Published: Monday, February 22, 2010 in The Whitworthian.

We interrupt this issue of The Whitworthian to bring you a special report. I have recently been informed of a glaring oversight in our efforts to go green.

Green, as all you alert and environmentally-conscious types are aware, is no longer merely a color, a sickly mixture of blue and yellow, or the pallid shade of Mr. Yuk’s face.

Nay–green has risen from obscurity like an army of furious forest elves to the forefront of our current political and moral attentions.

And rightly so. After all, our planet’s been around for a while now, and it’s about time somebody started making sure it wasn’t broken. Imagine if you let your car go for thousands of years without a tuneup. Would it still be so willing to sit neglected in the Fieldhouse parking lot? I think not. It just goes to show how lucky we are that old Mother Nature is still spinning after so long without somebody telling us not to use hairspray.

But we are pushing our luck. We are asking too much. We are begging for a Captain Planet beatdown.

It seems that in the midst of our tray-tossing, hybrid-driving, DOMA-drinking efforts, we have forgotten something, something that millions of people use and abuse every day. A vast landscape of overpopulation, waste and trash.

The Internet.

Think about it. We have regulations and laws about where we toss our 100 percent recycled napkins when we’ve finished wiping our greasy lips with them, but no such laws exists to protect the poor denizens of Facebook. No one stands up for the rights of those living in “World of Warcraft.” And the ozone is, in stark honesty, a small issue compared to the sheer weight of the trash one can find clicking through the blogosphere.

It’s a tragedy, fellow students. A bloody digital tragedy. And it’s time to step up and do the right thing. It’s time for cyberspace to go green.

The first step is simple: cyber resources must be used more responsibly. Do you keep a blog? Is it contributing to the good of humanity and saving the lives of helpless Norwegian orphans? Or is it just sucking down broadband like a MySpace Hummer?

And don’t get me started on Facebook. You narcissistic snakes in the grass who update your status every five minutes? In a just world, you would be burned alive on a pyre of CRT monitors. Same goes for you, Twitter addicts. Have you no shame? Have you no respect for the horrendous conditions computers are kept in on the server farms that host your 140 characters of self-gratification? They never even see the sun! You monster.

As you can see, I’m not holding myself above you here. I’m part of this problem. The difference between me and you is I feel bad about it. On purpose. Every weekend I chop down a helpless tree and burn it, just to make myself weep inside over the travesties I commit.

If Whitworth, and the United States in general, is really so concerned about protecting the environment, then this must be their next initiative. Stop the inhumane treatment of servers. Cleanse the radiated wasteland of MySpace. Pass several hundred irritating little laws that make life harder for those just trying to go about their business. If we can band together on this, we can change the world. Perhaps not for the better, but certainly for the greener.