This is an update and adaptation of an interview with Jane Anne Morris on the program “Corporations and Democracy” on KZYX radio in Mendocino, CA. She began by expressing her surprise why everybody calculates the impact on the environment of raising beef for a Hamburger while nobody seems to calculate the impact of an internet search or upload.
Jane Anne Morris began searching for that number over ten years ago. She wrote an article on “The Energy Nightmare of Web Server Farms” in 2008 and – in 2012 calculated how many bicycles would be needed to keep the internet supplied with green power. That article is: “Eat, Sleep, Click: The Bicycle-Powered Internet.”
Numbers are now easier to come by and they are staggering and growing. The Swedish Royal Institute of Technology in 2018 published their research that quote: “Around 10% of the world’s total electricity consumption is being used by the internet.”
A news feature in the Journal Nature from September 2018 says: “The five biggest global companies by market capitalization this year are currently Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft and Facebook, replacing titans such as Shell and ExxonMobil. … As demand for Internet and mobile-phone traffic skyrockets, the information industry could lead to an explosion in energy use ..”
Jane Anne Morris was an author, researcher, writer and workshop leader with POCLAD the Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy. She was only 65 when she died in May, 2019. And this program is a tribute to her life and work. On March first 2013 my friends Annie Esposito and Steve Scalmanini interviewed Jane Anne Morris on their radio program on KZYX in Mendocino County, CA.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 19.9MB)
