Thursday, April 23, 2026
The carbon cost of our clicks
Fast Company: Last year at SXSW, I got on stage with a colleague from Tangent, a London-based digital design agency, to ask a simple question: What if every time you checked your phone, a visible puff of smoke rose into the air? While we can’t immediately see the environmental impact of our digital lives, it is very real.
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The whole problem of why digital environmental awareness is such a big issue, as this artice points out, is the fact that we cannot fathom or see how detrimental our “clicks” are. While much awareness has been spread about the immense environmental impact specifically generative AI has, we forget the impact simple use of technology has as well. The thing is though, is that unlike AI, there has been development in technological production and use to mitigate the environmental impact, however it still very much exists. But moreover, this article reminds me of the propaganda surrounding a person’s “environmental footprint” as a designed means of guilting individual consumers over corporations. With the way our society is run, it’s impossible at this point to try and separate technology from daily use on a large (even small individual scale), and I don’t think we necessarily should with the environmental advancements made. That being said, again, we can’t even consider the damage done, despite scientists and historians consistently waving red flags. What can be done now though, is specifically targeting corporations in their practices of valuing profit over environmental impact.
I feel like even if people understood the environmental impact the internet has on the environment, people are too used to the internet of the modern era that people would just ignore that consequence(this isn’t to see that everyone would, there would be a few people that limited their activity but it wouldn’t be enough to massively change anything) especially since it is only 4 percent of total emissions people might focus their attention instead to other global emitters instead and claim that the internet is not a substantial emitter compared to those and while their is some truth to that it’s important to note that every emitter should be analyzed and see if there is a solution to decrease the green house gasses they produce.i see people a lot more enraged at chat gpt for this than their daily internet scrolls but that might be because of the negative reputation ai already has.
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