It’s remarkable how a simple word can both describe an idea as innocent and at the same time hide its inconvenient, even dangerous, implementation. The “cloud” is one such word.“ The cloud evokes an image of a gently traveling billowing mass over our heads efficiently and conveniently storing all the files and images humanity wants to save with little concern for storage limits. At face value, it seems pure, simple and practical deserving of the seal of good house/office keeping, Really?
The cloud instantly helps us to free up more space on our mobile phones so that we can take even more pictures. The cloud stores all the documents we don’t wish to or can’t store on our computers. It makes us able to electronically create art of all kinds often with files so extremely heavy it seems to pay or be wiser for us to store them on the invisible cloud.
In the BBC news interview, “Dirty streaming: The internet's big secret” of March 5, 2020, we are reminded that the cloud is a euphemism for huge data centers ever larger and more numerous and prevalent all over the planet. They are full of huge amounts of computers and cables, creating mega energetic fields interfering with the energetic field of anything alive on earth.
“There are now hundreds of thousands of data centres around the world, storing everything from viral videos to doctors’ notes and even bank account details. Many of them run on electricity generated by burning fossil fuels.
Film and TV writer Beth Webb went in search of the internet and discovered that ‘the cloud’ is actually a vast network of energy-guzzling data centres and undersea cables.”
It is anachronistic and ironic to realize that the cloud which is the result of increasing needs and ingenuity of the high tech industry and symbol and manifestation of our creativity and forward thinking is actually an energy glutton. It relies on the oldest source of energy in the world – coal.
We might have assumed that in most, if not all, locations, clean energy sources like solar panels would have been used. Not so. Collectively, these data centers are responsible for the release of more carbon into the air than the total release of carbon from all airlines companies around the world. Moreover, the data center carbon release is increasing at a faster rate than that of any airline.
At a time when all signs point to the causes and effects of global warming, we might think that the creative and forward thinking mindset of the high tech industry would have been more aware of the long term effect of their cloud creation on the well-being of humans, flora and fauna. But when we observe, for example, how high tech corporations like cell phone manufacturers ensure that each new model has a slightly different design of charger dictating that we can’t reuse the same charger for an upgraded phone, then we know that their focus is not preservation but consumption. It demonstrates an utter disrespect for the environment and consumptions’s implications on all forms of life. It essentially stems from ignorance of the simple rule of respect for all others as well as the planet. It demonstrates a disregard for or ignorance of the universal Law of One – that everything each of us does affects every other one on the planet.
Unless and until we come to a major collective awakening surrounding the basic and fundamental realization of mutual respect, the consumption race will end very badly for us, our children and grandchildren.
This is what’s up for us at this time in our evolution. We cannot allow, we must not allow widespread global damage to our planet’s ecosystem, in fact, to our own human bodies. And this is accomplished by our arising in consciousness as we become increasingly more aware and refuse to accept what greed-oriented entities serve up to us. We have that power to change what doesn’t truly serve us.
#####
Endnotes:
“Dirty Streaming: The Internet's Big Secret.” BBC News, BBC, 5 Mar. 2020, www.bbc.com/news/av/stories-51742336/dirty-streaming-the-internet-s-big-secret.