Page 69 - Carbon Capitalism and Communication Confronting Climate Crisis

4 DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY AND THE ENVIRONMENT … 53

Coalition work to keep digital devices from poisoning ecosystems in their
place of manufacture. The Basel Action Network and the StEP-initiative
relentlessly push for more extensive and thorough forms of end-of-life
management of e-waste. Companies like Fairphone are pressing for eco-
logically sound design for high-tech goods and manufacturing processes
that protect biophysical rights of workers who today fall sick from exposure
to poisons and deadly factory operations.
It’s time that these organizations did a better job reporting on their
internal sustainability practices—where their procurement fits into the
global supply chain; what their energy policies are; how they manage
e-waste; and how they create model working conditions built on safe and
sustainable uses of digital technologies. Give us another cause to celebrate
being green.

NOTES
1. The nine boundaries are: 1. Climate change; 2. Change in biosphere
integrity (biodiversity loss and species extinction); 3. Stratospheric ozone
depletion; 4. Ocean acidification; 5. Biogeochemical flows (phosphorus and
nitrogen cycles); 6. Land-system change (for example deforestation); 7.
Freshwater use; 8. Atmospheric aerosol loading (microscopic particles in
the atmosphere that affect climate and living organisms); 9. Introduction of
novel entities (e.g. organic pollutants, radioactive materials, nanomaterials,
and micro-plastics).
2. See for example, Basel Action Network, “Photos.” http://www.ban.org/
photos/
3. Stand with Standing Rock. http://standwithstandingrock.net/category/
news/
4. Artists and Climate Change. https://artistsandclimatechange.com/about/
5. European Commission (nd). “Supporting Cultural and Creative
Industries.” http://ec.europa.eu/culture/policy/cultural-creative-industries/
index_en.htm. Accessed Jan. 19, 2017.
6. Green Party USA (nd.). “Platform of the Greens/Green Party USA.”
https://www.greenparty.org/Platform.php. Accessed Jan. 19, 2016. Not
even California’s green party has acknowledged the material ecological
problems of making culture, and this with evidence of massive pollution
caused by LA-based film and TV production on its doorstep: Green Party
of California (nd.). “Arts and Culture.” http://www.cagreens.
org/platform/arts-and-culture. Accessed Jan. 19, 2017.