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Sam's Club waste of power

To the editor,

The reconstruction of the Memorial Student Union brought to the surface a phenomenon that previously had been safely hidden away in the basement. They call it Sam's Club, and it consists of a pool hall and a collection of 40 video games. Each game draws 3 amps of power at 120 volts for a total usage of 360 watts of power, 24 hours a day. That's a grand total of 345,600 watts a day.

Most of the machines have violent themes related to martial arts, intergalactic wars, fast vehicles and general violence. The more people you kill, the more points you get. The pool tables are innocuous enough, except that the space could be better used for essential educational purposes.

Besides the violent themes and the non-educational nature of the video games, consider the effect on the environment. Ninety-eight percent of Tucson's electric power is produced by burning coal, our most destructive fossil fuel. It is no secret that we have reached a crisis where we must reduce our greenhouse gas emissions to prevent further climate change. We can only do that by burning less gasoline and by replacing coal-generated electricity with renewable resources such as solar and wind power.

While there is plenty of solar power available on our sun-drenched campus, it is expensive to get sufficient solar-electricity to power a large campus like ours. Conservation of energy is the key to using solar and wind power. If we were to remove all nonessential sources of power draw on campus, it would greatly increase the feasibility of using solar power. Then, together with passive solar design, solar-electricity could provide most of the power needs of large buildings like the Student Union.

I think of our planet as a big rowboat adrift at sea. Out boat has sprung a leak and we all must start bailing out water and throwing off excess baggage if we are to survive. I'm sorry, Sam's Club, but we're going to have to throw your video games overboard; we simply cannot afford to keep them.

Barbara Kausen

Senior, Interdisciplinary Studies