WhatTheyThink’s Going Green has joined forces with Two Sides to help address the “perceptions” that paper destroys forests, that electronic media are “greener” than print and paper, and that recycling is the solution to all environmental ills. Elsewhere in this issue, we comment on the New York Times series “The Cloud Factories,” which reveal the environmental costs of the data centers that comprise the Internet and “The Cloud.” There is also a series of op-eds that attempt to put all of these things in perspective. One comment, from Richard Maxwell and Toby Miller, authors of Greening the Media, struck me, “With over 10 billion devices needing electricity, 15 percent of global residential energy is now spent on powering domestic digital technology. When added to the energy it takes to make and distribute these goods, consumption from digital living translates into carbon emissions that rival aviation.” Why should you care? However much some of us may wish a return to some kind of Arcadian existence, that is not going to happen. We are not going to switch from e-mail back to mailed letters (which, by the way, went out of fashion long before the Internet, largely thanks to the telephone), and even businesses are not going to revert back to paper. I don’t think this is a green issue; it’s a convenience and a cost issue. That said, the Times series makes abundantly clear that our reliance on electronic media do come with an environmental cost—often a very big one. Many of us in the Going Greenosphere and the Two Sidesosphere have known this for ages, and we have been trying to make this point to the general public that pixels are not pure. We point this out not to get people to chuck their gizmos, get off Facebook, and start using the post again (although that would be nice), but to put pressure on these providers, and vendors, and suppliers to clean up their acts. For more Two Sides facts see http://www.twosides.us/mythsandfacts.