Equinox Conservation: EMF/RF/5G/Wireless - Choices that Harm or Harmonize?
“Without action, you’re kidding yourself.”
by Patricia Burke of Safe Tech International Image courtesy Floris Freshman
The equinox occurs today, on March 19, 2024 This is the third blog written in observance of the Equinox and is accompanied by a news summary highlighting a recent publication about insects. This is part of an on-going discussion about the need to heal the growing divide between telecommunications technology and nature and health.
Losing Balance
When my children were young, parents began driving their children to and from the school bus stop. It started only during inclement weather, but then the habit became the norm. Cars often sat with the engines running (although many towns have since passed anti-idling laws) with older children and parents often on their cell phones.
The change in behavior unfolded insidiously and most likely was unintentional.
But from a health perspective, families who followed the crowd adopted dysfunctional behaviors with quantifiable negative impacts on air quality. They would have benefitted more from walking together, interaction, and access to the sun and nature, rather than the unexamined comfort and convenience.
Humans slipped in their inborn capacities and intelligence. They made unwise choices, mostly unaware or in denial.
Course Corrections in Consciousness
On the other side of the equation, there have been remarkable examples of attempts at course corrections.
Consumer opposition against Nestle’s exploded in the late 1970s when the corporation was convincing poor African mothers without access to clean water that their infant formula was superior to breast milk, resulting in infant deaths.
The Catholic Church played an enormous role in promoting the ethics underlying the boycott. Another example of engaged activism unfolded during the historical action against the Gallo wine company.
Societal Change, Sensibility, and Individual Choice
Societal norms can be changed for better or for worse.
For example, Politico’s “Digital Future Daily” has the tag line “How the next wave of technology is upending the global economy and its power structures” implying that tech is ushering in a more enlightened age. Whereas Silicon Valley historically presented itself as anti-establishment and “for the people” the reality is that Silicon Valley has unleashed its own grotesque tsunami of consolidation of wealth and power, and abuses, including its ties with the military industrial complex.
At this point in history, a growing but marginalized portion of society is at an inflection point. Experts and consumers recognize that screen technologies, including wireless devices and infrastructure, promoted under the guises of safety, security and sustainability, are in fact none of those things. Informed advocates recognize that we have surpassed the threshold where the antidote is to wait for more tech innovation to address the social, safety, and security risks. They are calling out the entrainment, addiction, greed, delusion, and willful ignorance. The emperor has no clothes.
Lack of insight is inherent in the use of the devices themselves, even without virtual and augmented realities. Focus is diverted to a narrowly contained field. Users are distracted from witnessing both the inner and outer environment. Even eyesight is already being harmed.
Moore’s Law
Delusions about tech and wireless have prevailed in sustainability and carbon-based climate efforts, despite reported harm.
One contributing principle was delineated in 1965 – Moore’s Law.
Investopedia describes Moore’s Law:
“In 1965, Gordon Moore posited that roughly every two years, the number of transistors on microchips will double. Commonly referred to as Moore’s Law, this phenomenon suggests that computational progress will become significantly faster, smaller, and more efficient over time. Widely regarded as one of the hallmark theories of the 21st century, Moore’s Law carries significant implications for the future of technological progress—along with its possible limitations.”
An implication of Moore’s law is that as efficiency and availability increases and consumer costs decrease, overall consumption actually increases.
This creates a conundrum for efforts towards conservation.
Digitally based technologies are not decreasing energy and resource consumption.
See The Conundrum: How Scientific Innovation, Increased Efficiency, and Good Intentions Can Make Our Energy and Climate Problems Worse (2011) “[] David Owen argues that our best intentions are still at cross purposes to our true goal – living sustainably and caring for our environment and the future of the planet. Efficiency, once considered the holy grail of our environmental problems, turns out to be part of the problem. Efforts to improve efficiency and increase sustainable development only exacerbate the problems they are meant to solve, more than negating the environmental gains. We have little trouble turning increases in efficiency into increases in consumption.”
See Coal Plants Staying Online Because Ai Needs So Much Power “We Still Don’t Appreciate The Energy Needs Of This Technology. Nationwide, the AI industry’s energy demand seems even more fearsome. According to an analysis from Boston Consulting Group cited by Bloomberg, the electricity consumption at US data centers alone is expected to triple from 2022 levels by the end of the decade. In the analysis’s summary, that’s equal to the electricity used by about a third of the total homes in the US, and about 7.5 percent of the entire country’s projected energy demand.
See: An increasingly energy-gulping digital world The fast expansion of ICT leads to a rapid increase of its direct energy footprint. This footprint includes the energy used for the production and the use of ICT equipment (servers, networks, terminals). This direct footprint has been increasing by 9% per year. Compared to 2010 the direct energy consumption generated by 1 euro invested in digital technologies has increased by 37%. The energy intensity of the ICT sector is growing by 4% per year, in stark contrast to the trend of global GDP’s energy intensity evolution, which is declining by 1.8% per year. The explosion of video uses (Skype, streaming, etc.) and the increased consumption of frequently renewed digital equipment are the main drivers of this inflation.
When did we go so far off course?
In part, via trauma-based, uninformed choices regarding cell phones, broadband consumption, and infrastructure, powered by regulations that expressly prohibit protecting health and the environment – to facilitate economic growth.
This is an extinction paradigm.
September 11, School Shootings, Cell Phones
Media depictions of Sept. 11, (including a phone call made from an airplane) were one factor that translated directly into consumers under stress seeking a sense of safety and control –by having cell phones where they could reach anyone, anywhere, and any time. School shootings also contributed greatly to associating addressing trauma and terror with cellphones (despite the fact that experts note that in this type of danger, common sense indicates that students are best served by being vigilant to their surroundings, and not on a device.)
The fear-based consumer shift was not accompanied by scrutiny regarding the safety of the technology for human health or the environment, and consumers hold an unfounded presumption of safety.
Broadband Usage: Pandemic Trauma and Hollywood Writer’s Strike
On February 13, in his blogpost “Another New High for Broadband Usage” Doug Dawson of CCG Consulting reported Openvault’s statistics for combined upload and download usage in the United States from 2018 to 2023. He wrote, “The average U.S. broadband customer used 54.3 more gigabytes per month than a year earlier. That alone is a pretty amazing statistic – 54 gigabytes is a lot of usage in a month. With roughly 120 million broadband subscribers, this equates to over 6.5 billion more gigabytes of data used each month than just a year ago.” []Open Vault always includes other interesting statistics in its quarterly reports:
The average upload usage per household grew to just over 40 gigabytes per month – up from 15 gigabytes at the end of 2019.
6% of homes now use over a terabyte of data per month.
Median household broadband usage is 423.7 gigabytes – half of homes use more broadband than the median, and half use less.
OpenVault showed the differences between residents and businesses for the first time. The average residence used 652 GB at the end of 2023, while the average business customer used 345 GB.”
On March 19, additional statistics about new broadband speeds were provided here.
Power brokers, ranging from environmental groups to liberal politicians, who identify with conservation goals, have ignored the costs and implications, and in fact continue to enable the dramatic curve in increased broadband demand.
Written Word, Voice, or Video? Who cares? Who Counts?
This increase in screen time was insidiously ushered into the mass culture during the pandemic, when many other alternative activities were limited, and when family members began using multiple independent devices.
A colleague noted, “In terms of consumption, a page of text is the equivalent of a mosquito; an image represents a fly; and video is the equivalent of a jumbo jet.
5 kilobytes (0.005 MB) for 1,000-word text web page
150 kilobytes for (0.150 MB) 800 x 1000 pixel jpeg image
150,000 kilobytes (150 MB) for HD/1080p ten-minute Youtube compressed video
300,000 kilobytes (300 MB) for 4k/2160p ten-minute Youtube compressed video”
More Data and Video Necessitates More Infrastructure
The article Cell Tower Range: How Far Do They Reach? explains. “On average, the maximum usable range of a cell tower is 25 miles. While the typical coverage radius of a cell tower is 1 to 3 miles and in dense urban environments, a cell tower usually reaches 0.25 miles to 1 mile before handing off a user’s connection to another nearby cell site. [] . However, people began using their cell phones for more than just phone calls, specifically, for applications like texting, mobile internet, and e-mail – all of which used more data than voice services. As a result, the radius that a cell tower could theoretically cover was still 5 miles, but only people in the first 2.5 miles could receive enough spectrum and thus, cellular service to their phones.”
Will the tide turn?
Course Correction Example: Zoom Galleries
When and how does corrective social change unfold? When awareness translates into action.
Last week, I participated in a zoom call with over 100 participants, featuring a presentation followed by Q and A. Every person in the gallery had their camera turned off, except for the presenter and the moderator.
Earlier in the month, I was invited to participate in another group zoom call. For this gathering, every participant was required to turn their camera on.
Both groups express intentions around problem solving, community, environmental stewardship, and supporting human rights. But the first group has already pivoted away from the unexamined, unconscious and grotesque video, screen, and telecommunications consumption that was fueled by the pandemic’s trauma.
The other group is fearful of infiltration and remains unaware of the burgeoning implications of screen-based telecommunications, 5G, and wireless technologies.
It is not intentional or malicious; the group is simply mirroring the dominant culture’s lack of awareness of cultivated demand for constant screen connectivity that was intensified during the pandemic. If we begin to listen to one another and to nature, we can heal.
Smart Meters and 5G
Quantifiable harm from new wireless technologies became apparent when utilities began rolling out the next generation of smart meters around 2009, Harm was reported from both PLC and RF applications,
With the wireless industries, and economic and military/defense interests increasingly in control of the media’s message, (note the impact of industry advertising) society ignored the carnage. Industry ridiculed those reporting health harm.
The deployments continue, with the very real risk of stranded assets for ratepayers and taxpayers, because the RF-based technology is known not to be safe for all users in all circumstances. The harms have not been quantified.
Another wave of concern about telecommunications technologies exploded a decade later when 5G began to be installed in front yards and neighborhoods to support autonomous vehicles and remote surgeries, and to enable the US to win the race against China for 5G.
The informed opposition was halted during the pandemic by 3 factors:
1. The pandemic artificially inflated the demand for constant connectivity.
2. The pandemic stopped the growing protest movement. (Global protest days against 5G began in early 2020 and were the brainchild of Dorotea Radoš Čulina of Croatia, Tanja Katarina Rebel of the U.K. and other colleagues around the world. Read the history here.)
3. Advocates identifying the risks associated with 5G were widely portrayed in the media as low-intelligence, right leaning, irrational arsonists fueled by Russian disinformation.
How did so many fall so easily for this narrative?
Trauma.
Bending the Arc of Justice
Before taking action, we don’t need to go back to every single infraction, ranging from the tobacco scientist who lied about smart meter safety to the politicians bribed in order to approve infrastructure. We do not need to keep re-hashing the scientific debate. We do need to examine our behaviors, and move into integrity regarding technology choices, now.
There are many legitimate and effective ways that consumers can begin to “bend” in their tech-based activities and many opportunities for industries to offer alternative choices to the current growth-at-all-costs, wireless-based paradigm. (One urgent example is to restore landline phone service that will work when the power goes out, fostering reliability and resiliency, rather than promoting overlapping wireless providers). But AI is not going to get us there.
The Paul Simon song “There Must Be 50 Ways To Leave Your Lover” contains the lines “It grieves me so to see you in such pain” and “I’d like to help you in your struggle to be free.”
Though-out the day, many consumers will interact with devices with more than fifty opportunities to change behavior.
This includes hard wiring/cable in fixed environments, especially schools. (See: Handwriting but not typewriting leads to widespread brain connectivity: a high-density EEG study with implications for the classroom https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1219945/full) The money being diverted to wireless tech, including endless software and security updates. could be invested instead in paying teachers and staff and providing better services for students. We can predict that significant resources will be devoted to negate these conclusions about learning.
For industry, from responsible web design that does not divert attention or cause eye strain – to hard wiring – to no longer valuing social media by how much time it engages its users and wastes time – to offering voice or text instead of video whenever possible – reason, honesty, integrity, care, and goodness can be restored.
The rising tide of newly conscious awareness will place new demands on society and enable those in the tech industry devoted to non-harming and peace.
Regarding union organizing activities, Cesar Chavez noted, “Without action, you’re kidding yourself.”
This equinox, get yourself, and this Earth free.
Let your direct partnership with nature lead the way.
See suggestions for responsible tech use, by Katie Singer:
Policies for More Ecologically-Sound Tech
See recent related articles from Safe Tech International:
Equinox Balance Act: Addressing Unhealed-Pandemic-Telecom- Dependency - Safe Tech International
Equinox Elephant in the Ecosystem: Dying Plants and Trees vs. Wireless Antennas