This is, while amazing, perfectly believable.
Those little boxes that usher cable signals and digital recording capacity into televisions have become the single largest electricity drain in many American homes, with some typical home entertainment configurations eating more power than a new refrigerator and even some central air-conditioning systems.
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One high-definition DVR and one high-definition cable box use an average of 446 kilowatt hours a year, about 10 percent more than a 21-cubic-foot energy-efficient refrigerator, a recent study found.
So… we are those fat people in Wall*E, hovering in lazy boys with the power always on. And this, near the end, perfectly incapsulates that way(s) we deflect any responsibility for our actions:
Mr. Wilson recalled that when he was on the California Energy Commission, he asked box makers why the hard drives were on all the time, using so much power. The answer: “Nobody asked us to use less.”
Consider yourselves asked. Please.