Doc, I think I've got techno droop

It was seven o'clock on Thursday night when I walked past the Apple store in Sydney C.B.D, where details about Apple's new iPhone which had gone on sale three hours earlier – for the bargain price of $599 were being beamed on a flat screen. If you believed the news, Americans were queueing up across the country for this shiny black gizmo.

On eBay, one of the first iPhones had just been resold for $12,500. By the looks of things, however, the hysteria had yet to reach Sydney. Inside the store, I could see a sales assistant sitting alone. "Are you gonna get one, where is your dedication?" "Nah," I concluded, not yet at least.

Now, for as long as I can remember, I have been an "early adopter". I bought a laptop when they were still made out of wood and cost more than a space shuttle. I practically remortgaged my kidney for a high-definition DVD recorder, the model of which was discontinued a fortnight later and replaced by a generic model, which came free with satellite TV subscriptions.

So why not become one of the half a million or so people who became early iPhone adopters on its debut weekend? The problem, I think, is this: I have lost my technology libido. My interaction with the world's most beautiful gadgets has become chilly and dutiful. You could say that I've got an embarrassing case of iPhone dysfunction.

Personally, I blame it on environmentalists. If it wasn't for environmentalists, I wouldn't know that when you plug an iPhone into a power socket in Sydney, it charges up with electricity that has in all likelihood been made by burning coal. And coal, when it comes to gadgets, is the ultimate passion killer. When Apple's founder, Steve Jobs, unveiled the iPhone back in January, do you think he asked Bono to stand in silhouette against a white background, holding an iPhone in one hand and a lump of coal in the other? No, he did not.

And yet, with coal being the world's largest single source of fuel for electricity, the iPhone could barely exist without it. That cool widescreen that changes aspect when you move it from portrait to landscape? It runs on coal. The built-in iPod? Coal-powered. And what about that clever "visual voicemail" function? Made possible by setting fire to black lumps of half-a-billion-year-old plants, thus releasing planet-killing quantities of carbon dioxide and other nasty gases into the air.

Which is why, as we begin yet another cycle of droughts, storms, floods, hurricanes, twisters, heat deaths, famines, species extinctions and so on, there is a limit to my excitement at the prospect of owning a coal-powered device that can display a tiny YouTube video of a skateboarding bulldog. Nothing against Apple, of course. I wish Mr Jobs all the best. But if he needs another product to revolutionise – electricity might not be such a bad idea.