Green Tip #67: First Person Shooters

Ah yes, the infamous First Person Shooters. I'm not going to go in a very long explanation of what an FPS is. I'd say it's pretty clear from the title that these are video games in which the gameplay is from the point of view of the main character and your goal is to go around and teach the benefits of alternative energy to elementary school children. Haha, I'm of course kidding. Your goal is to go around shooting terrorists in the face. It's okay, you don't need to worry if you just killed an innocent person or not. If they really were innocent, you'd probably lose points or the game would end, so as long as that doesn't happen, your conscious can stay clean.

So anyway, the FPS what I've got my sights set on in the third part of my video game series. Green Tip #67 is of course to not play these games. Oh, no, I'm not objecting to the violent content of these games. If anything, all the random killing is just going to help keep overpopulation under control. I've got some serious issues with the other messages that these games are teaching our impressionable youth.

First off, I've never seen a game like this where you have to worry about how much gas the car you just stole is using. I mean, you can just drive Hummers (ah, my dear friend, it's been a while...) around all day long and never run out of gas. When our children turn 16 and are allowed to drive, they are going to be seriously upset that they need to fill up the tank of their Dad's Hummer every 7 minutes. I know game developers have an easy time animating the boxy features of a Hummer, but I think it would be worth it to spend a little longer getting the curves of a Prius right.

And what about all of the buildings that you destroy in these games? I've seen pictures and videos from after 9/11. That debris doesn't just fade away like it does in FPS's. What if video games made you have to take all that rubble to the nearest landfill once you blew up a terrorist's stronghold? That would make you think twice about laying down all that C4.

And finally, have you ever thought about how many bullets you fire in a game like this? Thousands upon thousands. If you're singlehandedly taking down the North Korean army, you can only imagine how many shell casings you're going to be left with at the end of it all. My suggestion is to have a side mission where you gather them all up and sell them to a scrap metal recycling company. The bonus being that you get a little more cash to use to buy more body armor or something like that.

Well, there you have it. The FPS, while seriously flawed, could easily be altered to be much more environmentally friendly. Make sure you come by again on Tuesday, when I'll be wrapping up the stretch of video game themed Green Tips!

Green Tip #30: Stop Eating Our Fuel!

So, corn-based ethanol is something that has been debated quite heatedly for the past few years. Let me just give you a run down on a brief history of corn-based ethanol. Keep in mind that this is only from what I know, so it is probably on par with Wikipedia in terms of accuracy.

So, about 8 or so years ago, some people did some horrible things in New York City which made a bunch of countries invade Afghanistan. Through some nebulous logic and overblown fears made worse by someone waving around a vial of anthrax, a few of those countries then proceeded to invade Iraq (again). Anyway, this whole fear thing and invading thing made people nervous about using Middle East oil.

That's not a big deal when you think about it. We (the people who live in the so called "West") have always been afraid of the Middle East, from the whole Rome and Cleopatra thing through the WWII invasion of the area and on through the whole Iran hostage thing and beyond. So our relationship with the area has been spotty at best.

No, what really made the situation a problem was what China and India were doing at the time. (Don't worry, this is getting back to corn, I promise!) China and India (who I've mentioned before in a not so favorable light) had to go and grow their economies. I mean, who do they think they are, advancing economically and technologically? So they start sucking down all that Middle East oil that the US has work for a few hundred years to secure. That means that the whole world was going to run out of oil, so we all started looking at new sources of fuel.

That leads me to corn-based ethanol. Yay! All the environmentalists started cheering! It comes from the earth, so it can't be bad!! (Don't tell them oil comes from the earth) Well, everyone started pumping a lot of money and resources into making corn refineries and pretty soon corn prices were going up all over the world. This made livestock people mad and environmentalists mad because it uses more energy to make ethanol than you get out of it and basically the whole thing fell apart like a house of cards.

And it didn't make sense to use corn for fuel when so many people around the world were starving. But what if you looked at it a different way? What if the issue wasn't "Why are we turning food into fuel?" but instead "Why are we eating our fuel?" I mean, what if we came up with a fantastic oil-based pie that is sooooooo delicious? Nobody would let you eat that pie without giving you a guilt trip about destroying the environment. So Green Tip #30 is start guilting all of your friends and family whenever they eat corn based food. "Stop eating our fuel!!!"