The April Photo of the Month by Michael Nagle shows the above ground entry way of Apple’s Fifth Avenue Store in New York after Greenpeace activists released black balloons with the message “Clean Our Cloud.”

I like the way the reflection of the black balloons trapped inside the glass cube seem to trail away from the Apple logo like dark sooty smoke merging with clouds outside and framed by the streetscape. The balloons evoke the air pollution caused by burning coal to create electricity.

Greenpeace is calling on Apple to power its new iCloud service with renewable energy instead of building data centers to be served by utilities such as Duke Energy in North Carolina that burn coal.

I like and use Apple equipment.  From the first time my fingers touched the keyboard of a Macintosh SE II in 1986, I have been a Mac user. I never imagined I would want a small hard drive full of songs in my pocket, but once I had an iPod, I listened to a lot more music.

Apple has created innovative products and improved them, making them more environmentally friendly along the way. Apple customers like me want to see this kind of innovative spirit applied to the way Apple powers the cloud.

Rather than blowing up mountains to dig deeper into the climate hole we have been burrowing for the last 200 years of fossil fueled infrastructure, let’s power the innovative “cloud” with sustainable energy.