This article illuminates an often unacknowledged dilemma: The tangible repercussions of our intangible
wireless activities.
As the New York Times piece notes, online companies “run their facilities
at maximum capacity around the clock” and resultantly waste “90 percent or more
of the electricity they pull off the grid.”
Additionally, these companies utilize diesel generators and “thousands
of lead-acid batteries” to power their computers and back-up systems.
It gets worse. Read the following
statistic with elevated feet and cellphone in hand:
“Worldwide, the digital warehouses use about 30 billion watts of
electricity, roughly equivalent to the output of 30 nuclear power plants.”
Stop. Just stop.
Our cumulative e-sludge is comparable to the suffocating waste of thirty
nuclear power plants?
Pick up your jaw now. It would be
thoughtless to rob it of another shocked free-fall as the article wraps up with
the following:
The alleged cause of these shameful statistics: You. Yep,
you. And me, I suppose.
The piece contends, “That’s what’s driving that massive growth—the end-user
expectation of anything, anytime, anywhere…
We’re causing the problem.”
Though no bribe could compel me to promote mankind as irreproachable, I
must express my disgust for this ineffective and pompous shift of blame. Yes, we Google, eBay, and YouTube too
much. However, let’s not forget that we have
developed these habits because companies greedily supply us handy and
uninterrupted internet access.
Is a company environmentally conscientious if it defies pollution laws to
provide better service and attract more customers? No.
Is a company moral if it blooms as the earth shrivels? No.
Then is it fair to blame the users?
No.
When we reduce this situation to its elemental makeup, we identify the
legitimate cause-effect relationship.
Said succinctly, companies should never have offered us such
unsustainable and poisoning internet capacities and speeds.
Think of a situation when a friend recommended a favorite dessert or
television show. You sampled their
suggestion and thereafter clung to it with ferocious passion. As you swallowed the sugars and observed the
on-air nonsense, you attempted to hush the truth that the calories and content you
so enjoyed were corrupting your wellbeing.
How is this different? Companies
supplied the internet, we gobbled it up, and the earth began to shriek. We just couldn’t hear it.
But the companies could. Their
meters announced these transgressions in illuminated red block letters.
Their services encouraged our Wasteful Wireless Ways and promoted a
communal web-dependent lifestyle that our home cannot withstand.
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