3.12.18 DRAFT not yet ready for public distribution Within Our Means: Limiting the Internet's World Wide Footprint (Resources Extracted and E-Waste Generated) To Help Us and It Last Longer by Katie Singer www.electronicsilentspring.com

To slow climate change, destruction of the ecosystem and depletion of natural resources on which our survival depends, people in the developed world must impose limits on use-- or nature will impose limits for us. This will require lifestyle changes, including how we use the Internet. The Internet is the largest thing that humanity has built,1 yet its demands of , water and conflict minerals; its hazards to workers who mine for its raw materials and who assemble computers; and its waste (which does not biodegrade), are invisible and unknown to most of its users. For the Internet to continue, users must become informed about its demands and regulate their media use. By 2030, the Internet will consume 20% of global electricity production.2 According to a 2016 report from the Semiconductor Industry,3 by 2040, global energy production will not satisfy its demands. Most people in the developed world consider web access a necessity. To help it live longer, every community will need informed authority over its utilities, and Internet service must be recognized as a public utility.4 Communities will need to recognize Internet access as a privilege that requires regulation. Otherwise, we live beyond our means, with a false assumption of limitless resources, waiting for nature to impose limits for us. These are no small tasks. As Bill Torbert, Boston College professor emeritus in management and organization, says, "If you're not aware that you're part of the problem, you can't be part of the solution." This paper aims to illuminate the Internet's demands, to show how every Internet user is part of the problem--and can be part of the solution.

The The Industrial Revolution took off in the middle of the 19th century once we humans figured out how to create motors, extract and transmit electricity. In Africa and Asia, European investors began to mine raw materials for fuel and products. They built factories, then confiscated land and forced farmers to move into cities to in cotton mills. To engines, water, then , then oil were transported to factories. Manufacturers -produced cloth, denim pants, leather boots, gas lamps, cast iron pots and treddle sewing machines, then distributed these goods on coal-powered trains over far distances at unheard-of-speeds. For most Europeans and North Americans, buying a factory-made shirt cost less and took less time than looming cloth and sewing the shirt themselves. And so, the Industrial Revolution introduced energy efficiency. It lowered the cost of making goods, sped up production and distribution, and grew the Western economy.

Energy efficiency and the Jevons Most drivers know that frequently starting and stopping a car uses more fuel than steady highway driving. This concept also applies to using electricity: steady demand of power is more energy-efficient than heavy day-time use followed by decreased night-time and weekend demand. There's another aspect to energy efficiency that we usually overlook: in 1862, the British economist William Jevons explained in that energy efficiency is actually the cause of increased energy use. Here's the deal: to make thousands, millions or billions of any product, manufacturers must mine large quantities of fuel and raw materials, ship these to factories, build the factories, produce the item, then distribute and market it to consumers. Mass production of any item, including a computer, uses mass amounts of natural resources. Since energy efficiency has made electronics mobile and lowered their cost, more people own mobile devices. More people own multiple devices. Mobile users expect constant Internet access and generate increased data traffic--which require increased infrastructure, energy and natural resources. Mobile users also replace (upgrade) their devices frequently, which further increases demands of natural resources and generates yet more e-waste. In other words, energy efficiency massively increases demands of natural resources and generates massive amounts of hazardous waste. Even when applied to electronics, this phenomenon is still called the Jevons Paradox.

Electrification, economy, increased population In 1800, one billion people lived on Earth. Human use of the Earth's resources did not threaten the entire ecosystem's integrity. Beginning with the Industrial Revolution, technological advances lowered death rates, lengthened lifespans, created a growing economy--and increased the human population. By 1930, two billion people inhabited the Earth. By 1975, the human population had doubled again--to four billion. We're now past seven billion, increasing by one billion approximately every twelve years. By 2025, the human population will reach eight billion. Call us consumers. But the fossil that took billions of years to form and which now power so much of Westerners' daily lives have not increased. As Richard Heinberg, senior fellow at the Post Carbon Institute explains, "cheap, concentrated sources of energy in the forms of coal, oil and ...were a one-time-only gift from nature."5

Regulating electronic development Government agencies have diligently protectsx electronic technologies. In 1934, the U.S. Congress established the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The FCC prohibits "harmful interference"--anything that interferes with existing radio or TV broadcasts and (since the 1990s), cellular or Internet services. At the FCC, harmful interference does not include biological harm. Consider this a tipping point in human perception and law. In our enthusiasm for electric things and an ever-growing economy, we created regulations that serve engineering needs and a corporate agenda. We began eliminating regulations (like the ancient principle of first, do no harm) that protect our environment and health. We began relating to the plants, animals, minerals, topsoil and waterways that sustain us as resources for manufacturered goods. In our enthusiasm for new electronics and services, we ignore the fact that they depend on natural resources that have a limited supply and cannot be renewed. Alas. Societies that limit access to their available resources last longer than those that do not impose limits.6

The computer and digital revolutions Tech manufacturers began selling desktop computers in the early 1980s. Laptops arrived in the early 90s. In the mid-90s, telecom providers laid out infrastructure for 2G cell phones. The U.S.'s FCC determined that cell phones were safe to market because they did not change the temperature of a plastic dummy's head by two degrees Celsius after six minutes of use.7 In 1996, the U.S. Congress passed the Telecommunications Act. Section 704 prohibits municipalities from refusing to permit the installation of a cellular antenna based on health or environmental concerns. Regulatory agencies around the world followed suit.?? By the early 2000s, most Westerners had a cell phone and communicated by email. Most businesses got a website. In the U.S., telecom corporations had installed about 300,000 cell towers (also called base stations) to provide infrastructure for wireless communications. With 4G (fourth generation) infrastructure, telecommunications shifted its focus from transmitting voice and conversation to data for video and music.8 With Apple's 2007 debut of smartphones, individuals could literally carry the world wide web in their hands. In 2017, 77% of U.S. Americans owned a smartphone.9 By 2020, over six billion people will use one.10 Mobile Internet access (i.e. via smartphones) has caused broadband networks, data and energy demands to grow exponentially. The world had three million base stations (cell towers, also called masts) in 2007; by 2013, this number had increased to four million.11 In 2005, the average British adult spent 9.9 hours per week online (including at work and home). By the end of 2014, the average Brit spent 20.5 hours per week online.12 In 2016, a Nielsen Company report found that American adults devoted more than ten and a half hours each day to consuming media.13 American teenagers spend nine hours per day using media.14

Mobile Internet access requires more energy than wired access Wireless Internet access requires more energy than wired access because:  mobile users expect connectivity everywhere, 24/7. Infrastructure that supports such connectivity requires continuous delivery of electricity to ubiquitously deployed cell sites.  Users whose Internet access is limited to a wired desktop access the Cloud much less frequently than mobile users who can watch videos on trains, while dining or standing in a line. Now, multiply the energy required for constant connectivity times a few billion users. As increasing numbers of people acquire smartphones, natural resource demands will increase. To get informed about energy requirements, let's make visible the natural resources that go into every computer.

To make a computer Manufacturing semiconductors (every computer's building blocks) To process and store data, to provide memory and apps, a smartphone's low power microprocessors, accelerometers, transmitters and receivers (for cellular, wireless and Bluetooth signals), and noise filtering microphones all require semiconductors.15 Semiconductors (also called transistors) are made from sand (silicon) that is highly refined with chemicals. Because the industry can now create much smaller semiconductors than they could two decades ago, manufacturers now design hand-held and even wearable computers that each contain millions of transistors. A silicon wafer is "one of the most highly refined artifacts ever created by humans. Converting quartz sand to electronics-grade silicon consumes tremendous amounts of energy and involves highly toxic intermediate compounds."16 In 1997, the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition reported that producing an eight-inch wafer (each containing thousands to millions of semiconductors) required 4,267 cubic feet of bulk gasses, 27 pounds of chemicals, 29 cubic feet of hazardous gasses and 3,023 gallons of de-ionized water. It generated 3,787 gallons of waste water,17 denigrating the health of the waterways and communities near the factory.18 In 2013, manufacturers began producing far more transistors than farmers grow grains of wheat or rice.19

Conflict minerals To store energy, polish the screen, power the battery and offer apps, every computer requires multiple minerals. Many of these are called conflict minerals because they're extracted under armed conflict and/or human abuse. While rare earth usually refers to a series of metals in the periodic table, the term may also apply to the fact that few countries allow mining, since it wreaks havoc on the environment and people near the mines. I'll introduce a few conflict minerals here, starting with coltan. Short for columbite- tantalite. Coltan is black and tar-like. Refining makes a -resistant powder that can hold a high electric charge. Refined coltan is crucial to devices that store energy and allow mobility, including mobile phones, cordless phones, laptops, tablets, video cameras, ink jet printers, cordless shavers, hearing aids and pacemakers. The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) holds 64% of the world's coltan. Mining for coltan in Congo (wherein militias form to gain control of mining and the money paid by foreign investors) has contributed to mass rapes and more loss of life than any other single situation since World War II.20 Since 1998, conflicts over Congolese minerals have killed more than 5.4 million people.21 Cerium, a rare earth element used to polish touchscreens on smartphones and tablets, is extracted near Baotou, Inner Mongolia. To get usable cerium, processors crush mineral mixtures and dissolve them in sulphuric and nitric acid on a huge industrial scale, which causes vast poisonous waste. Neodymium, also mined in Bautou, is used to make lightweight yet powerful magnets for in-ear headphones, cell phone microphones and computer hard-drives. Neodymium is also used in large equipment that requires powerful magnetic fields, including wind turbines and electric car motors. Traveling in 2015, writer Tim Maughan found "a toxic lake" near Baotou. Just a few decades earlier, this area had been farmland. Maughan realized that the "alien, dystopian and horrifying environment" he observed was the "byproduct not just of the consumer electronics in my pocket, but also green technologies like wind turbines and electric cars that we get so smugly excited about in the West."22 Cobalt, a byproduct of copper and nickel mining, is essential for lithium-ion battery cells used in smartphones, tablets and electric vehicles. Mined primarily in DRC under Chinese control, human rights abuses abound while Congolese mine for minerals.23 The U.S.'s 2010 Dodd-Frank bill requires manufacturers to disclose the source of the minerals they use. But the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers have challenged it because, they say, it imposes too many costs and violates corporations' First Amendment freedoms by forcing them to label and condemn their own products. Until consumers are aware of the conflict minerals in their devices and until manufacturers take responsibility for the routine human abuses and environmental destruction caused while mining, damaging practices will continue.

Hazards to workers In addition to the murders and mass rapes in Congo, mining for any raw material increases risk of long-term health damage and fatal accidents. Researchers for Amnesty International found that the vast majority of cobalt miners worked without gloves, facemasks or other protective gear to prevent lung or skin diseases. Children reported working in the mines and carrying heavy loads for as many as twelve hours per day to earn one or two dollars. According to UNICEF, in 2014, approximately 40,000 children, some as young as four, mined across southern Congo, checking rocks for cobalt.24 Amnesty International has also found that major brands including Apple, Samsung and Sony fail to check that the cobalt used in their products was not mined by child laborers.25 While assembling the wafers that provide every computer's foundation, workers typically wear head-to-toe protective suits to protect the silicon chips from dust.26 These suits do not prevent workers from inhaling the toxic chemicals required to manufacture wafers. One worker-safety group has documented more than 200 cases of serious diseases among former Samsung semiconductor and LCD workers including leukemia, multiple sclerosis and lymphoma. Seventy-six of those 200 ill workers, mostly in their twenties and thirties, have died.27 In 2009, while assembling components for Apple products and earning about US$457 per month, 137 workers in Suzhou, Jiangsu province in China were exposed to n-hexane, a toxic chemical used to clean electronic parts. Chronic exposure to n-hexane can cause extensive peripheral nervous system failure and general muscular weakness.28 At Samsung factories, workers' rights violations have included forced overtime, exhausting working conditions, forced work without pay, abuse of underage workers, lack of worker safety and dependence on overtime.29 Who is responsible for protecting workers from on-the-job hazards? For compensating them when their health is damaged? Factory owners claim that they can't afford environmental protections. Given the international nature of assembling products, corporations like Apple and Samsung are not legally bound to responsible practices.

The Internet's energy hogs The Internet hogs energy in at least three ways. Access networks Infrastructure that provides the "highway" to transmit data is also called an access network. According to the University of Melbourne's Center for Energy Efficient Telecommunications (CEET), access networks are the Internet's main energy culprit. They're comprised of public and private cellular, wireless, copper and fiber networks that hold embodied energy and use electricity for radio power amplifiers, cooling systems, data processing and power supplies.30 In 2013, CEET calculated that by 2015, the wireless cloud would consume "up to 43 terawatt hours, compared to only 9.2. TWh in 2012, an increase of 460%." CEET further calculated that such increased the Internet's from six megatonnes of CO2 in 2012 to up to 30 megatonnes of CO2 in 2015, the equivalent of adding 4.9 million cars to the roads." Further, "up to 90% of this consumption is attributable to wireless access network technologies."31 4G networks consume 60 times more energy than 2G networks.32 Since 2007, when iPhones (and other smartphones and tablets) were introduced, Internet use has grown exponentially, and networks have experienced unprecdented increases in traffic. In the U.S., mobile traffic rose 400% from 2010 to 2012.33 In short, mobility (hand-held Internet access) has created exponential growth in Internet traffic. Smartphone users expect Internet access everywhere, all the time, which requires energy-demanding infrastructure. We've got to ask whether our society can "afford" mobility.34

Data storage centers Data storage centers make up the Internet's second-ranking energy hog. They account for two percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.35 Advertisements, websites, software programs, data collected by "smart" utility meters and "smart" appliances, Facebook posts, porn, medical and bank records, school records, transportation systems including GPS navigation and traffic flow, weather patterns, Netflix offerings, on-demand music, insurance industry data, retail purchases, undeleted emails, cute cat videos--you name it--all of these are stored in data centers that are sometimes large enough to be visible from outer space. The world's largest data center, at Inner Mongolia Data Park in China, is nearly eleven million square feet. China also has five data centers each between three and a half million and nearly eight million square feet. In 2014, the U.S. had three million data centers.36 The largest one is in Nevada, nearly four million square feet. Virginia, Utah, Washington, Arizona and Illinois all house data centers approaching one and a half million square feet.37 Smaller data centers can be found on university campuses, hospitals, banks and government buildings. According to a 2016 report from the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, data centers in the U.S. alone use 70 billion kilowatt hours (kwhs) per year. By 2020, data centers could consume 73 billion kwh of electricity per year.38 One kwh will keep a smartphone charged for a year.39 70 billion kwhs is about 1.8% of the U.S.'s total electricity consumption. Generating this much electricity requires eight nuclear reactors or twice the total electricity produced by U.S. American solar panels and generates about 70 million pounds of CO2.40 To access a data center, the average U.S. American uses about 200 kwhs per year. This translates to about 300 pounds of CO2 per year. One data center can consume as much electricity as it takes to power 250,000 homes.41 The average square foot of a data center uses 100 to 200 times more electricity than the average square foot of a modern office building. A tiny data room of a few thousand square feet uses more electricity than it takes to light a 100,000 square foot shopping mall.42 To keep their computers from overheating, data centers need cooling systems which, in addition to electricity, require water. In 2012, Greenpeace's Gary Cook reported that if data centers were a country, they would rank fifth in use of energy.43 In 2015, the world's data centers used 416.2 terawatt hours of electricity--significantly more than the UK's total electricity consumption. Despite hardware innovations that massively increase data centers' capacity to store data, Ian Bitterlin, Britain's foremost data center expert, says that the amount of energy used by data centers is doubling every four years. 44 In a blog for Data Center Dynamics, P. Judge wrote, "Everyone prefers to talk about the efficiency of individual data centers, or the proportion of they use. No one talks much about total energy used by data centers because the figures you get for that are annoying, depressing and frustrating.... The plain fact is that no matter how efficiently we run them, data centers are expanding uncontrollably and consuming increasing amounts of power. In fact, the efficiency improvements are contributing to the rapid growth."45 There's the Jevons Paradox again.

Embodied energy The Internet's third hog, embodied energy, is required:  to mine (explore for and extract) raw materials--i.e. cobalt, coltan, etc;  to process raw materials (i.e. refine sand with chemicals to make transistors);  to ship these materials to a factory (which also holds embodied energy and requires electricity to operate);  to build and program robots to assemble the device or infrastructure part;  to create packaging and  ship the final product to its end user. The embodied energy in every mobile phone, computer, laptop, tablet, iWatch, iPod, MP3, television and e-vehicle is greater than the energy that the product will use in its lifespan.46 Manufacturing a refrigerator takes about the same amount of energy as manufacturing a computer. However, because the fridge will last three to four times longer, its embodied energy is less than a computer's.47,48 Worldwide, we still don't have one fridge per household-- but increasing numbers of users expect several mobile devices per person. Meanwhile, the average American watches four and a half hours of on-screen entertainment per day.49 Watching one hour of video per week wirelessly consumes annually more electricity than two new refrigerators use in a year.50

Turning on a light vs. streaming a video To turn on a light, a young child can flip a switch. Beyond the switch, turning on a light requires a powered source of electricity, powerlines that deliver the electricity to the home or building, wiring to outlets within the building, and a lightbulb. A young child can also stream a video with a click. This seems easy, too--though streaming a video onto an iPad or smartphone activates a vast network of computers and infrastructure all over a country, even all over the world.51 Streaming a video engages hundreds of thousands of cell sites (access networks) and data centers that store the video. The data centers and some cell sites require cooling systems. The video itself requires energy to be produced and uploaded. Each device and infrastructure part involved in this sequence holds embodied energy (including factories that produce the chemical compounds required to produce trillions of semiconductors) and requires electricity to operate. Workers mine for the raw materials, assemble and box the electronic device. Ships and trucks transport the smartphone or tablet and charger or infrastructure part to its end user. What makes a video download necessary? At what point do we limit Internet access?

How the Internet speeds climate changes Let me repeat that when Apple introduced smartphones, in 2007, the Internet and users' access of it began to increase exponentially. So did electricity, water and conflict mineral demands. Most electricity used to power the Internet comes from coal.52 Burned coal generates carbon dioxide, which covers the Earth like the roof of a greenhouse. Heat gets trapped. When heat stays within our atmosphere, global temperatures rise. Arctic ice melts and sea levels rise. In 2013, the Center for Energy Efficient Telecommunications in Melbourne estimated that the telecom industry emits 830 million tons of CO2 annually, and that the Internet's energy demands could double by 2020.53 Google calculated that each search on its engine generates 0.2g of CO2. Watching a ten minute cute cat video on YouTube generates 1g. Facebook claims its average user's annual footprint is 269g of CO2--about the same as a cup of coffee's carbon footprint. Each of these sounds harmless--until you multiply it by a few billion users who also engage Amazon, Google and other search engines.

The Internet also hogs human know-how More quickly than anyone can grasp, humanity has shifted knowledge about how to grow and preserve food, heal wounds and infections, remember dates and numbers, heat and cool our homes...from ourselves to the Internet. We rely on Internet-connected devices to wake us, determine when we're fertile and infertile, locate an unfamiliar address. Doctors now use apps to determine what drug and dosage to administer. Teachers rely increasingly on Cloud- connected programs to determine when a child is ready for a new level in reading or math. Elderly people are given bracelets that can track their location 24/7. In agriculture, John Deere and Monsanto have joined forces to create tractors that assess soil mineral content and expected weather to determine exactly the seed, fertilizer, pesticide, herbicide and fungicide to apply for the most lucrative yield on a parcel of land. Crunching all of this data requires a tremendous amount of wireless broadband.54 Who benefits from relinquishing human know-how to computers? Who benefits from shifting dependence on each other to telecom providers and electronics manufacturers?

Electronic waste Unlike dead plants, birds and animals, "dead" electronics do not biodegrade. Electronics create waste during manufacturing and when they're discarded. During manufacturing, silicon chips generate highly toxic wastewater, impacting the ecosystems where the transistors are made.55 One discarded computer can contain hundreds of toxic elements and chemicals, including lead, mercury, cadmium, brominated flame retardants, n- hexane and polyvinyl chloride. When a user discards an electronic device, its heavy metals and chemicals can penetrate landfills and seep into ground water, creating long-lasting impacts to waterways, soil and air. Meanwhile, like early automakers who applied "planned obsolescence" when they annually released new models, electronics manufacturers encourage consumers to upgrade devices frequently. The lifespan of each privately owned device, each data center computer, and each cellular network grows shorter. Globally, we humans generate a total of 44.7 million metric tons (49.27 US tons) of electronic waste per year.56 Each U.S. household of annually four discards about 176 pounds of electronics (devices with a battery or a plug).57 In 2009, the U.S.'s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reported that only 8% of mobile phones, 17% of TVs and 38% of computers were recycled.58 Why recycle electronics? The EPA reports that one million cell phones can yield 35,000 pounds of copper, 75 pounds of gold, 772 pounds of silver and 33 pounds of palladium.59 Worldwide, electronic waste accounts for more than 5% of municipal sold waste. It accounts for 70% of the hazardous waste deposited in landfills.60,61 On average, every person in the developed world now discards 73 pounds of electronic waste per year.62 Most of this waste is exported to India, China and Nigeria. Children routinely comb these dumps for useful bits they can sell, exposing themselves to toxic hazards with no protection. Some e-waste is burned, which releases toxins like dioxins and benzene into the atmosphere. Some is sent to U.S. prisons, where inmates "recycle" it, again without protection. To decrease e-waste, manufacturers and consumers need to shift from a culture of constant upgrading to one that extends every device's lifespan as much as possible. Could we encourage satisfaction with what we've got, celebrate mechanics who can repair what's broken and recycle more?

Making the Internet's energy demands visible The more data we transmit and store, the more energy we require: Downloading a video takes much more energy than downloading a photo, which requires more data and energy than transmitting voice, which takes more data and energy than text. One hundred text-only reports make up less than nine megabytes (MBs) of data.63 A high-resolution image takes 3 MBs. One quality, eight-minute video takes 30 MBs.64 Further, whenever you access the Internet through a wireless network, energy use soars. 3G uses 15 times more energy than wired (fios, DSL or cable) access. 4G consumes 23 times more energy than wired.65,66 Streaming a video wirelessly is a major energy offender. Delete 67,68 In 2012, video traffic comprised 57% of all Internet traffic. By 2019, mobile video traffic will grow to 72% of total mobile data traffic.69 Would public awareness of the natural resources and energy required for mobility reverse this trend? Streaming and viewing an entire season of shows in one sitting generates a larger carbon footprint than watching one episode per day or, better yet, biking to the library to borrow a video and share it with neighbors. Ofcom, the UK telecommunications regulator, reported that UK home monthly average traffic volumes grew from 17 GBs in 2011 to 82 GBs in 2015.70 Forecasters predict 45% or more annual growth in mobile access through 2021.71,72 Read this s.l.o.w.l.y: the total annual Internet traffic from year 2000 equaled one hour of Internet traffic from 2015.73 This really gets sobering when you learn that at least 10-15% of web searches are for porn,74 YouTube's most popular category is cute cats, and 30% of web activity is dedicated to advertisements.

Now comes 5G and the Internet of Things Our Internet has just begun to rev up. The telecom industry maintains that 4G (fourth generation of mobile infrastructure) cannot support our exponentially increasing data traffic nor the speed that users expect. The industry claim that we therefore need 5G. 5G will also support the Internet of Things (IoT), machine-to-machine communication. In a 5G world, everything will be based in the Cloud: utilities (including smart-city energy grids), corporate agriculture, transportation networks including GPS and self-driving vehicles, retail purchases, immersive education, entertainment, telemedicine, records of all kinds, home heating and cooling systems, refrigerators and other appliances. By 2023, digital TVs will not be able to receive programs; consumers will therefore need to purchase "smart" TVs.75 Already, at 4G, a chipped diaper can send a message to your smartphone that your baby's diaper needs changing. Smart refrigerators can message your smartphone that you need orange juice. With wireless 4G, downloading a feature-length movie can take eight minutes. With wireless 5G, downloading a movie can take less than ten seconds. With a 5G Cloud-connected car, your windshield can tell you about an upcoming traffic jam and a better route. Some researchers predict that by the end of 2020, the number of IoT connected devices will reach 21 billion.76 Think of the infrastructure and embodied energy involved in operating 21 billion wireless devices, the water and conflict minerals, the hazards to miners and those who assemble components, the access networks' energy requirements, the e-waste generated, the CO2 emitted. Data volumes at least double every two years.77 By 2020, our created data will reach 44 trillion gigabytes.78 Until now, because each human has a limited number of hours in the day to spend online, we could call the Internet's energy use finite. But when unlimited numbers of machines connect to each other (the average U.S. American is expected to own 26 IoT devices), Internet energy use becomes infinite. What's the motivation behind 5G and the IoT? New devices and infrastructure help the economy to grow--and keep corporations alive.

5G's infrastructure 5G's extremeley short millimeter waves (mmWs) can carry much more data than 4G. However, because mmWs cannot travel far, antennas that transmit their signals must be densely deployed--about every three to ten households in urban areas.79 In rural areas, the "sheer number of small cells required to build a 5G network will present significant challenges."80 Some engineers claim that getting 5G to provide the consistent coverage that users expect will be tricky or unlikely. Gabriel Rebeiz, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at UC/San Diego says that at 73 GHz, "the second it starts raining--I mean, misting, if it just mists--you lose your signal."81 The telecom industry plans to deploy 5G cell sites on public right-of-ways (PROWs) including utility poles ubiquitously. A PROW-mounted cell site also requires a refrigerator-sized cabinet filled with more antennas and a (noisy) air conditioning unit to keep the electronics cool. To get consistent coverage, schools, office buildings and homes may need routers mounted inside in addition to the PROW-mounted cell sites. In the U.S., more than twenty states have passed legislation that allows distributed antenna systems (DAS) on PROWs with minimal or no zoning requirements--i.e. no neighborhood notification, no public hearing.82 In these states, anyone could find a cell site on the utility pole near their home and have no recourse. 83 Planning and Land Use departments nor Historic Review Boards will have say about cell site locations. Children could have antennas mounted on utility poles just beyond their bedrooms and on their schools' rooftops and routers on the windows beside their desks. How would such exposure impact their health?

Unequal energy use; unequal communications The United Nations' for All initiative aims "to ensure universal access to modern energy" by 2030. Meanwhile, our world's highest energy consumers may contribute 1000 times as much CO2 emissions as the lowest energy consumers.84 This applies to telecommunications: Current users--i.e. Americans who consume electronic media more than 10.5 hours daily--use energy in excess, while global citizens who do not have indoor plumbing, a phone or refrigerator live in energy poverty. If people who currently do not have web access begin to have access and go online as much as the average Western European or North American, then energy use and carbon emissions will again increase exponentially. For true reduction of global energy use and CO2 emissions, those of us who use decadent amounts of energy will have to decrease our use; while those who live with minimal media use will not be able to increase their use too much.85 To reduce carbon emissions and finance a climate adaptation fund, Lucas Chancel and Thomas Piketty of the Paris School of Economics propose taxing all individuals who emit more than 6.2tCO2e per year i.e. via airplane tickets.86 Could media users also be taxed, say for Internet access in excess of 45 hours per month? Telecommunications inequality also thrives via Privatizated Internet services. dividing users between those who can and can't afford what is increasingly a necessary utility. Indeed, when only a handful of corporations (Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Goodle, AT&T, Verizon) control what is designed to serve the public good, communities lose democratic zoning rights, income from taxes87 and leasing fees88 and net neutrality. Net neutrality recognizes the Internet as a public space that serves the public good. It supports treating all Internet content, sites and platforms equally. Without net neutrality, providers can block content, interfere with online traffic and prohibit states from contradicting these decisions.89 Whenever a household has only wireless or wired service, it faces significant disadvantages relative to their peers. For example, only wired services work during power outages.90

Now comes digital currency Released in 2009 and used largely by investors who want anonymous transactions, digital, artificial currency demands extraordinary amounts of energy. Digital currency is "awarded" by computers (with lots of processor power) "mining" solutions to progressively complicated math problems.91 It is not backed by gold or any country's word. Some hackers use digital currency for ransomeware. Of a half dozen kinds, bitcoin is the most common. A single bitcoin transaction uses about 240 kWh of electricity--enough to power the average American household for eight days. Each transaction emits about 117 kg of CO2 into the atmosphere. Worldwide, there are about 350,000 bitcoin transactions per day. Multiply these times the amount of CO2 emitted per transaction (117 kg) times 365 days, and Digiconomist figures that bitcoin operators put 16,000 kilotons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere per year.92 One year of emissions from 6.8 million cars comes, roughly, to 7.7. million tons of CO2.93 Digiconomist calculated that bitcoin's CO2 emissions are currently 20 million metric tons per year.94 Writing for electronicproducts.com in December, 2017, Warren Miller asked, "How long can a system this bad for the environment continue without effectively pricing itself (in terms of the cost of energy) out of the market?"95

Impacts to biological systems In the past century, while we've built an electrical grid and, more recently, the Internet, species have gone extinct at more than one thousand times historical rates. Twenty percent of mammals, one third of amphibians and two thirds of assessed plant species are currently threatened with extinction.96 Sea levels and global temperatures are rising.97 Worldwide, we're losing 25 billion tons of topsoil each year.98 Human diseases rarely seen before the twentieth century (Alzheimer's, attention deficit disorder [ADD], autism, diabetes, cancer, heart disease, infertility, insomnia, Parkinson's) have become epidemic. While tech giants (Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google,99 AT&T, Verizon, Spring, T-Mobile) collect users' money, democratic processes and regulations that safeguard the public diminish at municipal and federal levels. In the U.S., Section 704 of the 1996 Telecommunications Act prohibits health and environmental concerns from interfering with the placement of cellular antennas. We're now more than two decades downwind of this law, which many countries adopted. Most exposure safety standards are based only on thermal (temperature-related) effects. These are inadequate, since thousands of studies demonstrate harmful non-thermal effects of EMR exposure, including brain tumors, malignant heart schwanomas,100 sperm damage,101 miscarriage risk,102 DNA damage103 and much more.104,105 Electrical engineer Frank Barnes has demonstrated that common "signals such as modulated sine waves or pulses at different repetition rates containing more than one frequency" can "modify more than one biological system." He reports that electromagnetic field exposures may "increase or decrease such things as cell growth rates or immune responses."106 Scientists have found that Polish, Israeli, Belgian and Korean military personnel who had prolonged, whole-body exposure to radiofrequency (RFR), mainly from communication equipment and radar, found highly elevated hematolymphatic cancer risk. These scientists call for substantially reduced military exposures, and for the International Agency for Research on Cancer to reclassify RFR exposure as a human carcinogen. 107 Screen-time exposure is also hazardous. Different from EMR exposure, screen-time has been shown to create addiction, ADD and other cognitive impairments in adults and children.108 Even engineers who designed smartphones now express remorse for their inventions, which impair memory, make us more anxious and less creative, and keep parents (tethered to screens) from focusing on their children.109 Dr. Joel Moskowitz, public health analyst at UC/Berkeley, reports that there are no studies of constant, long-term exposure to millimeter wave frequencies.110 Because 5G's millimeter waves are so short, scientists are especially concerned about their effects on skin, eyes and insects.111 Who is served when our society disregards the non-thermal, cumulative and combined health effects of exposure to EMR-emitting infrastructure and devices on pregnant women, infants, children, workers, people with medical implants, the infirm or wildlife? While no agency monitors screen time exposure or the Internet's energy demands, governments help distribute Chromebooks to kindergarteners, who now learn basic skills like reading and writing on screens.112 Habituating children to unsustainable practices creates expectations of infinite resources--expectations that are hard to change.113 The industry also disregards the fact that wireless infrastructure fails during power outages. To maintain emergency services, communities need wired landlines. Before allowing telecom corporations to deploy 5G "small" cells, regulators should recognize non-thermal effects of EMR exposure and revise limits. We need limits that protect the public health and that require living within our means.

Electronic innovation and liability On February 28, 2015, Lloyds of London stated that it will not cover any claims "resulting from or contributed to by electromagnetic fields, electromagnetic radiation, electromagnetism or radio frequency." Many U.S. insurance agencies are following suit.114 So then who is liable in the event of damages from electromagnetic radiation? If an antenna or cabinet mounted on a public right-of-way catches fire or collapses or injures a person, who is liable? A report by the World Economic Forum and Oliver Wyman, How Emerging Technologies are Changing the Risk Landscape, outlines that disruption of the Cloud (i.e. by cyberattack) could result in economic losses as high as $243 billion. At its January, 2018 meeting, the World Economic Forum concluded that the majority of innovation-related risks (including Cloud-based services and the smartgrid) are uninsured. Matthew Leonard, a partner at Oliver Wyman, says that society faces two stark realities that need resolution. "First, people do not fully understand the risks they are running; and second, those who seek to mitigate their risk with insurance are faced with a decided lack of choice and/or affordability."115

To reduce energy demands, what solutions have we tried? Smart meters One of the smartgrid's aims is to even the flow of electricity's delivery, since uneven flow--i.e. increased daytime demand, with decreased evening and weekend demands--uses more energy. Some utilities have installed smart meters, two-way communication meters that can transmit data about a customer's electricity usage to the utility. With a smart meter detecting exactly when a customer uses electricity, a utility can charge customers more for daytime use. But during 100 degree days, people who have air conditioning cool their homes whether it costs more or not. Smart meters hold embodied energy since they require manufacturing and installation. While analog meters typically last 20-30 years, a "smart" meter lasts 5-7 years. So "smart" meters have to be replaced more often.116 After Pacific Gas & Electric, the U.S.'s largest utility, spent billions of ratepayer dollars to install "smart" meters and data storage facilities, its 2010 Program Year Demand Response and Annual Report showed no energy saved. Smart meters' data requires storage. Their transmissions (between customers and utilities) require access networks. Smart meters cause fires and explosions.117 They expose individual customers and the entire grid to hacking. They subject customers to privacy breeches since utilities sell meter-collected data to third parties.118 Smart meters can disrupt peoples' health, since digital and wireless meters put "noise" on electrical wiring, and transmit radiofrequency radiation 24/7.119 Former CIA director James Woolsey calls the smartgrid "a really really stupid grid."120

Cloud-based transportation and electric vehicles (EVs) Manufacturers now promote electric vehicles because they "use no fuel" and offer "zero emissions." But charging EVs requires electricity, which has to come from somewhere. EVs, batteries and charging stations also have embodied energy. Producing a standard lithium-ion EV battery of 25 to 30 kilowatt-hours can create up to six tons of CO2. Discarding these batteries is also hazardous.121 EVs' computers require water and conflict mineral to manufacture. In colder climates, electric vehicles produce less power, have a shorter range and use more electricity. Their batteries discharge more quickly and require more frequent re-charging, which results in greater emissions. EVs' battery packs add to their weight, which leads to more electricity consumption and more emissions. Through built-in sensors and Internet-connected systems, modern vehicles, including EVs, can now track your weight, where you eat and shop, and other personal data...for undisclosed purposes.122 Computers in cars, including EVs, can create electronic interference with medical implants. At stoplights, while a Prius or hybrid recharges its battery, the computers' magnetic fields can cause a deep brain stimulator (a medical implant for neurological diseases like Parkinson's) to malfunction or shut off.123 How are pregnant women and children affected by proximity to such magnetic fields? Unless we recognize EVs' wide-ranging hazards, we're kidding ourselves.

Solar and As fossil fuels become more difficult and more expensive to extract, householders, utilities and even servers look to renewable sources of energy to supply our increasing electricity demands, energy analyst Kris de Decker points out that "renewable energy sources alone cannot reduce carbon emissions for two reasons. First...solar and wind power plants are not replacing fossil fuels, but accomodating part of a growing demand for energy. Secondly, renewable energy systems are highly dependent on fossil fuels for their manufacture, especially when we count on an infrastructure that aims to match supply to demand at all times."124 de Decker also names that "Energy efficiency is not getting us anywhere either, because advances in more efficient technology often result in new or more energy-intensive products and services, and because energy efficiency makes unsustainable practices non- negotiable."125 In other words, having a solar system can give consumers the idea that they generate enough power to run a Jacuzzi, a plasma TV and recharge several smartphones. But even with renewable energy, the Jevons Paradox applies. To reduce our energy demands, we must reduce our use of technologies that demand energy, Storing electricity generated by a solar system requires batteries. Most batteries are made from highly toxic lithium, which devastates the people and ecosystems where it's mined and discarded. (Saltwater-based batteries are less toxic.) Because batteries are still expensive, most solar systems are installed without them. This keeps the user dependent on a utility for night-time and cloudy-day electricity use. Large solar arrays also pose problems. Typically owned by big banks and hedge funds, solar farms effectively prevent communities from maintaining self-reliance and authority over their power source. Large arrays also require huge transmission lines and can drive wildlife out of their habitats.126 Small solar systems are safer and (when installed with battery storage) allow users more control, including which inverter to select. Older "micro" inverters "chop" electric current: they put "noise" on electrical wiring, which creates electromagnetic radiation (EMR) that can radiate throughout a building's wires. Prevention Magazine has reported that "chopped" current (also called dirty power or dirty electricity) can cause health problems.127 To decrease "noise," German solar systems typically filter at the panels, the inverter and the breaker box. Older filters may use energy--and decrease the system's efficiency. Some newer inverters (Schneider, Heart and Outback) can create clean sine waves and save energy. (All inverters still require embodied energy.) Wind turbines can be deadly for migratory birds.128 Noise from wind farms can disrupt neighbors' lives and sleep up to three miles away. How to protect residents? How/can sound standards be monitored and enforced? Recognizing these concerns, the U.S.'s Vermont Governor Phil Scott has aimed for a moratorium on large wind projects.129

Limits to E-Growth Even though we are rapidly depleting the resources required to power it, the Internet continues to grow exponentially. A 2016 study from the Semiconductor Industry reports that by 2040, computers will require more electricity than the entire world can generate.130 How do we prepare our children and ourselves for a world without computers? Do we regulate Internet use--or wait for nature to impose limits for us? After Kris de Decker learned that the 2012 global communications network consumed 1,815 TWh of electricity, or 8% of global electricity production,131 he calculated that we could power the (2012, pre-IoT) Internet if 8.2 billion people each pedaled a pedal-powered generator for one eight-hour shift per day, with each generator producing 70 watts of electricity. While pedaling, people could use their smartphones or laptops.132 Exercise generators probably won't power the Internet; but could knowing how much muscle it would take to watch a cute cat video inspire us to change our habits? de Decker explains that the Internet's increasing use of energy "can only be stopped when we limit the demand for digital communication."133 He suggests charging more for data- intensive online services like video streaming, replacing videos with boardgames and providing Internet cafes rather than individually-owned computers. (Anyone who laughs at these suggestions is obliged to come up with better ones.) British researcher Mike Hazas whether we should replace "'unlimited' data tariffs with quotas or differential pricing for services of various 'importance'? Should micro- payment schemes incentivise use of more bandwidth-frugal and offline media?"134 When Saira Mian, a researcher at University College London, described how her computer science department became "a zero waste institution,"135 she created a model for schools, government agencies, businesses and households.

At what point do we impose limits on Internet use and growth? To limit the Internet's growth and reduce its footprint, we need to value the complex interrelations between plants, insects, animals, birds, fish, underground minerals, coal, oil and ourselves...more than the man-made web. We need openness to living without mobile devices; to shift our primary allegiance from tech monopolies to locally-owned utilities and service providers. Household by household, school by school, business by business, investor by investor, we've got to limit our energy and media demands as we change from a consumer- driven society that serves tech corporations' needs to one that values the public and our ecosystem. Before powering up a device, ask, How much energy went into manufacturing it? How much energy goes into the infrastructure this device requires.

Real solutions To move toward policies that reduce energy use, provide net neutrality and more secure, safer and faster connections: Municipalities  Recognize Internet access as a public utility.  Take ownership of your electric company and provide fiber-optics-to-the-premises as a public utility. Longmont, Colorado and Chatanooga, Tennessee have done this.136 San Francisco, Boulder and Traverse City and other cities are now trying to do so.137  Create maximum limits on energy use, regardless ability to pay. Manufacturers  Build recycling into new products.  Make adapters that will allow wireless devices to operate with wires.138  Restore manufacture of wired devices and wired devices like corded landline phones and infrastructure like copper legacy landlines.  Put labels on electronics that list their embodied and lifecycle .  Semiconductor manufacturers can reduce their CO2 emissions by using renewables. Higher temperature processes in semiconductor production might reduce or eliminate the need for chemicals with toxic environmental impacts.139 Utilities  Remove "smart" meters and replace with safe, long-lasting analog-mechanical meters. Businesses  Decrease pop-ups and videos on websites, since anything data-intensive is also energy intensive. Viewing a webpage generates about 0.2 g of carbon dioxide per second. This increases to about 0.3g per second when the page has complex images, animation or videos. A badly designed site can use four times as much energy to perform the same tasks as a well-designed site. Keeping a website's code clean and orderly loads more quickly than a page full of data-intensive banners, pop-ups and large photos--and saves energy. Schools, government agencies and businesses  Move toward zero emissions.  Offer forums and share ways to conserve. Cultural change takes place in groups of seven.  Stage contests between neighbors and businesses to reduce use. Aim for quality questions and conversation, healthier households, a real (not virtual) community. Be tolerant and gentle. No one will have an easy time with this.  Set standards and define best practices to regulate electronic waste disposal. Service providers  Maintain copper legacy landlines, which use less energy than wireless communications, survive power outages and are significantly less vulnerable to hacking.  Establish "speed limits" on Internet use, i.e. maximum levels of use per household, which would be enforced regardless one's ability to pay.140  Tax users who go online more than (say) 45 hours per month to finance a global climate adaptation fund. Individuals  Return to wired connections whenever possible. Wire your computer with an Ethernet cable.  Value long product life. Upgrade less often. Do not buy Internet of Things devices and appliances. Congratulate yourself on not buying something.  Recycle ink cartridges and electronics at recycling centers.  Reserve mobile devices for exceptional situations. If you must have a phone, keep the Wi-Fi and bluetooth off. Keep "airplane mode" on, and program the phone to remind you to check for messages every two hours.  Move social media from your first page to your second or third page to break the habit of constant checking.  Turn Wi-Fi off for at least 12 hours while you sleep.  Remember that improved viewing quality likely requires more data and thereby more energy. (A blu-ray's data size can range between 25 and 50 GB, five to ten times the size of a HD video.141 With 3D movies at home, a video might be 150 GB. Holographic movies could approach 1000 GB.)  Spread the word: transmitting a video takes more energy than transmitting a photograph; transmitting a picture takes more energy than a voice message, which takes more than text. Skyping uses more energy than plain talk on a corded landline or a flip-phone.  Watch videos selectively and download via wired devices. Return to safely wired libraries. To sharing books and videos rather than privately availing the world wide web 24/7 to all 7.5 billion of us.  Delete old emails and Facebook posts.  Use voice and text more than video.

Parents  Delay children's use of electronics at least until they have mastered reading, writing and math on paper.  Teach children to budget Internet access.  Give children books on paper, eye-to-eye conversation, gardening, cooking and composting skills. These changes will require a massive public awareness campaign.

Living within our means Call this an urgent plea to revise our expectations of daily life and to live within our means. The sooner every Internet user recognizes the Internet as a privilege and limits his or her use of it, the longer we'll all be able to have it. Just because someone can afford to upgrade a device does not make it within our collective, ecological means.

Acknowledgements Thanks to Katie Alvord, Patricia Burke, Kate Kheel, Blake Levitt, Stephanie Mills, Janet Newton, Dr. Gary Olhoeft, A. Brooke Pyeatt, Emily Roberson, Robert Roth, Dr. Timothy Schoechle, Ted Smith, Jim Thomas.

References

1. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/12/there-are-no-clean-clouds/420744/ 2. Andrae, A. and T. Edler, "On global electricity usage of communication technology: trends to 2030," Challenges, 6(1):117-157, 2015. 3. https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/1498750/computers-will-use-more-electricity-than-the-entire- world-can-generate-by-2040-tech-experts-claim/ 4. Schoechle, Dr. Tim, Re-Inventing Wires, 2018.

Electrification, economy, increased population 5. http://noapp4that.org/ In other words, they were non-renewable.

Regulating electronic development 6. Diamond, Jared, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, Penguin Group, 2005.

The Computer and Digital Revolutions 7. Davis, Devra, Disconnect, Dutton, 2010 8. Cassavoy, L., "What is 4G wireless?: Lifewire, 8.21.17, https://www.lifewire.com/what-is-4g- wireless-577577 9. Smith, A., "Record shares of Americans now own smartphones, have home broadband," Pew Research Center, 1.12.17; http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/01/12/evolution-of- technology/ 10. Lunden, I., "6.1Bsmartphone users globally by 2020, overtaking basic fixed phone subscriptions," TechCrunch, 2 June 2015. https://techcrunch.com/2015/06/02/6-1b- smartphone-sers-globally-by-2020-overtaking-basic-fixed-phone-subscriptions/

11. Hasan, et al., "Green Cellular Networks: A Survey, Some Research Issues and Challenges," IEEE, Sept. 2011. 12. Ofcom, "Adults' media use and attitudes report; Technical report," 2014. 13. https://www.cnn.com/2016/06/30/health/americans-screen-time-nielsen/index.html 14. ibid.

To make a computer Manufacturing semiconductors 15. https://semiengineering.com/the-limits-of-the-lifecycle-2/ 16. http://semiengineering.com/making-chip-manufacturing-sustainable/ 17. www.svtc.org 18. Smith, Ted, David Sonnenfeld and David N. Pellow, Eds., Challenging the Chip: Labor Rights and Environmental Justice in the Global Electronics Industry, Temple Univ. Press, 2006. 19. Hayes, Brian, "The Memristor," American Scientist, 2011.

Conflict minerals 20. Eichstaedt, Peter, Consuming the Congo: War and Conflict Minerals in the World's Deadliest Place, Lawrence Hill Books, 2011. 21. http://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-conflict-minerals-funded-a-war-that-killed-millions/ 22. http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150402-the-worst-place-on-earth 23. https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/afr62/31/3183/2016/en/ "This is What We Die For: Human rights abuses in the Democratic Republic of the Congo power the global trade in cobalt," Amnesty Int'l January, 2016 report.

Hazards to workers 24. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2016/01/Child-labour-behind-smart-phone-and- electric-car-batteries/ 25. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2016/01/Child-labour-behind-smart-phone-and- electric-car-batteries/ 26. www.svtc.org 27. Kim, I., et al, "Leukemia and non-Hodgkin lymphoma in semiconductor industry workers in Korea," Int'l J. of Occupational and Env. Health, Vol. 18, No. 2, 2012. https://www.ien.com/product-development-news-20830336/samsung-workers-speak-up-on- working-conditions 28. http://icrt.co/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=25:harsh-reality-behind- apple-scandal&catid=84<emid=533 http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90778/90860/77295214.html 29. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/09/these-samsung-factories-sound- bad-foxconn/323947/

The Internet's energy hogs Access networks 30. "Cellular Networks with Embodied Energy," IEEE Network. Date? 31. CEET, Bell Labs and U. of Melbourne "The Power of Wireless Cloud: An analysis of the energy consumption of wireless cloud," April, 2013. 32. Abdulkafi, et al., "Energy Efficiency of Heterogenus Cellular Networks: A Review," J. of Applied Sciences, 2012. 33. CTIA, Semi-Annual Wireless Industry Survey, year-end, 2012.

34. Preist, C. and P. Shabajee, "Energy use in the media cloud: Behaviour change or technofix?" IEEE Second Int'l Conf. on Cloud Computing Technology and Science (CloudCom), 2010, pgs 581-586.

Data storage centers 35. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/sep/25/server-data-centre-emissions-air- travel-web-google-facebook-greenhouse-gas 36. http://mashable.com/2014/09/30/doe-energy-efficiency/; Obuvly.R2uqk 37. https://info.siteselectiongroup.com/blog/largest-north-american-and-global-data-center- projects-of-2017 38. Shehabi, A., et al, "United States Data Center Energy Usage Report, Technical report (LBNL-1005775), Lawrence Berkeley Nat'l Lab, 2016. cda.iea-43.org/document/46/united- states-data-center-energy-usage report 39. 2016 Lawrence Berkeley National Lab Report One kw can keep ten 100-watt lightbulbs lit for an hour. 40. https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?d=74&t=11 41. Cook, Gary, "How Clean is Your Cloud?" 42. Mills, Mark P., "The Cloud Begins with Coal: Big Data, Big Networks, Big Infrastructure and Big Power," August 2013. Sponsored by the American Mining Assoc. and the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity. 43. Cook, G., "How Clean is Your Cloud" 44. http://www.independent.co.uk/environmental/global-warming-data-centres-to-consume- three-times-as-much-energy-in-next-decade-experts-warn-a6830086.html 45. Judge, P., "The truth is: data center power is out of control," 2016. http://www.datacenterdynamics.com/content-tracks-design-build/the-truth-is-data-center- power-is-out-of-control/95425.fullarticle

Embodied energy 46. de Decker, Kris, "The monster footprint of digital technology, 2009; http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2009/06/embodied-energy-of-digital-technology.html 47. Navigant Consulting for EIA," Residential and Commercial Building Technologies," September, 2011. 48. Lucky, R., "Cellphones and cameras don't ripen, like bananas, on the way to the store," IEEE Spectrum, Sept. 2012. 49. https://www.cnn.com/2016/06/30/health/americans-screen-time-nielsen/index.html 50. Mills, Mark P., "The Cloud Begins with Coal."

Turning on a light vs. streaming a video 51. Mills, Mark P, "The Cloud Begins with Coal."

How the Internet speeds climate change 52. Mills, Mark, "The Cloud Begins with Coal." 53. https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/es303384y

The Internet also hogs human know-how 54. Thomas, Jim, "How corporate giants are automating the farm," 2017. https://newint.org/features/2017/11/01/agriculture-robots

Electronic waste 55. www.svtc.org 56. https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Climate-Change/Documents/GEM%202017/Global-E- waste%20Monitor%202017%20-%20Executive%20Summary.pdf 57. https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/12/e-waste-monitor-report-glut 58. https://www.thebalance.com/e-waste-recycling-facts-and-figures-2878189 59. https://www.epa.gov/recycle/electronics-donation-and-recycling#why 60. https://www.thebalance.com/e-waste-recycling-facts-and-figures-2878189; 61. http://www.greenpeace.org/international/Global/international/planet-2/report/2008/2/not-in- our-backyard-summary.pdf 62. https://www.thebalance.com/e-waste-recycling-facts-and-figures-2878189 Note: According to https://www.census.gov/popclock/, at 2014's end, the US population was 319,951,923. According to www.thebalance.com, the US generated 11.7 million tons of e-waste in 2014. Therefore, the average US citizen generated 73.135 pounds of e-waste in 2014.

Making the Internet's energy demands visible 63. . de Decker 64. deDecker, Kris, "Why We Need a Speed Limit for the Internet," http://www.resilience.org/stories/2015-10-21/why-we-need-a-speed-limit-for-the-Internet 65. Huang, Junxian, "A close examination of performance and power characteristics of 4G LTE networks," June 2012. 66. Corcoran, Peter, "Emerging trends in electricity consumption for consumer ICT," 2013. 67. Cisco Visual Networking Index 2012-2017," 68. Cisco, 2013. 69. "Cisco Visual Networking Index: Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast Update: 2014-2019," CISCO, 2015. 70. Ofcam, "Communications Market Technical Report," 2014. 71. Cisco, "Cisco visual networking index: Forecast and methodology, 2012-2017," Technical report; May 29, 2013. 72. Ericsson, "Ericsson mobility report: on the pulse of the networked society" (mwc edition), Feb., 2015. 73. Mills, Mark P., "The Cloud Begins with Coal." 74. Ogas, O. and S. Gaddam, A Billion Wicked Thoughts: What the Internet Tells Us About Sex and Relationships, Plume, 2012.

Now comes 5G and the Internet of Things 75. "Over-the-Air TV Gets a Makeover" by Barry Manz, Feb 16, 2018, www.mwrf.com 76. Ganz, J. and D. Reinsel, "The digital universe in 2020: Big data, bigger digital shadows, and biggest growth in the far east," IDC iView: IDC Analyze the Future, 2007:1-16, 2012. 77. . https://insidebigdata.com/2017/02/16/the-exponential-growth-of-data/ 78. https://www.emc.com/leadership/digital-universe/2014iview/executive-summary.htm

5G's infrastructure 79. https://www.cio.com/article/3117705/cellular-networks-5g-could-require-cell-towers-on- every-street-corner.html 80. https://spectrum.ieee.org/video/telecom/wireless/everything-you-need-to-know-about-5g 81. https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/telecom/wireless/millimeter-waves-travel-more-than-10- kilometers-in-rural-virginia 82. https://ehtrust.org/list-us-state-bills-streamlining-wireless-small-cellsdasnodes-rights-way/ 83. YouTube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=dkBO9IVhemA

Unequal energy use; unequal communications 84. Chancel, Lucas and Thomas Piketty, "Carbon and inequality: from Kyoto to Paris," 2015. http://www.ledevoir.com/documents/pdf/chancelpiketty2015.pdf 85. de Decker, "How Much Energy Do We Need?" 86. Chancel and Piketty, 2015. 87. Galloway 88. https://medium.com/@kushnickbruce/5g-wireless-is-the-new-fiber-optic-bait-and-switch- scandal-646246b8f34d 89. Wu, Tim, "Network Neutrality FAQ," 2016; http://www.timwu.org/network_neutrality.html 90. Communications Workers of America Technology Report: Mobile Service Not an Adequate Substitute to Robust Wireline Broadband, 10.6.17; https://www.cwa- union.org/sites/default/files/ctc_mobile_broadband_white_paper_-_final_-_20171004.pdf

Digital currency 91. https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2018/1/18/16901422/bitcoin-price-crash- energy-emissions 92. https://www.electronicproducts.com/Programming/Software/ls_bitcoin_power_hungry_A_look_ at_the_environmental_cost_of_cryptocurrencies.aspx 93. http://www.manchester.ac.uk/discover/news/microwaves-could-be-as-bad-for-the- environment-as-cars-suggests-new-research/ 94. https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2018/1/18/16901422/bitcoin-price-crash- energy-emissions 95. https://www.electronicproducts.com/Programming/Software/ls_bitcoin_power_hungry_A_look_ at_the_environmental_cost_of_cryptocurrencies.aspx

Impacts to biological systems 96. http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/biodiversity/elements_of_biodiversity/extinction_cri sis/ 97. Contribution of Working Group II to the 5th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, Part A Global and Sectoral Aspects, Cambridge University Press, 2014. 98. Bakker, Martha M. et al, "Soil Erosion as a Driver of Land-Use Change," Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment, 105: no. 3, 2005. 99. https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a15895746/bust-big-tech-silicon-valley/ 100. Nat'l Toxicology Program Study, May, 2016 101. www.saferemr.com/2015/09/effect-of-mobile-phones-on-sperm.html 102. De-Kun, Li, 2017. 103. NTP 104. www.bioinitiative.org 105. www. saferemr.com 106. Barnes, Frank and Sahithi Kandala, "Effects of Time Delays on Biological Feedback Systems and Electromagnetic Field Exposures," Bioelectromagnetics, 2018. 107. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0013935118300045 108. Dunckley, Victoria, MD, Reset Your Child's Brain: A Four-Week Plan to End Meltdowns, Raise Grades and Boost Social Skills by Reversing the Effects of Electronic Screen-Time; New World Library, 2015. www.resetyourchildsbrain.com

109. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/technology/your-smartphone-is-making-you- stupid/article37511900/ 110. www.saferemr.com EXACT? 111. www.mdsafetech.org 112. www.eduresearcher.com Dr. Roxanna Marachi's blog. 113. For discussion about safer tech use in schools, see www.electronicsilentspring.com/safer- tech

Electronic innovation and liability 114. www.electronicsilentspring.com/liability EXACT? 115. http://www.brinknews.com/the-payoff-and-peril-of-smart-infrastructure/

What solutions have we tried? Smart meters 116. www.smartgridawareness.org 117. www.emfsafetynetwork.org 118. www.smartgridawareness.org 119. Peter Sierck? 120. Need James Woolsey Ref.

E-vehicles 121. http://cyprus-mail.com/2017/12/03/beyond-hype-hazards-electric-vehicles/ 122. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-5274809/How-car-SPYING-you.html 123. www.electronicsilentspring/MED IMPLANT INTRO PACK

Solar and wind power 124. http://www.resilience.org/stories/2018-01-29/how-much-energy-do-we-need/ 125. ibid. 126. Manville, Albert, PhD, "Impacts to birds and bees due to collisions and electrocutions from some tall structures in the United States: wires, towers, turbines and solar arrays--state of the art in addressing the problems," Chapter 20, pp. 415-442, Problemmatic Wildlife: A Cross- disciplinary Approach, Ed. F. M. Angelici, Springer Int'l Publishing, Switz. YEAR? 127. Segell, Michael, "Electro-Shocker: How dirty electricity created a cancer cluster at a California school," Prevention Magazine, January, 2010. 128. Manville, YEAR 129. https://vtdigger.org/2016/08/04/turbine-foes-seize-on-window-issue-in-new-temporary- sound-rules/

Limits to E-growth 130. https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/1498750/computers-will-use-more-electricity-than-the- entire-world-can-generate-by-2040-tech-experts-claim/ 131. IEA Statistics, "Key Electricity Trends;" 2015; Corcoran, Peter, "Emerging trends in electricity consumption for consumer ICT," 2013. 132. http://www.resilience.org/stories/2015-10-21/why-we-need-a-speed-limit-for-the-Internet 133. ibid. 134. Hazas, M, J. Morley et al., "Are there limits to growth in data traffic?: On time use, data generation and speed," LIMITS, '16. 135. Mian, I.S., D. Twisleton, et al, "What is the resource footprint of a computer science department? Place, People and Pedagogy," Discussion Paper for Data for Policy, September 4. 2017. www.zenodo.org/record/884492#.Wil8uxlOn3g

Real Solutions 136. Mowkowitz, Peter, "Chattanooga Was a Typical Postindustrial City, Then It Began Offering Municipal Broadband: Chattanooga's publicly-owned Internet service has helped boost its economy and bridge the digital divide," The Nation, 6.3.16. 137. Morris, David, "To Save the Internet, We Must Own the Networks;" 2017; Institute for Local Self-Reliance, www.ilsr.org. 138. Schoechle, Dr. Tim, Re-Inventing Wires, 2018. 139. http://semiengineering.com/making-chip-manufacturing-sustainable/ 140. de Decker, Kris, 2018, http://www.resilience.org/stories/2018-01-29/how-much-energy-do- we-need/ 141. Seetharam, A., "Shipping to streaming, is this stuff green?" 2010; and "The energy and greenhouse-gas implications of Internet video streaming in the United States," 2014.