmental impact of the media, and notes:

.. the Internet isn’t exactly solar-powered and eats up plenty of energy… the five leading search engines have about 2 million servers for a total of 600 megawatts of power consumption. When you add in hard drive power and air conditioning, the total energy usage for search engines hits 5 gigawatts — enough to power Las Vegas on a hot day, according to the article.
Journalist/blogger Nicholas Carr noted that 4,000 servers power the virtual world Second Life, and that there are an average of 10,000 to 15,000 avatars living there. He wanted to know if Second Life citizens ended up using up more energy than real-life people and found that the average avatar uses up 1,752 kilowatt hours per year — about the same amount used by the average Brazilian. “Avatars aren’t quite as intangible as they seem,” he concluded. “They don’t have bodies, but they do leave footprints.”