We can’t stress about things every moment of our lives. But in reality, we do live in one of the most stressful eras of human history–with inflation skyrocketing prices, no houses available to buy, our rights changing on a regular basis, … as well as global warming.
When I was young, grabbing a DVD off of the old wooden shoe rack was an everyday thing. Really, it was a multiple times a day thing. And every night, my sister and I would sit in front of the rack choosing a movie to watch for bed. Of course, we learned that it did have to be a movie without a loud and annoying home screen.
Nowadays we scroll through what’s available online, on streaming. Everything is on Disney, so you can always depend on them for their classics. Hulu has all the shows. Netflix has its originals. And everything else has everything else.
Shows and movies are traded around so often like football stars. It’s come to a point where if it’s not a streaming original, it’s likely unavailable to watch unless you are subscribed to 15+ services.
More and more, I find myself wanting to watch things that aren’t on streaming. And so of course I have slowly but surely started to accumulate more and more DVDs so that I can watch what I want to watch when I want to watch it. Rather than being more or less forced to watch whatever is available on streaming.
A part of this accumulation has also been the thought to “save on internet” because there is technically a limit to the internet we pay for. But this thought grew into a larger curiosity: does streaming affect climate change?
The answer is yes. “[S]tatistics bring the extent of the internet streaming emissions problem into perspective: online streaming is responsible for one percent of global CO2 emissions. That’s equivalent to 20 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions caused by digital technologies” (Utopia, 2023).
- “34 percent of online streaming stems from on-demand services: sites such as Amazon, Prime and Netflix were responsible for the equivalent of over 100 million tons of CO2 emissions. That’s about the same as Greece.
- “27 percent of streaming comes from pornographic content: watching porn accounted for 80 million tons of carbon emissions in 2018 — the same amount as was produced from all French households in the same year.
- “Online platforms such as YouTube came in third place at 21 percent.
- “Another 18 percent of videos were streamed on social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat.” (Utopia, 2023).
With this information alone, there are more than just mental health reasons to not be online all day every day. Not only do we need sunshine and nature, and actual tactile games and crafts, but the earth needs us to get offline too.
The Kantian philosopher in me cannot help but breed a duty in that we need to stream as little as possible.
In thinking about the imaginative sci-fi future of living in a digital reality, like the one we see in Ready Player One — we have to understand that this would be an impossibility if we are streaming this world with the same technologies we have now. Or at least not at all at the same rate that we see in RPO, where it seems like everyone lives online.
The difficulty here is that everyone does live online. Of course, this is in a modern technology sort of way, but streaming shows and movies has to be one of the most perfect examples of ways that you can effect change.
We can help combat climate change with a multitude of actions. I know that some of these actions can feel like a lot to ask because we live in a world that does not change very quickly. We can take our re-useables out but if your server drops a straw on your table, it can’t be used again even though you didn’t open it (this is not food-safe/ sanitary). Many, many, many things like this exist. But streaming in your own home is completely up to you.
With this though, does a sense of duty not fester deep within you?
We limit our water, our energy usage, our plastic, our waste, harsh chemicals, oils, everything, … fast fashion, corporate businesses, you name it. But we never talk about limiting how much we stream, why is that?
You could probably answer this yourself easily, but streaming services, streamers, or influencers aren’t going to advise you to get offline when the algorithm that makes them money is dependent on how much time their viewers are online.
Pulling your attention in to watch more and more and more is what every single streaming/ content creator wants. This is what makes them famous, how they make their money, as well as their entire purpose.
It’s almost a conspiracy in that we are pointing toward more and more streaming technologies. Hiding ourselves in these beautiful, artificial worlds to avoid the stresses of reality, when we could make a positive change for the world simply by not being online.
We don’t necessarily have to be offline is the greatest part. There is a very nifty invention called a digital video disc, or DVD for short. There are also VHSs or Blu-Rays if you’d rather go forward or backward in time. But jokes aside, we can watch tv and movies with A) more autonomy in actually choosing what we want to watch but B) we’d be saving the planet that much more.
If we start taking a stand against the new norm of stream this, stream that, it’s likely that the only folks being hurt would be the largest corporations as YouTubers have yet to normalize creating DVD collections. In the end, the large corporations make both the DVDs and the streaming services, and so they would simply move their budget from one side to the other.
The next issue on this entire platform would be that streaming is far too affordable in comparison to buying media; especially when there are free services with highly regarded shows and movies available. To this, the circle spins back around to money, to capitalism. Not only is there ease in streaming, there’s no walking, no boxes, no effort, but there’s also only small, insignificant payments for a whirlwind of options.
As always, the hat falls on what’s most profitable for humanity, not the planet.