Boy, if you enjoy killing trees, this is a fantastic excuse to no longer care about recycling. Perhaps we could have a contest for how quickly the average Giz-gadget-person will kill off their tree?

I know a bio prof who's an ecologist but has a total black thumb when it comes to growing plants. I think this would make her cry.

Cool concept! Side note: They used the wrong "Your" in their little diagram. Should be "you're" Just a pet peeve of mine.
I wonder how much something like this would cost. Once the poison has been given, can you revive the tree by being efficient again?

How big would this product be? It seems way too far-fetched to me. I was also bothered with the large amount of grammatical errors I found on his webpage. And I'm still unsure why a Mr. T is at the bottom of every page, smiling at me, and often blocking the text . . .

izzi, is that you?

Do we really need to be supplying Msoft with bad ideas? They seem to have enough generated internally at this point.

The one at Al Gore's house is so hosed.

My electricity company has this crazy scheme to encourage conservation. They have this weird system where they send me something called a "bill" every month. Using a device called a "meter" which has been installed in my home, they actually measure the amount of electricity I use. Then, and this is the nutty part, they make me pay "money" for the electricity I use. So if I use less electricity, I pay less money.

I know it's not quite as straightforward as a gizmo that automatically poisons a tree, but it seems to work.

I think this tree should come half dead for having wasting natuaral resources on such a dumb thing. Plus, it's more realistic...were all gonna die if we can't control our environmental $#!+ing where we live (aka Earth) lifestyle.

bah - I've been doing this for years. If it's green, I can kill it. Bring it into my house and it dies, cellulose or plastic, it'll whither away to nothing in no time at all, and it doesn't require a CPU and a bag of poison.

Damn Lorne beat me to it... I don't understand these ideas to help people conserve... is the bill at the end of the month not enough on its own? Does it really take a freaking tree dying to explain to you that you should shut the light off when you aren't in a room, also I'd be curious to know how it knows when/if I recycled... can I lie to it?

Junyo word. Does the tree know if I take a Private Jet to Canada for the day and consume more fuel than it would take to traverse the continent 4 times? If so Al Gore is really screwed.

reminds me of a family guy episode

brian was trying to buy stewie a replacement for rupert, and they're in this toy store.

Brian: Stewie, come on, just buy something. Here, how bout this gorilla? Loook it says that if you buy one they will save a gorilla in the rainforest....and if you dont they'll kill one...man they're really playing hardball...

jeez...somehow i'd think the treehuggers are gonna have a problem with it, b/c all these evil capitalist will surely kill theirs...

Today I was just thinking that I didn't have enough guilt.

Glad to see people are willing to sell me more.

Ditto... like I need to add guilt on top of all the other aspects of my life I sacrifice/short-change as part of my profession that keeps me on the computer all day and night.

There must be a better way - how about a Tomagachi version or maybe just a widget tree I can see on my monitor as I'm killing it? The guilt would still be there, but more easily ignored.

It's a good idea, but it needs to be taken a step further. If you're good to the environment, all you get is a tree that you haven't killed yet. What if the setup grew some kind of tree that actually rewarded you? You know - the tree would produce something that you find rewarding. If you love grapes, you get a grapevine; if you love tomatoes, you get a tomato plant. Too bad the best version would only be legal in Amsterdam...

So sad.

Every 3 months you've to fill those enormous "drawers" with water, fertilizer and .... poison.

Like growing a real tree was so easy that is enough to let a cpu handle water and fertilizer .. Btw, can you imagine a pot that big in your backyard ? A tree is not exactly a gadget.