Environmental Impact of Digital Communication with Helen Hayes Part I
Jordan 0:00
Hello and welcome back to Imperfect Eco-Hero! I know it's been a while, but I can promise the wait is going to be worth it. We have one of the most interesting and mind blowing episodes ready for you today. And I'm going to start this off with asking everyone just a quick question: How many of you when you woke up this morning checked your phone; read an email, sent a text message, watched a TikTok? How many of you even now are listening to this episode on Spotify or Apple? Have you ever wondered what the environmental impact is, of you doing those things? How your own digital and Internet usage is impacting the planet? Well, a new study done out of Purdue University found that while there has been a record drop in global carbon emissions in 2020, due to the Coronavirus and the stay at home order, this pandemic driven shift to remote work, and more at home entertainment, still presents significant environmental impacts due to how da— Internet data is stored and transferred around the world. There's an estimated 2.5 billion people around the globe connected to the Internet. And the Internet's energy and carbon footprint have now exceeded that of air travel. Let that sink in: the Internet and digital communication has a larger impact on climate change than the entirety of the aviation industry. Wild, right? Just to give you an example, if you sent out a one megabyte email, it emits the same amount of carbon dioxide in its entire lifecycle to that of leaving a lamp on for 30 minutes. One email. I don't know about the rest of you guys, I send out a lot of emails every day. But the Internet's overall carbon footprint is not solely tied to individuals. The majority of the Internet's greenhouse gas emissions come from manufacturing and shipping, the products we use, as well as powering and cooling the data centers and data farms, where all of that information is stored. This is a widely undiscussed issue in the environmental movement, which is why we wanted to bring an expert in this field to talk about the importance and significance of learning and understanding the materiality of digital communication and how it is impacting the world.
[intro music]
Jordan 2:40
Hey, this is Jordan!
Mimi 2:41
And this is Mimi.
Jordan 2:42
And welcome to the Imperfect Eco-Hero podcast.
Mimi 2:45
The series that connects community, normalizes imperfections and empowers heroes.
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Jordan 2:54
Fun fact, Helen actually went to school with both Mimi and I, in undergrad. Now, Helen has completed her master’s and is pursuing a PhD in Communication Studies at McGill University, where she investigates the intersections between tech policy, data collection and digitization, and oil extraction. Helen has won numerous awards and scholarships for her outstanding academic excellence, especially in our graduate studies. Currently, Helen is a policy fellow at the Center for Media Technology and Democracy at McGill's Max Bell School of Public Policy, where she researches platform governance and international tech policy and has provided research assistance to the Canadian commission for democratic expression. She is also an active member of the Grierson Research Group, the Low-Carbon Research Methods Group and the Ecological Design Collective. You can follow Helen on Twitter @Helen__hayes [double underscore]. And now on to our interview!
Mimi 3:58
Hey Helen! We're really excited t— [all laughs] I can't do it, now!
Jordan 4:03
‘Kay, we’re goi— We got this, we’re professionals!
Mimi 4:06
Hey, Helen. I guess we can just start by asking you a very generic question about your studies, ‘cause that's what we'll be talking a lot today. So what are you currently studying and what does your research focus on?
Helen 4:18
Firstly, I'd like to say thank you for inviting me onto the podcast. I'm really excited to speak with you both today. I'm currently pursuing a PhD in Communication Studies at McGill University. And my research examines the partnerships between technology and the oil industry, their practices at the level of infrastructure, the environmental ramifications of their relationship, and the policies regulating the use of AI and machine learning technology in petro-cultural labor. So in more general and simple terms, I researched the environmental impacts of digital technologies and the policies regulating their use. This is a subfield of Communication Studies that scholars and academics referred to as Infrastructure Studies.
Mimi 5:12
Is Infrastructure Studies— like, I've never heard of it before. Is that like a new field or...?
Helen 5:19
It is a newer field.
Mimi 5:21
Okay.
Helen 5:22
It's having a resurgence right now in Communication Studies.
Mimi 5:26
Right on.
Helen 5:27
It was quite popular in the ‘70s and ‘80s. And now there is what's called an infrastructural disposition, or turn to materiality and communication studies, to more focus on the environmental ramifications of the communication technologies and other digital technologies that we use on a daily basis. And so because of this resurgence in interest in looking at those facets of the environment, Communication Studies has really spawned this big community that's interested in infrastructure and the implications it has on our societies.
Jordan 6:09
I got a quick question. Maybe it's just ‘cause I don't— this is not my bread and butter. But um…What do you mean by infrastructure? For like, people who maybe aren't aware of the term or like, broadly— ‘cause communication for me, like, I can't even, like, conceptualize it. And so the infrastructure also then surrounding communications, is something that, like, I still can't wrap my head around. So I don't know if you can maybe, like, explain that a bit to anyone who might be unfamiliar with the term and just what it is.
Helen 6:40
Yes, for sure. So when we talk about infrastructure, or we think about infrastructure, we're looking at the…the wires, we're looking at the conduits through which our communication is enabled. So we're looking at how exactly we get access to our digital technologies, what material aspects of our society enable our ability to connect with each other, through the Internet, through other digital technologies, and the ways in which those infrastructures have an impact on the ways that not only we live our lives, but the ways that our environment needs to be shaped to adapt to these new ways of being and socializing.
Jordan 7:39
That's really interesting, because I don't know, I pegged that more as an engineering field. Like, it's weird to think of the environment and communications in particular being anything kind of related to infrastructure, but that could just be my, like, lack of knowledge of just— I picture most things that we studied to be very siloed. So it's interesting that what you're studying is like oil, communications infrastructure, like, it sounds so interdisciplinary, like, I don't know if that makes any sense. Like, it's really interesting!
Helen 8:09
Yeah, exactly. It's funny, because a lot of communication studies scholars speak about how people don't truly understand what we study, because it is so interdisciplinary, and that we're looking across fields. You can't be a communicationist, like you can be a historian or you can be a geographer. When you're studying communication studies, you're really looking at the interdisciplinarity of the world in which we live, and how these different sectors, how these different fields, actually are implicated in the way that we communicate with each other. And we're trying to expand away from viewing communication structures as simply immaterial, or digital. And instead, we're looking at what exactly is around us in our society that enables our ability to communicate in these new ways that are evolving over time.
Mimi 9:20
That's, yeah, that's so interesting, and...As soon as you said roads, I really started thinking about, like, how roads encourage communication and how that's changed, like since the evolution of roads, which obviously has been a couple hundred year process. But for me, that's a very, like, tangible and easy thing to visualize, like the connection between roads and communication. But I'm curious to know, like a little bit more about oil and communication, because I feel like that's a little less visual.
Helen 9:50
Yeah, that's a great question. So, when we speak about the communicative capacity of an object, of a material, of a substance, what we're looking at is the way in which that material allows us to understand the broader political, environmental, economic and social conditions in which we live. So if we're looking at oil, for example, or if we're looking at bitumen that's…that is processed to allow us to use oil and fossil fuels, we're looking at the ways in which those substances allow us to better understand, let's say, in the Canadian context, the way in which our economy is directly linked to the fossil fuel industry. It's allowing us to look at what values are prioritized in Canadian society. And it allows us to look at the ways that our social relations are or are not shaped by the way in which fossil fuels are integrated into our everyday lives. So in that way, the substance itself can be seen as the integral substance that reveals the social connections that we have in our society.
Mimi 11:24
That's so interesting, how did you even get into this?
Helen 11:28
So oil specifically, I've been interested in for a while, in that the ramifications it has on our environment is something I'm very concerned about. And I'm very interested in learning more about, on an academic level. But I was really inspired to study it in my doctoral work through the program that I'm involved in, at school. So I attend McGill University, as I mentioned before, and my department has a very clear connection to infrastructure studies. And a lot of the faculty members and staff members are interested in this idea of looking at infrastructure, looking at the environment, and looking at the relationship between those two — the infrastructure and the environment — as a way to better understand communication technologies. So in my master's degree, which I also completed at McGill University, I had taken a class on infrastructure, and it was my first real look into this world. And into this field of study that, to be quite honest, I didn't know existed before. And learning more about the ways that our media is materially tethered was extremely interesting to me, it was extremely helpful for my studies, and also for the ways that I understood my place in the world, and the ways that my digital consumption was impacting my environment. And so the more I learned about this, the more I studied this, the more interested I became in pursuing research in this area, which is exactly what led me to looking at the oil industry, and its integration with tech companies in Canada specifically. And the policy side of this interest stemmed directly from my master's thesis, which I wrote on participatory policy structures. And I thought it would be interesting to specifically look at the regulation of technology, and the regulation of companies that produce these technologies that really end up shaping the way that our digital technologies and our communications are used not just by individual, personal and small groups of people, but also by these larger companies, that folks might not necessarily link with communications, like the oil industry, like you were saying before Mimi. And so I was interested in really looking at those connections and it stemmed directly from my…my studies in my master's degree.
Jordan 15:02
So this…this field sounds so fascinating, but like, I had never heard of it going into university, and, like, really curious, is this something you always knew you wanted to do in high school? Or did you, like, take something else and undergrad and then stumble into this master's and then stumbled into this like, like, Ph.D program? Like, I don't know, I, if I had known about this, I probably would have wanted to go into this had I— like, when I was first starting university, because all I knew of if I wanted to go into environmental studies was to do Geography, or Environmental Studies, like I didn't know that there were other ways of getting into, like this kind of green movement, these green jobs in any other way. So I'm, like, just curious to know, if you take a step back even further, like, what is this something you always knew you wanted to do?
Helen 15:51
In my undergrad, I studied Ethics, Society & Law, American Studies and History, which are adjacent, I would say, to Communication Studies, but obviously not exactly overlapping in all aspects. But I was always interested in the environment, and especially interested in what I could do to better understand my impact on the environment, and how I could alleviate the impacts that my living has on the climate. That was always an interest of mine. But it wasn't something that I studied in my undergrad. I didn't look specifically at the environment, I didn't look specifically at communication studies or media studies. But in my master’s, I went into Communication Studies with a slightly environmental lens. And what I mean by that is, I was researching participatory policy practices, like I just mentioned, but I was looking at the…those participatory policy practices through the lens of natural disaster. So my master's research looked specifically at hurricanes, Hurricane Katrina, and how the US government responded to natural disasters through a policy perspective. And so in that way, my work was tethered to the environment. But it was still more connected to a policy frame, or a legal frame, than strictly looking at the ways that the environment was impacting the creation of more…of more natural disasters. So I would say that I always had an environmental inclination, but this is the first time that it's been solidified in the precise research that I'm looking at.
Jordan 18:21
That's really interesting. I'm just curious why natural disasters in particular?
Mimi 18:27
Yeah! And I guess to add on to Jordan's question, like why Hurricane Katrina, specifically, because of course, there's been hundreds of hurricanes to choose from. I know that Katrina is often spotlighted for various reasons, but just if you could speak on that, that'd be awesome.
Helen 18:42
Yeah, for sure. So when I was in middle school, so this is going back while, I helped out with Habitat for Humanity in New Orleans. And this was years after Hurricane Katrina had happened. Hurricane Katrina was in 2005, I went to New Orleans in 2010, so five years later. And the destruction and the ways that the community both was and was not being rebuilt, was something that really struck me, especially seeing it five years after the hurricane. Because I had just assumed, being young and also being naive, that after a natural disaster as devastating as Hurricane Katrina, the infrastructure of the city would be built up relatively quickly. And the fact that it wasn't was very alarming to me at the time. So I helped out with Habitat for Humanity there. We rebuilt some houses, a basement, and a community garden space. And it was really impactful to me to be involved in that initiative, but also to meet people who had gotten through the hurricane and to speak to them about their experience and to see the water lines on the homes, to actually be in a space where these floodwaters were rushing through the city in ways that people couldn't control, in ways that really devastated people's lives. And so, that inspired me to always be cognizant of the ways that natural disasters in— influence people's livelihoods, and influence people's understanding of their own safety, especially in cities that are at low elevation, as cities that are more vulnerable to natural disasters. And for people, historically disadvantaged folks, especially who are disproportionately affected by the ways that natural disasters impact their lives moving forward. And so, because I was so steeped in that space, I always held a very conscious mindset towards environment— towards the environment and environmental destruction. And then in my undergrad degree, I took a class specifically on Natural Disasters through the American Studies Department. And in that class, I looked at Hurricane Katrina, and the legal aspects of the aftermath. And what I mean by that is, the ways that certain victims of the hurricane were able to sue the federal government for negligence in propagating Hurricane Katrina. And so I wrote a big research project on the legal ramifications of natural disasters. And I was in my third year at the time, I wrote that when I was preparing my master's applications, just a few months later. I had applied to the Communication Studies program at McGill, with the intention to write about natural disasters, and the legal and policy ramifications of those natural disasters, which is, like, I— what I had mentioned before, is what I wrote my master's thesis on. And looking at those relationships between people, between natural disasters, between the environment and between the policy and legal frameworks that informed people's way of understanding the aftermath of a natural disaster was important to me. And that's…that's what led me to do my work now.
Jordan 23:35
It's crazy how, like…like a series of events, almost like a domino effect, like, one thing, like, lead you into this, which then leads you into this, which then leads you into this. It's kind of …kind of funny how life works like that. But I want to even go a step further back. I’m sorry if this is, like, pushing, like, through your history. But what— I don't know a middle school… middle school student who works for Habitat for Humanity, like, I was just barely trying to pass French class, let alone heading off to New Orleans to…to, I don't know, save the world. Like, I'm curious if, like, how you even got into Habitat for Humanity, like, was it part of your school or like, was this something, like, your family really pushed? Like, I'm really— like, we talk a lot about what your relationship with nature is, and like, a lot of our interviewees talk about sometimes, like, how their family is what inspired them or, and I’m like, just really curious what…what middle schooler you were and like, like, what…what was pushing you down…down this path?
Helen 24:35
Yeah, okay, so I attended a middle school that had a very robust music program. And the Habitat for Humanity's project was directly linked to my involvement in the music program. So we were going on a trip to New Orleans, to play in our jazz band, and...
Jordan 25:07
What instrument did you play? Just out of curiosity.
Helen 25:11
At the time I was playing trombone. This is actually, like, a bigger story about my desire to join the stage band because all the cool kids were in stage band. And I played violin…I played violin since I was three, but I really wanted to be part of this band. And so I asked my band teacher what instrument I would need to learn in order to successfully audition for the stage band. And he told me, “If you can learn trombone, I can probably find a space in the stage band for you”. So over the summer, between grade seven and eight, I learned trombone. And I was successful in my audition, and I got into the stage band. And we got to go on this trip to New Orleans. And being part of that privileged space that allowed me, not only to learn the instrument, not only to attend this school that had such a robust program, but also, that allowed me to go on this trip, really was the impetus behind me understanding that I needed to use that type of privilege to better the society that I was living in. And part of that understanding came from the teachers at my school that enrolled us all in this Habitat for Humanity program. So they brought us to New Orleans under the guise of a music trip — which obviously played a large role in what we were doing there at the time — but then, for about half of the trip, each day, we would go and work on these Habitat for Humanity's projects. So that's what led me there. It's kind of a convoluted story, I guess, but—
Jordan 27:28
I just love that a trombone is what, like, led you down the path to environmentalism. I think that is the best story I think I've ever heard. That's amazing!
Helen 27:40
Yeah
Mimi 27:40
Yeah, I feel like that needs to be part of the episode titled like, from trombone to environmentalism.
Jordan 27:46
Trombone to oil!
Mimi 27:48
Yeah. [laughs]
Helen 27:50
Yeah, exactly. It's, it's funny, because I've never actually sat down and thought about that trajectory. But yeah, it makes you think about how these small choices that you make, even at a young age, can really have an effect on the way that you end up living your life on what you study, on what your career may or may not be. And I think that definitely links to a longer conversation about how understanding the habits that we have, even as children or as teenagers can affect the ways that we live our lives. In terms of our environmental impact, for example, like if we encourage young people to be mindful of their environmental impact in middle school, and in high school, those habits may reverberate into how they structure their lives going forward. So I think that conversation definitely has some implications for a lot of the environmental conversations that we can have, especially around habit building.
Mimi 29:15
yeah, as you were, like, speaking, this is kind of off topic of environmentalism, but it just kind of brought me back to like, those talks that you had in, like, grade 12, or even first year where they had like a speaker come in and say, like, “you don't know where you're gonna end up in life, like you…you like, can't really plan for it”, you know, and I think your story, like, really embodies that, like, it's just like these small little steps and you really don't know where you're gonna end up, and that could be scary, but it's also really exciting. Yeah, so it's…it's really cool to listen to your story. But when we think about industries having an impact on climate change, many of us think immediately of things like the fossil fuel industry, or the agriculture industry…or even the aviation industry — that's been a big topic, especially in this last year with Corona, people have been talking about the decrease in all the flights around the world and what that means in terms of the global impact on the environment. But we don't really think about how communications and the communications industry impacts the environment and the CO2 emissions from that. I would love if you could describe how the Internet or other communication technologies have an impact on the environment.
Helen 30:28
Yes, for sure. So, before I directly answer this question, I think it is very important to begin with a discussion about the materiality of communication, which I had alluded to at the beginning of the interview, talking about infrastructure, but I'd like to dwell on it a bit more. And in looking at the materiality of communication, I'd like to encourage the audience to understand communication, not just in terms of how it sounds, or what it says, or how it makes you feel, but rather, in terms of what communication is made of, where the stuff it's made from comes from, and under what conditions it's made, including the physical requirements of its circulation and consumption. And the reason why I'm drawing our attention to this materiality is because I think we can learn a lot from examining the ways that the Internet and digital technologies exist in more or less the same conditions as any other commodity or industry. The Internet, for example, is preceded by and dependent on a variety of materials and actions that include raw materials, supply chains, logistics, waste streams, and working conditions. And so in drawing our attention to the materiality of communication, I'm interested in looking at the materials, the processes, and the circuits that may differ from one technology to the next. But it's very important to look at how each…each of these technologies are materially implicated in industrial scale, in extraction, in manufacturing, in transportation, in energy, and in waste disposal. So this means that forms of communication at every stage of their existence, have massive environmental implications and effects. And in looking at the materiality of communication, what is important here, not just for what I study, but for the understanding of the environmental ramifications of communication technologies, is that we should not only be paying attention to content about the environment. Instead, we should be looking at the physical implications and impacts of mediated communication on a mass scale. And in that way, communication becomes environmental. So—
Jordan 33:54
Can I ask a quick question before you keep going? Sorry, just so I don't…I’m…I don't lose the plot.
Helen 33:59
Hm mmm.
Jordan 33:59
And maybe it's just because it's early morning. When you mean, materiality, and you're talking about waste and materials. You're not just talking about, for example, like our computers or phones, you're talking about, like where data is actually stored? Correct? Because that was something I had to look up. Because I don't know why I just imagined data to be just stored in the air somewhere, like through, I don't know, like cell waves. I was just imagining it to be some sort of entity outside of ourselves. I don't know why that was what I thought, but I—
Mimi 34:33
Do you mean like, like Internet farms, Jordan?
Jordan 34:36
Yeah. I don't even…I don't even know what an Internet farm is. But that's—
Mimi 34:39
Oh I don't know if that's a thing. That's like, I’m just…
Jordan 34:42
Yeah, so I just want to like just so, like, before we keep going, is that what you're referring to when you talk about materiality in the sense of like, not just the items that we have, but like, the things that we need to actually make the Internet a thing.
Helen 34:59
Exactly. So not only is the material— materiality of communications, about the physical computers we use, or the cell phones we use, it's about the way that our data is stored. It's about the way that the energy that's used to run these devices is having an environmental impact on our world. So, for example, um, so there are server farms that store the data that we produce through our use of digital devices. And these server farms are located throughout the world in various locations. You can actually look them…look them up, if you are interested in where zoom storm— stores its data, you can look up where the Zoom server hubs are located across North America, for example.
Mimi 36:07
Really random question, but you know, how, like, hydro stations are often disguised as houses, are server farms also disguised as houses, or they’re like…like, this big, like, warehouse in the middle of nowhere?
Helen 36:20
Yeah, they're actually, like, giant factories, basically. A lot of them are in rural communities, or in spaces where there is massive amounts of land that allow companies to create these giant warehouses that literally just store our data. And so the electricity, the water that's used to run these facilities, the resources that you— that are used to actually allow server farms to exist and to house the data that we create, contribute to immense environmental waste. To the point where if the amount of data that we produce, and use at the rate it has been over the last 20 years, there will be an unsustainable demand that will not allow us to produce this much data anymore. And because of that, coupled with the growing reliance on server farms, because of the amount of data that we generate through our environmental— our electronic use, exacerbates cycles of pollution and waste. And this is directly implicated in immense environmental destruction. To give you some concrete examples, if the Internet were a country, it would be the fifth largest consumer of energy in the world.
Mimi 38:13
Oh, my god.
Jordan 38:13
Oh…
Helen 38:14
Yeah.
Jordan 38:15
That's... Oh, man.
Helen 38:17
Exactly. It's actually projected to use 2 billion kilowatt hours of electricity this year, which is an amount that exceeds the current consumption— consumption of Canada, France, Germany, and Brazil combined. Just by using the Internet.
Jordan 38:40
Just this year..
Mimi 38:41
That’s crazy.
Jordan 38:43
Woow..
Jordan 38:43
Do you think that's increased because of the pandemic and now everyone's working from home?
Helen 38:49
For sure, for sure. I think that these definitely raised larger questions about how the digital communications that we use end up exacerbating the environmental cycles and processes of energy, of electricity, of water and of pollution in a really problematic way. But like Jordan was mentioning, because the Internet and other communication devices are seen as being so immaterial. People don't understand that the impact that electronic devices have on the environment is not just tethered to throwing away your device. It's actually tethered to your use of that device throughout its lifespan. And this raises really important questions about what can be done about our use of digital technologies, when, like you said, Mimi, we're living through the COVID 19 pandemic, where we're reliant on these communication devices, to work, and to socialize, and to relax. Everything's tethered to these devices. And so the more and more our society is dependent on using digital communications, the more and more environmental destruction the use of those communication technologies has on Earth.
Jordan 40:40
And this concludes part one of this super eye opening conversation we've had with PhD candidate Helen Hayes. Listen out for part two, as we dive in deeper into mitigation techniques people can use to reduce their digital and Internet consumption, while also understanding how privilege and intersectionality really comes into play with how humans communicate everything as a society.
[outro]
Mimi 41:07
Thanks for listening to this episode of Imperfect Eco-Hero. Stay connected with us through our instagram @Imperfect_ecohero or email us at imperfectecohero@gmail.com. If you want to learn more about our podcast or see resources related to this episode, visit our website imperfectecohero.com.
