A report released last week by a “carbon transition” think tank is blaming online pornography and other use of online video for ultimately heating up the earth and creating climate change. In their report, “Climate crisis: the unsustainable use of online video – a practical case for digital sobriety”, study authors link CO2 generation to online video consumption. “We live in a world where only one form of digital use, online video, generates 60% of world data flows and thus over 300 million tons of CO2 per year.” Study authors assert increased CO2 leads to a heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and overall climate change.
Maxime Efoui-Hess, an engineer specialized in climate and computer modeling, who graduated from ISAE-SUPAÉRO, Université Paul Sabatier and the French Meteorology University, led the research work. He is also co-author of the report “Lean ICT – Towards a digital sobriety” (The Shift Project 2018). According to their analysis, online video represents 20% of all greenhouse gas emissions of all digital devices when use and production are included and 1% of global emissions. When it comes to video, 34% is based on Video on Demand providers like Netflix, while 27% if from online pornography sites such as Pornhub and XTube. 21% comes from what they describe as the “Tubes” such as YouTube, Vimeo, and DailyMotion. The remaining 18% is based on streaming video hosted on social networks like Twitter. When it comes to online pornography, the report says it is responsible for 16% of the total flow of data and 5% of the total greenhouse gas emissions due to digital technology.
When compared to the CO2 output of many countries, the amount of CO2 generated by online porn is equivalent to the output of 72 countries with the lowest carbon emissions in the world, combined. On its own, pornographic digital streaming generates 81 million tons of carbon dioxide each year.
The report ponders, “From the standpoint of climate change and other planetary boundaries, it is not a question of being “for” or “against” pornography, telemedicine, Netflix or emails: the challenge is to avoid a use deemed precious from being impaired by the excessive consumption of another use deemed less essential. This makes it a societal choice, to be arbitrated collectively to avoid the imposition of constraints on our uses against our will and at our expense.”
As the report title suggests, report authors are encouraging “digital sobriety” with people curtailing their digital media consumption for the sake of climate.
