When I lumbered out of bed this morning and hobbled to the bathroom to shower, I did not expect to spend ten minutes waiting to bathe. But I did. I spent at least ten minutes waiting idly for the poorly engineered, "environmentally friendly" combination of plumbing and water heating apparatuses to deliver water warm enough not to give me frostbite. This, like the cell phone problem I wrote about on a previous occasion, epitomizes the lack of thought people give to supposedly environmentally friendly ideas. It also underscores just how stupid our supposedly intelligent buildings are.

Even with a specially-designed low-flow shower head, I wasted at least ten or twenty gallons of water waiting for hot water. While I doubt the state of Maine has a shortage of fresh water, wasting that quantity of water seems contradictory to the aim of making a shower more environmentally friendly. It also raises the possibility that the hot water heating system operates inefficiently, and thus wastes energy, if it takes just under ten minutes to feed hot water into the shower.

The solution, as I see it, lies with intelligence. If the water heating system in my dormitory had a bigger, better, faster brain, it could undoubtedly save tremendous amounts of energy without sacrificing my time or my comfort.

I have often wondered, for example, why showers, sinks and baths have such imprecise temperature controls. One must fiddle with several knobs for a minute or so — wasting water and energy in the process — to find that "just right" temperature. On the other hand, a computer controlled water heating system could take a person's preferred water temperature, measured to degree Fahrenheit precision, and summon that person's desired water temperature and flow at the push of a button in much the same way some high-end cars store seat position and climate control preferences in drivers' key fobs.

What's more, if the software controlling the building's water heating system employed a Bayesian classifier, it could eventually predict hot water usage patterns to a reasonably high degree of accuracy and precision. Such a system would also reduce the amount of energy expended heating water, improve people's comfort by always having heated water ready and reduce the amount of water wasted before a person actually takes a shower.

Many environmental advocates object to the amount of lamb imported from New Zealand because the idea of transporting food all those thousands of miles offends their carbon conscious morals. These people, however, ignore the host of factors that make up a products carbon footprint, which, in the case of lamb, actually make imported New Zealand lamb more environmentally friendly than domestically produced lamb. Likewise, people living on the East Coast of the United States would actually act in a more environmentally conscious manner if they bought wine imported from Europe, rather than shipped across the country from California.

People need to think before they think green. These reactionary solutions to environmental impact issues, in many cases, create just as many problems — for the environment and for people's overall welfare — as they create. Not to mention they make me wait an intolerably long time to take a shower.