first of all, i think this is really a strange discusstion..

if Jim need to rewrite his program for such ONE SMALL CONCERN, he may sleep 2 or 3 hours a day.

if your CPU get die for such lovely screensaver, just
blame to the CPU manufacturer ( they offer the
warranty for their products ).

furthermore, it is not a responsibility of software,
the hardware should take care for the power consumption...like AMD-PowerNow, Crusoe-Longrun...
but it won't be appeared in desktop computers.