• A new briefing paper showcases for the first time, the full impact Big Tech has on the climate crisis.
• Big Tech platforms’ “surveillance advertising” based business model is fuelling climate change by driving emissions, driving consumerism, driving division and driving out democracy.
• Campaigners believe the climate movement cannot achieve its aims without addressing Big Tech’s toxic business model.
1 December 2022 – A new briefing paper authored by barrister and digital human rights expert Susie Alegre for environmental charity Global Action Plan finds that the world’s biggest tech companies such as Meta, Twitter, Google and TikTok are standing in the way of effective climate action.
The paper details how Big Tech companies are systematically exacerbating the climate crisis by driving emissions, driving consumerism, driving division and driving out democracy.
The report outlines the enormous climate impacts of the technical processes behind the advertising upon which platforms are almost entirely reliant – an estimated 1% of total energy consumption on this planet is used in the process of serving online ads. The nature of the complex auction system behind these ads means the vast majority of this 1% is effectively pointless, wasted energy that leads to zero ads being placed. The effect of the ads that are seen is profound: Purpose Disruptors recently found that advertising now adds an estimated 32% to the carbon footprint of every person in the UK.
As well as consuming and wasting energy, online ads turbocharge excessive consumption while ‘engagement based’ algorithms drive division by spreading climate misinformation and disinformation, deepening climate denial, and threatening democracy. Big Tech’s lobbying power now outstrips the oil and gas sector and poses a direct threat to environmental action.
Each of these issues is hugely problematic. Taken together, they demonstrate how Big Tech – and its underlying business model, built upon surveillance advertising and recommender algorithms – is a fundamental blocker to effective climate action.
Campaigners are calling for the climate movement to join wider efforts to tackle Big Tech’s toxic business model and curb the power of online platforms.
“Big Tech billionaires are the oil barons of the 21st century and their impact on climate change is no less destructive. This paper should serve as a wake-up call to the climate movement.”
- Susie Alegre, barrister, digital human rights expert and author of the report.
“Big Tech’s way of doing business is fundamentally at odds with efforts to stave off the deepening climate crisis. These platforms and their eye-watering profits rely on processing massive quantities of data at a huge direct carbon cost. This is inseparable from the incentives of an online advertising industry which is built on surveillance and compulsive attention. These incentives accelerate consumerism, but they also pollute our information environment in ways that are even more devastating to effective climate action than direct emissions from the sector.”
- Oliver Hayes, policy & campaigns lead at Global Action Plan.
Notes to Editors
Media contact
Bryony Aylmer, Communications Manager, Global Action Plan – [email protected] - +447903812863
Global Action Plan is an environmental charity focused on issues where the connection between the health of people and our planet is most tangible. We mobilise people and organisations to take action on the systems that harm us and our planet.
Global Action Plan convenes the ‘End Surveillance Advertising to Kids’ coalition which is calling on the UK Government to outlaw the practice of surveillance advertising to under 18s.
