THE NEW FLAT EARTH SOCIETY
Editorial, World-Watch Magazine, November/December 1999 by Payal Sampat, Staff Researcher
In May 1999, the popular U.S. business magazine, Forbes, published an article declaring that the Internet has become a major electricity consumer. Predicting that the power-hungry Internet would drive electricity demand skyward in the next decade, the article's authors urged that we "Dig More Coal."
Although the energy implications of the Internet are still a moving target, most signs point in the opposite direction. Internet-connected devices are increasingly energy-efficient, online transactions are displacing some energy-hungry activities, and computers are making possible more precise -- and thus less wasteful -- energy management in industrial operations and in buildings.
The authors of the Forbes piece backed their claims with data that were patently inaccurate. They assume, for example, that "your typical computer and its peripherals require about 1,000 watts of power." In fact, a desktop PC and monitor use about 150 watts of power, which dips to 50 watts or less in energy-saving mode -- and most laptop computers use around 20 watts. Printers and other peripherals add to this figure only slightly. By taking inflated estimates for every component of the Internet's architecture, the authors claim that the Internet used 8 percent of the United States' electricity in 1998. Energy analysts at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Rocky Mountain Institute say this figure is several times overstated.
What was the purpose of this distortion? Although the magazine didn't mention it, the article was based on a report by the Greening Earth Society, an arm of a coal industry lobby, the Western Fuels Association. With coal use in decline (it fell 2.1 percent worldwide in 1998), the coal producers may have been growing desperate enough to engage in some serious twisting of the truth. "Futurists have been promising us an information highway, not unit trains loaded with coal....We're going to get both," declared the article. Creating a no-alternative scenario, the authors planted the seeds of two dangerous ideas in readers' minds: first, that a wired society will require enormous amounts of electricity -- "half of the electric grid will be powering the digital Internet economy with in the next decade," they assert -- and second, that coal is the fuel of choice for the digital world.
Despite its falsehoods, the Forbes article achieved its mark: by masquerading as a piece of journalism, rather than acknowledging its origin as coal industry propaganda, it was able to stealthily influence public opinion. The piece was slickly written, full of impressive-sounding numbers. And since the authors' coal industry affiliation was not mentioned, readers weren't expecting to be worked on by a powerful public relations machine. The Internet's electricity-guzzling ways were on their way to becoming another "urban legend."
As we speed into an information-loaded era, we're bombarded by a growing avalanche of "reports." But were do they come from? As readers, we need to be more vigilant than ever before about the origins of the ideas we receive and pass on. And as editors, journalists, and educators, we have critical roles to play in distinguishing real information from deception. Otherwise we risk having our strings pulled by the highest bidders, with dangerous consequences for both the planet's health and our own.