Happy Earth Day 2008! I’m celebrating by planting some trees with friends from work around AOL’s campus. They also gave each employee a CFL bulb so that we can help reduce our energy footprint and reduce CO2 emissions. It’s great to see so many people pledging to minimize their environmental impact on Earth Day, but are you looking for an easy way to help take care of our Mother Earth every day?

The Google Desktop team has created an Energy Saver gadget that you can install on your Windows XP or Vista computer that will help conserve energy. Basically it’s a quick way to help manage your standby and shutdown timeouts to minimize the amount of time that your computer spends idling. The Energy Saver gadget also has a display to tell you how much all users of the Energy Saver gadget have used in terms of electricity and greenhouse gases.

This is a very cool and incredibly easy way to help minimize your energy consumption. It’s also fun and encouraging to see how much we can save if we all work together. Screenshot after the jump.

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