How Data Hoarding Is the New Threat to Privacy and Climate Change

As machine learning and other data-intensive algorithms proliferate, more organizations are hoarding data in hopes of alchemizing it into something valuable. From spy agencies to network infrastructure providers, data collection is part and parcel of the digital economy. The best data can be combined with clever algorithms to do incredible things — but digital hoarding and computationally-intensive workloads have externalities too.

Data hoarding and computationally-intensive
workloads have climate crisis implications.

The electrical costs — and therefore the environmental impacts — of computation are both extraordinary and growing. Modern machine learning (ML) models are a prime example. They require an enormous amount of energy in order to process mountains of data. The computational costs of training ML models have been growing exponentially since 2012, with a doubling period of 18 months, according to OpenAI. In recent months, similar studies have shown that the electrical costs of cryptocurrency and video streaming are also significant and growing.

Producing this electricity creates literal exhaust in most cases — there are precious few server farms running on 100% renewable energy — and with climate change looming large, it’s time we acknowledge the environmental impact of computation. Just like wrapping every little thing in a plastic bag is, some of our CPU usage is frivolous and wasteful.

Read the story from One Zero by Tyler Elliot Bettilyon - “How Data Hoarding Is the New Threat to Privacy and Climate Change.”

Human health and adaptation: understanding climate impacts on health and opportunities for action

Climate change presents a risk to health in a variety of ways. 

The health risks resulting from climate change impacts in countries are changing and the interlinkages between health, climate change and other drivers of global environmental changes are complex and need to be better understood.

 A large number of activities ranging from policies that are planned and implemented by governments, to various actions undertaken by intergovernmental organizations, non-governmental organizations and communities are already under way in order to address climate change impacts on health. 

However, a number of challenges, particularly with regard to awareness and education, as well as planning, capacity and financial mechanisms continue to limit action on the ground.

Read the full report here - “Human health and adaptation: understanding climate impacts on health and opportunities for action.”

Taking climate talks beyond 'the big tent'

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arlier this summer I helped to organize the March for Jobs, Justice & the Climate — an action that brought more than 10,000 people to the streets of Toronto in one of the largest and most diverse climate mobilizations in Canadian history.

More than 100 organizations supported the march — from national environmental groups to labor unions to the indigenous rights’ movement Idle No More to Toronto-based groups tackling poverty, food justice and migration. It was, as Naomi Klein put it, the “first steps of a new kind of climate movement” that reached beyond the traditional boundaries of the environmental movement.

Read Cam Fenton’s story - “Why the climate movement needs to move beyond the ‘big tent’”.