The times are notable for two conflicting impulses. One is the impulse to save the environment; the other is the universal impulse, or craze, even, for the most advanced forms of communications technology. Even those most passionate about saving the environment are often swept up in the latter; in fact, they often use them to power their environmental campaigns.
For some time we’ve had hints that our communications devices were harming the environment: here a news spot about the difficulty of recyling electronic gear; there a documentary on Chinese villages with streams poisoned by toxic materials from the dismantling of computers; and in general a common-sense realization that the production of this stuff takes natural resources and the disposal of it generates clutter and pollution. The devices are improved and elaborated so fast that, as we abandon good working devices for new ones with enhanced capabilities, the piles of electronic debris rise ever higher.
Suddenly it’s become alarmingly clear that the proliferation of our communications devices, including the computer on which this article is being written, is threatening the earth. The new poster for that threat is the Serengeti Plain of Tanzania, an area where so many animals move freely and visibly in unspoiled habitat that the famous Polish foreign correspondent Ryszard Kapusczinski once wrote that it looked like Eden before Adam and Eve. Now the Tanzanian government proposes to build a highway through the Serengeti so minerals like coltan from near Lake Victoria can be trucked out faster than on currently existing roads and carted away for Chinese manufacturers of consumer electronics. Those of us who play a part in the phenomenally burgeoning demand for these things have to face the fact that the market exists because of us.
Then there’s another issue, and an important one, though it doesn’t appeal to the eye like herds of wildebeest and zebra. It’s that a sizeable part of the energy savings we’ve realized on heating and transportation has been done away with by our use of consumer electronics.
Last year the International Energy Agency reported that nearly 15 percent of in-home consumption of electricity is related to the use of computers, computer accessories and other consumer electronics (such as televisions, game consoles, DVD players and audio equipment, and battery chargers that feed phones and cameras). Even with all the work being done to make these devices more energy-efficient, the IEA expected the draw on power from consumer elecronics to increase 250 percent by 2030.
