Questioning Our Digital Footprint
after seven decades of exponential growth
by Miguel Coma and Katie Singer
originally published at meer.com 25 February '23
In 1801, a French merchant invented punch cards to create a kind of data storage and make a loom weave fabric automatically. Call those punch cards an early computer program. In 1853, a Swedish father and son designed a calculator that could print. In 1941, two men designed a computer that could remember and store information and perform an operation every fifteen seconds.1
Indeed, early computers expanded our abilities. Some were as large as a room. Today, computers fit in our hands. We use them for most aspects of daily life. Children typically use computers before they have speech.
While engineers imagine increasingly fabulous devices and applications, few question the relationship between digital tech and environmental degradation. Few scientists study the ecological impacts of manufacturing, operating and discarding users' digital devices, network infrastructure and data centers. Impacts include use of fossil-fuels, greenhouse gas emissions, extractions (more than 50 metals), chemical manufacturing, disrupting wildlife habitats on land and in the sea, taking water from communities and farmers, and radioactive and toxic waste.
Who monitors digitalization's footprint?
To the best of our knowledge, no single standard methodology exists to analyze the (scarce) data we have about these impacts. One study might look at the footprint of manufacturing, operating and discarding digital devices (mobile phones, laptops, e-vehicles)... but ignore smart TVs. Another might focus on electricity use or CO2 emissions of digital tech... but ignore blockchains.
The European Union names 14 categories of environmental impacts.2 Of these, CO2 emissions are the most studied. To date, no peer-reviewed study considers the digital industry's combined ecological impacts.
In 2020, Charlotte Freitag3 and colleagues published a synthesis of recent peer-reviewed studies about info-communications-technologies' (ICTs') environmental impacts, with a focus on CO2 emissions. The researchers report that while "ICT has delivered increasingly wide-ranging efficiency and productivity improvements to the global economy; global CO2 emissions have also risen inexorably."
Digital tech now accounts for two to four percent of global CO2 emissions (civil aviation is two percent)--or 1.2 to 2.2 gigatons of CO2 equivalents (GtCO2e).
Freitag asserts that reducing digital tech's CO2 emissions would require major actions from industry, legislators and regulators--and that current "Green Deal" policies cannot achieve sustainable goals alone.
We agree. We also recognize that current regulations do not decrease CO2 emissions, mining's impacts to indigenous communities or wildlife habitats. They don't decrease electronic waste. We see that engineering schools rarely cover these issues.
What policies would encourage engineers to design devices and infrastructure that biodegrade and that can be repurposed (given extended use)?
Pollution generated during manufacturing the Internet's devices and infrastructure is rarely studied or monitored.
Big tech to save us all?
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