Another Article About Why “Smart Tech” is Environmentally Toxic (The Ecologist)

By B.N. Frank

Only fools continue to insist that “Smart” Technology is beneficial to humans and the environment. This includes the tens of millions of electric, gas, and water “Smart” Meters installed by utility companies worldwide which have also increased utility customers’ bills, are causing fires and explosions and all kinds of other mayhem.

Unfortunately, “Smart” Meters and Grids aren’t the only technology being touted as “green” while poisoning us (see 1, 2, 3, 4, 5) and the planet with their need for frequent replacement, etc. 5G, Internet of Things (IoT), and “Smart” everything for “Smart Cities” are plenty toxic too. Ditto on the tens of thousands of satellites being launched to blast 5G and WiFi back down at us from space (see 1, 2, 3).

More about them from The Ecologist:

With data centres set to have a bigger carbon footprint than the whole aviation industry, smart technology’s benefits need urgent re-examination.

Smart technology has been promoted as ‘green’ because it can help monitor and reduce carbon emissions and achieve energy efficiencies. But is this the full picture?

The embedded energy costs of communications technologies and voracious digital consumption are actually exacerbating global heating rather than helping prevent it, the recent Shift Project report, Lean ICT, Toward Digital Sobriety, suggests.

[…]

Mining

Besides the carbon issue, Paul Mobbs argues in Land Magazine that there is a “significantly toxic ecological footprint” from mining rare earth minerals essential for our devices. For example, mining cobalt in Africa or lithium in Argentina – key ingredients of lithium ion batteries – is implicated in slavery and in the abuse of indigenous people’s rights.

Mining of the sea-bed for these minerals, another option being pursued, will put fragile marine ecosystems at further risk and, according to Greenpeace, may make climate change worse by releasing carbon stored in deep sea sediments.

All this gives pause for environmental thought.

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Activist Post reports regularly about 5G, IoT, “Smart” Meters and other environmentally UNFRIENDLY technology. For more information, visit our archives and the following websites:

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