[SteveEisenberg]

Before eReaders, my wife and I would drive to large public libraries. Now we have less need for paper books, and so have not been to any but the walking distance public library in the last year. I have also stopped driving to book stores.

On the other hand, I am posting this on a tablet, which must have a far bigger carbon impact than the kids edition kindle I read books on. And if it wasn’t for ebooks, all the carbon used in this thread would be saved. Heck, the entire carbon impact of Mobileread would be saved.

Or it wouldn’t, because whatever we would be doing instead would also have carbon impact.

When I started with eInk, I repeatedly cracked the screen and had to buy a new one. This has not happened in many years even though I am still a klutz. Quality must have improved. So the carbon impact of ebooks goes down over time. The same may be true for paper books, but that is such a mature technology that the energy efficiency improvement going forward will be less. Maybe.