It's not sustainable.
The shadow sides of computers and "green" energy
I vote that before anyone calls the Internet, solar PVs, industrial wind turbines or any vehicle "green," "zero-emitting" or "carbon neutral", they learn about the extractions, energy use, greenhouse gas emissions, toxic waste and worker hazards from its design, to mining and smelting, chemical manufacturing, assembly, shipping of raw materials, infrastructure requirements for operating and what happens during its recycling and/or discard.6
As long as these things keep invisible to consumers, policymakers, designers and engineers, we can't make real solutions to our climate crisis, our biodiversity crisis, our dependence on an electronic interface for almost everything. We perpetuate gross imbalances between people who consume these goods and people who live and work near mines, smelters, refineries, assembly plants, power plants, data centers, industrial wind facilities and Amazon warehouses.
Here's another way to say all of this: We've become dependent on fossil-fuel-based electric grids, telecommunication infrastructure and international supply chains that keep invisible to most of us. We've noticed that these supply chains are crashing. They're not sustainable.
Here's another way to say this: modern life and the Earth's finite resources are not compatible. As a recent group of scientists explain, "... today's political economy has been designed to value short-term financial wealth over the real treasure of Earth's functioning ecosystems, to discount the future at the expense of the present, and to demand infinite exponential growth... which is simply impossible on a finite planet. Given all this, humanity should view its present overshoot-prone trajectory with tremendous suspicion, humility, and concern."7
Un-Sustainability is personal
My husband (a tree pruner) and I rent a four-room house with single-pane windows, galvanized pipes and a back yard we've turned into a vegetable garden. We live within walking distance of two grocery stores that sell organic produce. Compared to the vast majority of people on Earth, we live in extraordinary privilege: we have clean water, electricity, food, a refrigerator, a washing machine, a hot-water heater, a telephone, Internet access and two cars. We do not have money to buy this house--or any house. I'm in my 60s; my husband is in his 70s. We do not have any assets of value. We do not have anywhere to go to talk about this.
Our lives are not sustainable.
I actually welcome acknowledging this reality--because now we can move forward realistically.
Realistic counterbalances
To increase awareness of every product's impacts from cradle-to-grave, decrease reliance on international supply chains, reduce overall extractions and emissions and worker hazards, could the UN (and other agencies) create an indicator that measures the true material footprint of consumption--and its impacts?8 (If not, why not?)
At least until reading, writing and math are mastered on paper, could we teach children without an electronic interface?
Could everyone compost kitchen scraps with worms or a biodigester?9 A biodigester turns vegan kitchen scraps into liquid fertilizer and methane gas that 20 million Chinese families (and some American schools) use for cooking fuel and/or to power generators.
Could we walk to the grocery store?
Get raised beds with insulating covers and nutrient-dense, lead-free compost?
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