The Climate Crisis: A Record-Breaking Summer

It’s official: the summer of 2024 is the hottest ever recorded globally, according to the European Copernicus Observatory. All indicators point to 2024 being the hottest year ever, surpassing the infamous 15 degrees Celsius threshold that we should not exceed by 2050!

The climate situation is dire, no surprise there. While global solutions have been known for a long time, they require a level of coordination we’re incapable of achieving, and too often, they’re steeped in capitalist, liberal culture (let’s not forget that the last president of COP 28 in Dubai was the head of an oil giant).

It might feel discouraging, right? Here’s some good news: simple options that can have an immediate and significant impact are within our reach. This is what we call responsible digital practices.

A Key Contextual Point

The digital sector as a whole is responsible for about 4% of global greenhouse gas emissions – already significant, double that of aviation – and more than 10% of electricity consumption. All projections predict an explosion of these numbers in the coming years, particularly due to the rapid development of artificial intelligence.

Behind every AI-powered query are energy-hungry processors and graphic cards, data centers that need cooling, communication networks that clutter our landscapes, undersea cables that disrupt deep ecosystems… but also additional energy production units (regardless of whether they are renewable or not, zero-impact energy does not exist – it’s better to create energy for necessary applications). Here’s a telling statistic: when you purchase new electronic equipment, you’ve already generated 80% of the emissions. So, the issue lies mainly with hardware.

Electronic Hardware at the Heart of the Problem

As a symbol, just yesterday, Apple held its traditional presentation of the latest smartphones. Beyond the brand’s eco-responsibility announcements, one number is particularly striking: sales. The number that drives every decision and makes the markets tremble. In 2023, Apple sold an impressive 234 million iPhones worldwide. When you multiply this by the greenhouse gas emissions generated throughout the lifecycle (estimated at at least 85 kg), that’s around 20 megatons. 20 megatons represent 0.04% of global emissions, 28% of Canada’s annual emissions (and no, we’re not model students).

Making Responsible Digital Choices

Even if these figures don’t resonate with you (they should), in a world rapidly transitioning to renewable energy, where demand for clean energy (especially electricity in our regions) will exponentially increase to support our lifestyles, every kWh is a precious resource. We can all agree on that.

It’s imperative to seriously examine our relationship with digital consumption. The choices we make regarding digital, as citizens or businesspeople, have and will continue to have a major impact on our environment. And it’s all in the palm of our hands.

Join the Responsible Digital Community

If you want to join a dynamic community of passionate citizens who want to make a difference on the Responsible Digital front in Quebec, come and join the Collective for Responsible and Sustainable Digital.