Creating This Blog and Our Other Internet Activities Contribute to Carbon Emissions

April 4, 2018 – We don’t think about our electronic communication as a source of emissions but rather see it as a way to reduce carbon pollution. Why? Because when we email we don’t need an envelope, sheets of paper, a stamp, and the post office network to collect and distribute what we produce. Surely then email contributes much less carbon to the atmosphere. All that is true. But nonetheless, electronic communication does have an impact on the environment.

Credit Angel, a free credit checking and reporting web-based service located in the United Kingdom, has attempted to quantify just how big our global Internet carbon footprint really is. It is an eye-opener for me and I am sure it will be as well for you, my readers.

Take Google Search – Today more than 60,000 inquiries occur every second using Google Search. Each search produces 0.2 grams of carbon dioxide (CO2) on average. A minute of using Google Search will then produce over 750 kilograms (more than 1,650 pounds) of CO2 emissions. Multiply that over a year, and consider the number of new Internet users being added each year and you have a sizable carbon footprint just from Google Search.

Of course, Search is just one of the many applications Google makes available for free to the global Internet audience. Think of the apps you use on your Android smartphone such as Google Maps, and you can multiply the emissions by a geometric factor. No one is more aware than Google of their net carbon contribution with the company publishing its internal environmental report each year celebrating more than a decade of carbon neutrality.

Google and its parent corporation Alphabet may operate a net-zero emission business, but those of us who use the applications it has created for the Internet are not so fortunate because the data we send and receive comes over third-party providers’ networks that consume electricity for data servers, heating, air conditioning, and other operational requirements.

That’s what makes this Credit Angel effort at calculating just how much our daily Internet activity adds to our global carbon emission totals. so very important.

Here are probably the most often used Internet activities in which we almost always engage.

Sending Email – Collectively we send more than 2.5 million emails every second. Each contributes 4 grams of CO2. That doesn’t sound like a lot. But when you start running the numbers that’s over 150 million emails per minute and a contribution of more than 620,000 kilograms (just under 1.37 million pounds) of CO2 to the atmosphere each minute.

Now consider how much of the email we receive turns out to be promotional, junk, or spam (McAfee, the antivirus, and security software company, puts the number at 78%), it would seem that we can find some economies here in terms of carbon emission contributions if we can eliminate the trash.

Using Facebook – If you needed another reason to consider ending your Facebook account, the carbon footprint of this social media giant is worth a gander. Facebook has more than 2 billion active users today. The annual carbon emission calculation per user equals 299 grams of CO2. That means every minute we are on Facebook making comments, friending, and following, we add 1,100 kilograms (2,425 pounds) of CO2 emissions to the atmosphere. Maybe less of Facebook would be a good habit to consider in calculating our personal carbon footprint contributions.

Watching YouTube – If you watch YouTube videos then you know just how easily you can be suckered into watching the cute cat and dog segments, late-night talk show monologues, or endless numbers of “how-to” self-help instructional videos. Well, according to The Guardian newspaper, every viewing second contributes 0.0017 grams of CO2 emissions. And every minute we view 4 million of these videos, which means our viewing habits are producing more than 7 kilograms (15.5 pounds) of CO2.

Posting Tweets – The President of the United States is the Twitter-in-Chief and every one of his communications produces 0.02 grams of CO2 emissions. So one can say he not only contributes a Twitter storm but also adds to global warming. Of course, he is not alone. A single second on Twitter equals more than 8,000 tweets. A minute produces close to 10 kilograms (22 pounds) of CO2.

Did I tell you this is an eye-opener? We can all do something about this in calculating ways to reduce our carbon contribution and lessen our impact on the planet.