Never mind cars and farting cows, mobile phone emissions will choke us all! – Scottish Energy News

When we think about climate change, the main sources of carbon emissions
that come to mind for most of us are industries like petroleum, mining and
transport.

But according to Lotfi Belkhir, Associate Professor of Eco-Entrepreneurship
at McMaster University in Canada, the mobile phone in your pocket is
increasingly responsible for the emission of hundreds of tonnes of C02.

Having conducted a meticulous and fairly exhaustive inventory of the
contribution of ICT ­including devices like PCs, laptops, monitors,
smartphones and tablets ­ and infrastructure like data centres and
communication networks, his research found that the relative contribution
of ICT to the total global footprint is expected to grow from about one per
cent in 2007 to 3.5 per cent by 2020 – and reach 14 per cent by 2040.

That’s more than half the relative contribution of the entire
transportation sector worldwide.

Like farting cows, the mobile phone is the silent greenhouse gas emitter
that threatens us all…