World Wide Waste: How Digital Is Killing Our PlanetÑand What We Can Do About It

World Wide Waste: How Digital Is Killing Our PlanetÑand What We Can Do About ItSpeaking out when its unpopular. Back in the day, Henry David Thoreau raged at the robber baronsthe big shots of their age, despoiling the environment in the name of progress. Deep in the throes of the seemingly unstoppable growth of tech, a modern day Thoreau has emerged in the guise of Gerry McGoverndecrying the massive, hidden negative impacts of tech on the environment. McGovern has thoroughly documented in World Wide Waste how tech damages the

Speaking out when itÕs unpopular. Back in the day, Henry David Thoreau raged at the robber baronsÑthe big shots of their age, despoiling the environment in the name of progress. Deep in the throes of the seemingly unstoppable growth of tech, a modern-day Thoreau has emerged in the guise of Gerry McGovernÑdecrying the massive, hidden negative impacts of tech on the environment. McGovern has thoroughly documented in World Wide Waste how tech damages the EarthÑand what we should be doing about it. It is not just the acres of discarded computer hardware conveniently dumped in Third World countries. Every time an email is downloaded it contributes to global warming. Every tweet, search, check of a webpage creates pollution. Digital is physical. Those data centers are not in the Cloud. TheyÕre on land in massive physical buildings packed full of computers hungry for energy. It seems invisible. It seems cheap and free. ItÕs not. Digital costs the Earth.