Water doesn't need us to save her-- she needs us to remember we are her.
-- Casey Camp-Horinek, Ponca Nation
Have you noticed that electronics manufacturers, telecom access networks and data storage centers can't survive without water?
Starting with mining for raw materials, manufacturing electronics can cause lakes to disappear-- and create health hazards for living creatures.
While the tech industry expands, so does its water consumption. Google's new environmental sustainability report explains: "As our business continues to grow, so does our water use: our overall water consumption increased by 28% from 2023 to 2024."
Meanwhile, we're encouraged to admire children who use electronics before they have speech (or mastery of reading, writing and math on paper)-- without awareness of computers' water demands-- let alone their impacts to brain development.
I blinked-- and then noticed people marveling that A.I. can make us more productive and save us from ecological disaster. I noticed A.I.'s influence in doctors' thinking, insurance company decisions, grocery stores' shelves and children's education. Some parents use robots to answer their kids' questions and stop fights.
Advocating for regulations around social media use, data storage centers, solar facilities, battery storage, e-vehicles, EV chargers and other technologies tends to result in people saying "technology is inevitable-- " and dismissing its consequences.
Call this a Contest for Survival between living creatures and computers (and tech corporations). Where do households and communities have control?
To begin, we need to know what resources manufacturers, Internet providers, A.I. providers and other developments take from our watershed-- and how they pollute it. We need to move toward living within our own watershed's offerings of water, food, fuel and ores.
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