Indeed, all electronics and anything online (including this substack) require immeasurable amounts of electricity, water and extractions; (one smartphone starts with more than 125 substances, each with an international supply chain); workers who labor in hot factories (104 degrees Fahrenheit/40 degrees Celsius) at barely sustainable wages; access networks that guzzle energy and data centers that guzzle energy and water.
How does all of this relate to land and homes and neighborhoods? Composting kitchen scraps and growing a wee bit of food connect me to land and water and give me inclusion in the web of life. When corporations take land, water and forests-- the public commons-- to build technologies, profits, data centers and energy systems, we mortals get confused. We start thinking we need money and technology to survive. We think food comes from grocery stores. We think community is online. We lose our homes and neighborhoods.
So then, as we look for home, what's constructive use of our attention?
SURVIVAL LESSONS
First, we need to admit we've got a problem.
The Strait of Hormuz's closure might well be the crisis that gives us no choice but to admit we've got problems. We depend on international supply chains that we cannot control.
Then, we need to learn to grow food.
Recently, I watched John D. Liu's 2007 film, Lessons of the Loess Plateau. It shows how degradation of an ancient Chinese civilization's ecosystem led to dried up soil, plant loss and people dying from starvation. Then, in 2005, each household was granted land ownership. With education, people over 35,000 square kilometers (13,500 square miles) restored their watershed, healed their damaged ecosystem and grew much of their own food"in ten years.
In 2017, Lui founded Ecosystem Restoration Communities: a global movement that's currently active on six different continents. "By 2030, we're aiming for 100 projects and 3,1 million hectares of land."
OTHER NEWS
In London last week, Jake Hurfurt observed two protests: one for "Unite the Kingdom," an anti-migrant, anti-Islam movement. The other supported Palestine by marking Nakba Day. (The Nakba, The Catastrophe, names the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict that led to the creation of Israel and the forced expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians from their homes.) In both London protests, people were chilled by the surveillance, including live facial recognition alongside drones, helicopters, police dogs, horses and armored vehicles. In UK, Hurfurt observes, the right to free speech often depends on where you live, not on the law.
AT&T has filed suit against California officials: it seeks a court order declaring that it does not have to continue offering traditional copper wire phone service to new customers.
The U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services released a surgeon general's report warning against the harms of excessive screen use for children and teens. The report gives parents, schools and communities practical tools to protect children and adolescents from growing harms of excessive screen exposures.
See Honor the Earth's toolkit for opposing data centers.
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