Dear Geist,
As a writer who drafts in longhand, then inputs the draft in a word processor, then the same again for each revision, am I a wanton polluter of the Mother Earth? That's what two people in my writers' group are saying. They do absolutely everything on the computer, but surely that takes a toll too, and not just the blue light.
—Old-Fashioned, Toronto ON
Dear Old,
Oh, yes. According to Jason Stamper in Standpoint, “Globally, the IT industry produces about the same volume of greenhouse gases airlines do,” and Anne Quito, writing in Quartz, says that Google searches “account for about 40% of the internet's carbon footprint.” And so on. A page of search results on a home computer is quick and noiseless, but the vast networks and subnetworks of computers, switches, routers and other essential technologies that bring in those results burn a lot of fuel—mainly fossil fuels. The good news is your colleagues cannot blame pollution on you. The not-so-good news is that all of us in the writing and publishing business—and many other culture pursuits—are implicated.
—The Editors
