As if adult entertainment doesn't already take enough heat from the Religious Right, now there's a study suggesting that online porn plays a role in global warming. A French think tank makes the claim in a new report that online video streaming—primarily from two sources, Netflix and similar streaming networks, and online porn—accounts for 4 percent of all carbon dioxide emissions, the main “greenhouse gas” causing global warming and the ongoing climate crisis.
Porn accounts for 27 percent of that total, or about 1 percent of all CO2 emissions, or about 80 million tons, according to the report by the research group The Shift Project, a think tank that studies the effects of carbon emissions and solutions for transitioning away from technologies that cause them. The introduction to this study states that online video was used as a "practical case study” to show the importance of “digital sobriety.”
That could mean, in the not-to-distant future, that societies around the world would be forced to choose between sources of internet traffic, giving priority to certain traffic and limiting others. But that choice is exactly what net neutrality rules would prevent.
"Since we are constrained by climate crisis and the planet's finite raw resources, not choosing means potentially allowing pornography to mechanically limit the bandwidth available for telemedicine, or allow the use of Netflix to limit access to Wikipedia," the report states, as quoted by The National Observer. "In the 21st century, not choosing is no longer a viable option."
The total amount of greenhouse gas generated by online video streaming—porn and other content—equalled the amount generated by the entire country of Spain, the report said.
Streaming of porn alone equaled the greenhouse gas output of such countries as Belgium, Bangladesh or Nigeria, a New Scientist summary of the report pointed out.
Even more significant, the output of CO2 from internet video streaming appears likely to double in terms of overall percentage, to 8 percent of all emissions, in just the next six years, in part due to the increase in resolution of online video.
But for individual users, there is only one significant step to take immediately, according to Chris Preist, a University of Bristol scientist who specializes in environmentally sustainable use of technology.
“For individuals, upgrading our devices less often, owning less devices, and not demanding mobile high quality internet connection everywhere are probably the most important actions we can take,” Preist told New Scientist.
Photo by National Park Service / Wikimedia Commons Public Domain
