Journalist Guillaume Pitron publishes a book on the impact of digital technology on the Earth. A sector responsible for nearly 4% of greenhouse gas emissions.
Three years later The war of rare metals, the French journalist, publishes a new survey: Digital hell. Travel at the end of a like*. This book is intended as a paving stone in the pond which answers questions that the users of connected objects do not ask themselves and which reveals the complexity of the digital revolution led by the “climate generation”.
Have you ever wondered what was the environmental cost of a post on Instagram, a live view on the social network or that of a simple heart added to a photo on your feed? The application launched in 2010 has 1.22 billion monthly active users worldwide with more than 500 million visitors who connect every day.
A like travels around the world before landing on your phone
“But how can you imagine that the simple publication of a selfie sent from our smartphones mobilizes the carbon equivalent of 1.3 meters made by a light vehicle per minute? With 95 million photos and videos shared every day on Instagram, we have you lets do the math on the carbon footprint for our planet … But if you are addicted to the social network, know that posting a photo on your account consumes 1.8 times less energy than posting a photo as a story and 2.4 times less than hosting a live.
In his survey, Guillaume Pitron further emphasizes that a simple like trip around the world, using submarine cables, telephone antennas and data centers located as far as the Arctic Circle. “Digital technologies which today mobilize 10% of the electricity produced in the world and reject nearly 4% of global CO² emissions, ie double the global civil aviation sector.“
So, as we have learned to turn off the light when leaving a room, to start the machines in “night program” or to lower the temperature of our apartments, let’s learn to clean our mailboxes and our overloaded cloud by joining an initiative. Estonian the ” Digital cleanup day “, an online tutorial to better manage your digital data. It’s a first step.
*The Ties That Liberate Editions