The Carbon Cost of Clicking

Most mornings, before I’ve even fully woken up, the first thing I do is reach for my phone. After turning off my alarm, I inevitably scroll through my latest emails, messages, and the news. These little habits have become so part of my morning routine that I barely notice them. Yet all these clicks and scrolls have a hidden cost that I rarely acknowledge: the environmental and carbon impact of everyday digital technology. Did you know that every email you send uses approximately 4g CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent)? Did you know an average short conversation with an AI chatbot uses approx. 500ml of water, the volume of an average water bottle? That’s a sobering thought in this Season of Creation focused on ‘living water’.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately how much of my life happens online. As well as the endless emails, Teams and Zoom meetings, and all of my website browsing, there’s also the invisible world of servers, data centres and ‘cloud’ storage. I’m struck by how physical the digital world really is. Every message I send zips through miles and miles of undersea cables. There are data centres humming away in corners of cities I’ll never visit but which hold so much of my identity. Every photo I snap (and rarely look at again) is saved and stored somewhere on a server that needs cooling, energy and maintenance. This ‘cloud’ storage is actually somewhere on this precious planet of ours, consuming energy and water at an alarming rate. It not quite as benign as the name suggests. This stuff isn’t as invisible as I’d like to think.

I find myself asking how I can live more mindfully and gently when so much of my digital life is ensnared in systems beyond my control, in countries far away and impacting people I’ll never meet. What does it mean to follow Christ in a world where even my online searching and emails have consequences for my neighbour?  As with all questions of global justice, asking these questions draws me back to the heart of the gospel to discover afresh that our interdependence with every living thing is a God-given delight and not a burden. Solidarity is the most radical and hopeful response we can make, to a world we receive as a gift from a loving God.

I’ve been thinking about this more deeply since joining a St James’s Carbon Literacy training day in May. We explored the science of climate change and the carbon costs of our everyday lives. One activity was to calculate our “carbon footprint” – the amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases produced every year from our everyday lifestyle choices and activities. For example, how much we fly, drive or eat imported food, meat or dairy. (You can calculate yours too on the WWF website in about 5 minutes.)

As part of the training, everyone commits to take a specific action to reduce our carbon footprint as individuals and in the communities, organisations and workplaces we’re part of. Over the coming months, Hazel Bradley, Deborah Perkin and I will be creating some factsheets and advice for anyone who’d like to reduce the environmental impact of their everyday digital habits and technology. More on this coming soon.

Before then, here’s a few things to start with:

• How many unread or unwanted emails can you delete? Can you delete any unwanted photos? The data centres used for file storage are responsible for 2% of the world’s carbon emissions, and this proportion is growing alarmingly fast.
• Can you use a standard Google search rather than an AI search engine? An AI query takes approximately 10 times more electricity than a standard Google search.
• Can you repair a damaged phone or laptop, rather than buying a new one? If you buy a new device, laptop or phone, can you buy an ethically sourced device such a Fairphone or refurbished device (available from nearly all the major phone manufacturers)? (These are broken devices which have been repaired to make them as good as new.)
• Do you know where your nearest recycling centre is for electronic devices? Did you know that almost half a billion electronic devices go to landfill in the UK every year? The majority of these could be recycled.

All of this can feel overwhelming at first – the magnitude of the problem, the invisibility of the digital world and its infrastructure, but one of the most hopeful parts of the Carbon Literacy training is realising we don’t do this alone. So many churches, workplaces, schools and individuals are asking the same questions and searching for better ways forward for our shared planet. Small changes matter. Every deleted email and every repaired device is a tiny act of justice and care as we seek to create a just future and flourishing planet, reaching for the Kingdom of God.

Details of the next Carbon Literacy training day this Saturday 12^th September are on this page .