Other than unsold pulped books, most books get used and re-used dozens of times by their original owners and subsequent purchasers. Cloth diapers are probably the only thing that gets re-used more. Environmentally, books are great. E-books use far more fossil fuels in the production of the equipment as well as the coal used to generate the electricity to power the various readers out there. Now, on a per-book basis it might be minuscule and it might get better as more e-books are produced and better equipment is made.

And the counter-argument to the "e-books last forever" argument really is true. With various DRM included and most formats proprietary, most e-books will be unreadable in 15 years. Also, think how many times each person has lost their contact list in computer crashes, as well as photos and other electronic items. Except for books in the public domain or published under Creative Commons licenses, readers are at the whim of the publishers when all too common computer crashes occur.

I'm not completely against e-books (I once was, I've changed my mind), but there are some specious reasons out there for promoting e-books. Among e-book fans, the debate has almost turned in to the Apple vs. Windows vs. Linux wars (or for the more tech-aware vi vs. emacs wars).

Rat's Reading - http://reading.kingrat.biz/