First, the encouraging stories: #1 Ida Huddleston and her daughter Delsia Bare value feeding people. They therefore refuse to sell their Kentucky farmland for a proposed data center project, even after offers topping $26 million.

#2 When the Tennessee Valley Authority (a federally-owned corporation and the country’s largest public electric power provider) threatened to remove all vegetation and trees and install ten posts and power lines over a farm’s 100-foot long corridor, the farmers fought back—and won.

Now the Call for Your Help:

On May 20, AT&T mailed notices to landline customers it plans to discontinue phone service in their areas by June, 2027.

Wireless Action reports that in the past week, AT&T has:

• Sued the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) for its previous refusal to grant its application to discontinue plain old telephone service (POTS) in California.

• Petitioned the FCC to preempt California’s Carrier of Last Resort (COLR) rules (as per the March 26th order where the FCC asserted preemption of state PUCs). The CPUC would be powerless to stop AT&T if the FCC obliges.

• Notified the FCC of its intent to disconnect 199,000 POTS customers in California by June 2027, which is automatically approved by the FCC under its new streamlined rules, unless there is significant opposition.

Please read this bulletin prepared by PhreakNet and SaveLandlines.org. It names the imminent threats to plain old telephone service in California and nationwide. It also names actions YOU can take TODAY. NOW: https://phreaknet.org/action

Landlines are lifelines for people in areas with frequent, prolonged power outages; unreliable (or nonexistent) Internet and cell service; and for those who cannot use cell phones. California is at the forefront of this national issue. Even if you are not in California, please take action to protect access to reliable phone service today.

In particular, item #3 involves submitting comments to the FCC on a docket on intercarrier compensation (25-311). The deadline for initial comments is tomorrow, Tuesday, May 26th. Please follow the instructions (on the bulletin) to submit comments to the docket. We need hundreds, ideally thousands, of comments submitted by Tuesday. See #3 here: https://phreaknet.org/action

If you have time for only one action right now, please submit comments on #3 before the deadline.

Let’s make this another encouraging story.

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After 15 years of renting a four-room house and learning, from tending its flower and vegetable gardens, that home is about connection to land, my husband and I need a new home. Our landlords plan to move back here.

Forty years ago, a mentor told me, before you look for a house, find your neighborhood.

When “All politics is local” no longer holds true, what is a neighborhood? Most gatherings happen online; and “all politics” have gone online and turned federal.

My husband and I would love to live near food-growers who aim to live within our watershed’s offerings of fuel and water. We’d welcome neighbors who consider nature our teacher. We don’t want to live near a data center, a battery energy storage system (BESS), solar PVs or wind turbines, cell sites or smart meters. We’d like to keep our landline.

While we and many friends struggle to afford housing, water and nutrient dense food, rental prices have increased 74% in nine years; the cost of buying a new house has increased 82%. AirB&Bs and second homeowners now border our rental house.

Federally, The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) just rescinded the 2024 Conservation and Landscape Health Rule. For the USA’s 245 million acres of BLM-managed public land, including 13.5 million acres in New Mexico, this reversal will prioritize mining, drilling, grazing and recreation over conservation. It goes into effects June 11, 2026.

When you lose your land, British climate journalist Rachel Donald says, you lose your mind.

In New Mexico, where my husband and I have lived for about 40 years, we’re inundated with projects that take from the Earth faster than it can replenish and waste faster than the Earth can replenish the waste. Recently, Santa Fe County Commissioners have permitted the 700-acre Rancho Viejo solar/battery facility. Doña Ana County Commissioners have permitted Project Jupiter, a 1400-acre, $165 billion data center campus. Near Socorro, Green Data proposes building a $165 billion, 10,000-acre “green” AI-training data center that will rely heavily on solar PVs and battery storage. Gamma Resources seeks an exploratory permit to drill uranium in the Carson National Forest. The Los Alamos National Lab might double its production of plutonium pits (nuclear weapons), per year. The private equity firm Blackstone aims to buy PNM, the state’s largest utility; and the state’s regulatory staff just recommended approval of selling NM Gas Company to Bernhard Capital Partners, another private equity firm.

If an affordable neighborhood with legal protections for nature and public health still exists on Planet Earth, I don’t know about it.

So—what is home now, and how do we who aim to orient by nature proceed?

I DO NOT UNDERSTAND

In 2017, in his inaugural speech, China’s leader Xi Jingping called for “an ecological civilization” that ensures “harmony between human and nature.” He said that his administration would “encourage simple, moderate, green and low-carbon ways of life and oppose extravagance and excessive consumption.” Xi Jingping promised to “take tough steps to stop and punish all activities that damage the environment.”

Then, as China’s president, he invested heavily in solar PVs, industrial wind turbines, EVs…and A.I.

I do not understand how anyone can call solar PVs, wind turbines, batteries or EVs “clean.” Look at electronics (anything with a computer, including vehicles, appliances, TVs, smartphones, solar panels and batteries) from their cradles-to-graves! Look at the infrastructure they require! Manufacturing electronics involves a power grid, extractions, refining, fossil fuels, water, toxins and intercontinental shipping. Electronics do not biodegrade. Plus, they pose major fire hazards—and emit toxins when they catch fire. And then, about 80% of solar components are manufactured in China using slave labor.

Indeed, all electronics and anything online (including this substack) require immeasurable amounts of electricity, water and extractions; (one smartphone starts with more than 125 substances, each with an international supply chain); workers who labor in hot factories (104° Fahrenheit/40° Celsius) at barely sustainable wages; access networks that guzzle energy and data centers that guzzle energy and water.

How does all of this relate to land and homes and neighborhoods? Composting kitchen scraps and growing a wee bit of food connect me to land and water and give me inclusion in the web of life. When corporations take land, water and forests—the public commons—to build technologies, profits, data centers and energy systems, we mortals get confused. We start thinking we need money and technology to survive. We think food comes from grocery stores. We think community is online. We lose our homes and neighborhoods.

So then, as we look for home, what’s constructive use of our attention?

SURVIVAL LESSONS

First, we need to admit we’ve got a problem.

The Strait of Hormuz’s closure might well be the crisis that gives us no choice but to admit we’ve got problems. We depend on international supply chains that we cannot control.

Then, we need to learn to grow food.

Recently, I watched John D. Liu’s 2007 film, Lessons of the Loess Plateau. It shows how degradation of an ancient Chinese civilization’s ecosystem led to dried up soil, plant loss and people dying from starvation. Then, in 2005, each household was granted land ownership. With education, people over 35,000 square kilometers (13,500 square miles) restored their watershed, healed their damaged ecosystem and grew much of their own food…in ten years.

In 2017, Lui founded Ecosystem Restoration Communities: a global movement that’s currently active on six different continents. “By 2030, we’re aiming for 100 projects and 3,1 million hectares of land.”

OTHER NEWS

In London last week, Jake Hurfurt observed two protests: one for “Unite the Kingdom,” an anti-migrant, anti-Islam movement. The other supported Palestine by marking Nakba Day. (The Nakba, The Catastrophe, names the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict that led to the creation of Israel and the forced expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians from their homes.) In both London protests, people were chilled by the surveillance, including live facial recognition alongside drones, helicopters, police dogs, horses and armored vehicles. In UK, Hurfurt observes, the right to free speech often depends on where you live, not on the law.

AT&T has filed suit against California officials: it seeks a court order declaring that it does not have to continue offering traditional copper wire phone service to new customers.

The U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services released a surgeon general’s report warning against the harms of excessive screen use for children and teens. The report gives parents, schools and communities practical tools to protect children and adolescents from growing harms of excessive screen exposures.

See Honor the Earth’s toolkit for opposing data centers.

Pope Leo XIV will drop His A.I. Encyclical on Memorial Day with Anthropic onstage.

Given that the last oil tanker from the Strait of Hormuz has delivered, petroleum geologist Art Berman expects that by July, U.S. Americans will understand that we’re in crisis, undeniably. In his conversation with Nate Hagens, Berman maps what goes into delivering gas and diesel and liquid natural gas (drilling, refining, ship insurance, delivery—and why, even if our war with Iran ends today, energy prices will rise. In turn, higher prices will impact our civilization’s four oil-dependent pillars: steel, cement, plastic and ammonia (for fertilizer). The opportunity is to live with a lot less oil.

Last, I’m reminded of Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925, founder of Waldorf Schools and biodynamic agriculture). After wires installed behind walls allowed people to access light and power by the flick of a switch, he predicted that eventually, because of electrification, people would no longer need to think. He also believed that the world would divide between two kinds of people: those who believe that what is actually evil is good—and those who must love them.

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GLOBAL EARTH REPAIR CONVERGENCE at Fort Worden State Park in Port Townsend, WA * May 7-11, 2026. Find the in-person and online programs here. Register to attend online for $20/day here.

I’m honored to participate in a panel on Friday afternoon, May 8th:

12:15 – 1:45pm/Pacific: GAIL FULLER speaks and leads discussion about Healing the Soil, Healing the Farmer.

1:45 – 3:15pm/Pacific: KATIE SINGER speaks and leads discussion about Mapping Our Technosphere to Discover Our Biosphere

3:15 – 5:05pm/Pacific: ANDREW MILLISON speaks and leads discussion about Fixing Watersheds is How We Fix the World

Join us!

Check out this May 4, 2026 cartoon from Rhymes with Orange.

THIS WEEK: Global Earth Repair Convergence May 7-11 in Port Townsend, Washington and online. More than 120 soil scientists, Indigenous elders, restoration ecologists, permaculture designers, policy advocates, mycologists, agro-foresters, filmmakers, economists and farmers lay out how to regenerate degraded land, how fungi can clean polluted waterways, how to rethink your backyard. On Friday, May 8^th, I will present MAPPING OUR TECHNOSPHERE: the four pillars that make online activity possible: the power grid, manufacturing, access networks and data centers. I’ll propose ways to reduce the technosphere’s cradle-to-grave ecological impacts—and host discussion.

BEYOND THE MARKETING TERMS

Every time I hear someone call solar PVs, industrial wind turbines, battery energy storage (BESS) or e-vehicles “green,” “clean,” “zero-emitting” or “renewable,” I flinch.

Whenever someone asks how much energy and, water and toxic waste are involved in operating (say) a data center, and the person responding fails to include the energy, water, mining, intercontinental shipping and toxic waste involved in manufacturing the servers and cooling systems, and the person responding fails to discuss the impacts of discarding these servers and cooling systems (which need replacing every few years and do not biodegrade), I cringe.

I flinch and cringe a lot.

Does people who call these technologies “green,” “clean,” “zero-emitting” or “renewable” know that these are merely marketing terms?

I understand that coal-burning power stations generate coal ash—toxic substances like arsenic and lithium that can leach into groundwater and air and harm health if they’re inhaled or ingested. Modern landfills must have a protective barrier below the coal ash to prevent contaminants from leaching into groundwater. But landfills constructed before that practice existed…now require cleanup that can take ten years. https://bouldercounty.gov/environment/water/valmont-station/

I wouldn’t wish coal ash on any neighborhood. But ignoring the ecological and public health impacts of solar PVs, wind turbines and BESS from their cradles-to-graves does not make them disappear. Here are a few significant issues:

· 81% of (say) a laptop’s energy use is consumed before its end-user turns the laptop on for the first time.

· Manufacturing silicon (for solar panels or transistors) burns coal and trees. Panels are coated with PFAs in four places.

· Users who expect 24/7 electricity will need to connect to the (fossil-fuel-powered) grid or use batteries, which are toxic to manufacture and flammable.

· At their end-of-life, solar panels are hazardous waste. They do not biodegrade.

BATTERY ENERGY STORAGE SYSTEMS (BESS) and SOLAR PV HAZARDS

Way back in 2019, Calvin Luther Martin, PhD, made an excellent, two-part slide show about BESS. Once you get to Part 1, scroll down to begin. Here’s Part 2.

If you’re fighting a BESS proposal in court, check out Dr. Martin’s collection of papers about their hazards, including Aiello et al’s 2025 report about coastal wetland deposition of cathode metals from the world’s largest lithium-ion battery fire at Moss Landing, California.

Also from Dr. Martin: Solar Energy: Yes or No? and Why solar energy farms are a bust. He explains, for example, that near airports, solar panel glare can blind pilots. Do a ForgeSolar “solar glare” analysis and ask the court to pause your case until a solar glare report is completed.

DATA CENTERS

Jason Bak, CEO of Green Data Center Real Estate, says his proposed “world’s largest” green data center between Socorro and Magdalena, New Mexico has renewable energy (there’s that marketing term) and water neutrality and it partners with local institutions like New Mexico Tech. The data center would operate at 2-gigawatts, similar to the Hoover Dam. (Most existing data centers operate in the tens to low hundreds of megawatts.) Then, since solar PVs provide only intermittent power, generating continuous (“baseload”) power for this data center would require building massive generation capacity and equally massive battery storage. Bak claims the panels would generate atsmopheric water to keep them clean (and efficient). Atmospheric water generation depends on humidity that Socorro rarely has. To protect NM’s Midle Rio Grande Community, check out Common Ground Rising; and sign and share this petition.

A Michigan utility has okayed a 12-month ban on supplying water for data centers.

Monterey Park, a small city seven miles east of Los Angeles, became the first in California to permanently ban data center construction. The ordinances officially label data centers a public nuisance and “prohibit all data centers within city limits.”

To oppose A.I. data centers, people are building a new political coalition. Learn How to Stop a Data Center in Your Backyard.

TRANSITIONING TO ECO-FRIENDLY FARMING

With worldwide shortages in synthetic fertilizers (resulting from the Strait of Hormuz’s closure), Vijay Kumar Thalam explains how 1.8 million farmers in Andhra Pradesh, India have transitioned from chemical-intensive agriculture to eco-friendly techniques that improve soil health, farmer livelihoods and rural resilience. A recording with Didi Pershouse.

TAKE ACTION TO STOP Congress from legalizing the liquidation of the USA’s national forests.

The NY Times reported that when the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran last month, “black rain fell from the sky as airborne oil droplets mixed with precipitation and coated streets, cars, plants and pets. Across Tehran, people reported burning eyes, migraines, dizziness and coughing…. Smoke from a bombed oil depot would include benzene, formaldehyde and other carcinogens”… and endanger lives on a massive scale.” The burning oil depots probably also contaminated parts of Tehran’s water supply.

MORE

Virginia has joined the trend to reduce local control of wireless permitting. The state’s HB277 prohibits a locality from denying an application for the modification of an existing wireless facility if the modification would not substantially change the physical dimensions of the existing wireless facility. Local control is also preempted for co-locations of new transmission equipment, the removal of transmission equipment and the replacement of transmission equipment. WHY would a state give up its control???
An Italian mayor ordered wireless networks turned off in municipal schools due to electromagnetic radiation exposure to children and replaced wireless connection with Ethernet cables.

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Robots keep signaling me that I need to upgrade my software and get A.I. I’m fine with what I’ve got. The robots have other ideas. Some moments feel like an existential wrestle. I notice my temperature rise. I remind myself that for most of human history, survival has not depended on electricity, cars, smart meters, smartphones, Internet access, solar PVs, battery energy storage or targeted missile strikes (all here whether I like them or not).

Thinking that survival depends on nature, on abiding by nature’s cycles…can seem like a kindergarten lesson that’s no longer relevant.

I clarify that from conception until death, every living creature depends on an ecosystem of water, food, soil, air, insects, birds, fish and other animals. Actually, we depend on the biosphere before conception—for healthy parents—and after death—when the body decomposes and returns to soil.

In what schools does nature serve as our teacher? Who still teaches that all life evolves from heating and cooling and drying and moistening? Glaciers, rocks, plants, animals and menstrual cycles all evolve from these two cycles. Since survival depends on healthy water-soil-plant relationships, could we stop covering soil with paved roads, parking lots, data centers (etc.)? Healthy soil absorbs and holds water. It grows food, cools the temperature and prevents fires. Why not stop cutting down climate-regulating forests (for solar and battery storage facilities, data centers and new housing developments)? Let forests that we have ruined regenerate themselves. Why not pause technological developments until we can do them without ravaging nature? Let go the belief that survival depends on making money and upgrading electronics. Reduce dependence on international supply chains, decrease military spending—and learn to live by the food, water and energy offered within our region’s watershed.

Even in highly populated areas, could we stop deploying new tech infrastructure and encourage people to grow food at schools, hospitals, office complexes, empty lots and windowsills?

Could we teach ourselves to abide by nature’s cycles? I hear that when people do that, we genocide and ecocide become less common.

WHAT WE NEED TO KNOW ABOUT OIL Former Wall Street broker Nate Hagens explains that “the human economy, measured by people times goods and services per person, is now 1000 times bigger than it was 500 years ago. This lens is missing from virtually all mainstream economic and political discussions and analysis. We’re making long-term plans, taking on long-term debts, building long-term institutions and financial systems…all based on the assumption that the energy and material largesse at the top of the carbon pulse is a permanent plateau. It isn’t. It goes up and it will likely come down soon. The downslope has implications for every dimension of civilization, but especially our economic system, because the economy runs on energy.” I highly recommend Nate Hagens’ three brief videos: Oil 101; Oil 201; Oil 301.

Iranian/Canadian Kaveh Madani explains that because of its chemical debris, fallout from explosions, targeting of oil sites and desalination plants, WAR IS THE WORST THING FOR THE ENVIRONMENT. Madani says that problems come from blaming only oil producers—and from excluding oil buyers’ responsibility. See his recent report, Global Water Bankruptcy: Living Beyond Our Hydrological Means in the Post-Crisis Era.

WANT TO RESISIT A DATA CENTER? Organizers from Tennessee, Wisconsin and Arizona share how they did it. A Pennsylvania farmer rejected a huge payment to turn his land into a giant data center. Students at Colorado U/Denver surveyed responses to a $2 million contract between the university and OpenAI. Most students do NOT support this contract.

Landlines are an underrated lifeline—even in 2026. Unlike wireless devices, landlines keep working through power outages. And yet the FCC’s latest rulings can preempt state and local authority over Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS). The FCC’s 2019 Order 19-72A1 and 2025/2026 updates…permit carriers to retire copper lines and transition to modern technology, overriding local “carrier of last resort” (COLR) obligations that force providers to maintain outdated infrastructure.

Beware: Solo screen time poses a unique peril for young children already at risk.

To break the vicious circle that destroys ecosystems, David Bollier, whose work focuses on the commons (a social system for long-term stewardship of resources that preserves shared values and community identity), speaks with degrowth scholar Federico Savini—who explains we need “to focus on building up the essential economies of care, housing, transport, health, education creativity and art.”

AN URGENT UPDATE FROM THEODORA SCARATO A Congressional bill that would fast-track cell towers in front of homes is advancing to a full House vote. H.R. 2289, the American Broadband Deployment Act, has cleared committee and is headed to the full House floor. After the House Rules Committee meets on April 20 at 4 PM to set debate rules, the bill can move quickly to a final vote. If it passes, it goes to the Senate. H.R. 2289 would fast-track cell towers near homes in neighborhoods nationwide, override local control and strip cities and towns of their ability to enforce basic safeguards like setbacks, safety review and community input. This bill will also expand federal preemption regarding RF related health effects.

KEY ACTION STEPS

1. Send a letter to your Congressmember (use our 1-Click tool), then call them!

2. Urge your local officials to write letters and to contact federal representatives.

3. Share this alert with your community.

CELL PHONE AND WIRELESS CORPORATIONS ARE LOBBYING FOR AN IMMEDATE VOTE

On April 13, major telecom and infrastructure groups, including CTIA (The Wireless Association representing corporations such as Apple, AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile), sent a letter to House leadership urging them to bring H.R. 2289 to the floor immediately, “because it directly supports America’s position in the global AI race.”

H.R. 2289 WOULD UNDERMINE PUBLIC SAFETY

On April 16, 2026, the National Association of Counties (NACo), the U.S. Conference of Mayors (USCM), the National League of Cities, and the National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors (NATOA) wrote a letter to House leadership stating that H.R. 2289 “would undermine public safety, force local taxpayers to subsidize private corporations and disrupt the very broadband deployment progress it aims to accelerate.” “H.R. 2289 creates a framework that prioritizes communication companies’ shareholder value at the expense of the safety and financial interests of the communities and the taxpayers they serve. Furthermore, by limiting cost-recovery mechanisms for application reviews, the bill effectively forces local taxpayers to subsidize private providers’ administrative expenses – a cost that falls entirely on the public.” “H.R. 2289 as written, would sacrifice local autonomy, impose unfunded mandates, and disrupt deployment progress already underway.”

The National Association of Counties (NACo), representing counties serving more than 80% of the nation’s population, states that “the preemption of local permitting authority will not lead to the expedited build-out of broadband infrastructure, but instead jeopardize the safety of the public.”

RESOURCES TO SHARE WITH POLICYMAKERS

Environmental Health Sciences (EHS) Resources on HR: 2289 with key quotes from letters from states, cities, and towns. Download EHS Factsheet on H.R. 2289

See also letters regarding the FCC proposal to fast-track cell towers.

The National Association of Counties: Oppose the Preemption of Local Broadband Permitting Authorities | National Association of Counties

National Association of Towns and Townships Action Alert: Oppose H.R. 2289, American Broadband Deployment Act. They have a draft letter of opposition for towns.

April 16, 2026, Letter from Counties, Cities, Mayors, and Telecommunications Officers and Advisors to House Leadership on H.R. 2289

TAKE ACTION TODAY

Write Your Lawmaker Then call your representatives, set up meetings, elevate this issue in your community—and share resources. We can do this! THANK YOU for standing up.

Henry David Thoreau: THINK OF YOURSELF as an inhabitant of nature, rather than a member of society.

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For the last century, many (most?) U.S. Americans have enjoyed an abundance of vegetables, fruits, grains, cheese and meat—without knowing about the petroleum (for fertilizers, packaging, intercontinental shipping, etc.) behind grocery stores’ shelves or restaurant menus.

Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz illuminates our dependence on oil and international supply chains—and invites us to reduce them by building local sources of food. This means getting to know our watershed, developing nutrient-dense soil and supporting farmers.

As a first step or a class project that moves toward eating within our means, map your favorite meal’s supply chain.

We’ve got so much to unlearn. For example, we’ve covered soil with paved roads, shopping malls, parking lots, houses, schools, weedcloth, gravel and data storage centers. We’ve cut down forests for solar PV facilities—which require fossil fuels to manufacture and ship and are hazardous waste at their end-of-life. Further, our modern constructs block soil’s ability to absorb and hold water. That’s a problem, since we need soil that absorbs and holds water to grow food. Plus, pavement raises temperatures. Soil that absorbs and holds water is one of the Earth’s primary cooling mechanisms.

Once we make it our goal to reduce dependence on international supplies and restore soil’s nutrient-density and ability to absorb and hold water, we’ve got opportunities:

· Participate in community supported agriculture (CSAs): provide farmers with upfront capital and receive weekly or bi-weekly boxes of seasonal produce.

· Encourage every school to grow salad greens. Develop human know-how about growing food.

· Harvest rainwater and keep it on-site. Don’t drain it off-site.

· Plant dense, diverse Miyawaki forests (the size of six parking spaces) at schools and in parking lots. They need watering and mulch for two years—and then generate water themselves. (When single plants are placed every twenty or thirty feet in, say, a parking lot, the tree has a shelf-life of six or seven years. Sustainable plants need density and diversity.)

· Transform vacant lots into gardens with native plants, fruit and nut trees, berry bushes and vegetables.

· On a south-facing windowsill in your home, school or office, start an herb garden. Fill six-inch-deep pots with drainage holes and high-quality potting mix. Plant basil, cilantro, thyme and parsley.

Think edible landscaping—even if the agricultural industry has other ideas. This industry that provides most of U.S. American food now wants “precision agriculture.” Precision ag uses GPS, sensors, drones, satellites and telematics technologies to measure soil nutrient levels and moisture, then has robots decide when to apply water and petroleum-based fertilizer…in order to maximize yields and reduce costs. Of course, precision ag requires data storage centers that drain water, cause air pollution and gobble up farmland.

Anthony Pahnke reports that The Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2026 currently in Congress includes a provision that would reimburse farmers 90% of the cost of adopting AI and precision agriculture. The tech industry—not the USDA—would set the standards governing those technologies. Instead, Pahnke advocates for supporting young people to get on the land and stay there—in programs like the Local Agriculture Market Program and the Justice for Black Farmers Act.

Let Senators know that The Farm, Food and National Security Act of 2026 will grow corporate profits, not food. It’ll harvest data, not fruits and vegetables. The Senate’s Agriculture Committee members are expected to vote in the next couple of weeks.

AI, SOCIAL MEDIA & HUMAN INTELLIGENCE

Before he died, in 1925, Waldorf schools-founder Rudolf Steiner predicted that because of electrification (i.e. accessing light without knowing how to wire electricity), people would eventually no longer need to think. Now, a Georgetown computer science professor explains how AI challenges our cognitive abilities. Unfortunately, while the tech industry asks us to trust AI and rely on it more, it moves toward less human oversight. (To break your digital trance, the professor suggests keeping your phone out of easy reach.)

In Africa, human workers who train AI…are fighting back.

Because readers don’t know whether a person or an AI wrote the copy, trust in writers is plummeting.

Last week, a California jury found that Meta and YouTube’s addictive design features led to a user’s mental health distress. Similar lawsuits now hinge on the central question: Is social media addictive?

Regarding debates on banning smartphones for children, see neurobiologist Dr. Keren Grafen’s “Effects of a digitalised childhood on the cognitive and emotional maturation of the brain” and Peter Hensinger’s “Effects of mobile phone electromagnetic fields on brain metabolism.”

THE FCC: WHY IS IT AGAINST FREE SPEECH and LANDLINES?

Donald Trump’s Federal Communications Commission chair, Brendan Carr, has publicly threatened news broadcasters: Report the Iran war the way the administration wants, or lose your license to operate. With this unconstitutional abuse of government power, Intercept Voices calls for impeaching FCC Chair Brendan Carr. While Intercept Voices recognizes that this is a longshot, it can help show that this conduct is beyond the pale and build momentum for change at the FCC. Here’s the petition.

U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders notes that news media are increasingly concentrated in fewer hands. The Ellison family alone—allies of Trump—will soon control TikTok, CBS, CNN, HBO, Discovery Channel, BET, Cartoon Network, Comedy Central, DC Studios, Fandango, Miramax, MTV, Nickelodeon, Paramount, Pluto TV, Showtime, TBS, The CW, TNT, and Warner Bros. Sanders calls this “oligarchy.” Ellison is a personal confidant of Benjamin Netanyahu; he supports Netanyahu’s genocidal war in Gaza. Would his media platforms allow criticism of Israel? Can democracy survive when a handful of billionaires control the media and social media platforms?

On Thursday, March 26, the FCC approved its order on landlines. In this video, The End of Landlines: What We’re Losing, Plain Meaning explains why. Beware: during power outages, only landlines are reliable. Further, people disabled by exposure to electromagnetic radiation (see the note below) can use only landlines safely. To CONTINUE essential landline telephone service, tell your Congressional representatives to protect the public and require landline services. File a complaint with the FCC. Ask your city/county officials to oppose landline shutdowns and protect emergency communication systems.

POWER, DATA CENTERS, SOLAR PVs, BESS…AND WATER: THEY’RE RELATED!

Kollibri terre Sonnenblume reports we might expect A Million Miles of Transmission Lines. Currently (no pun intended) the US has 200,000-240,000 miles of high-voltage transmission lines. In order to decarbonize or electrify the nation’s energy supply, the most commonly mentioned estimate is to double this amount by 2035. However, according to an oft-cited Princeton study, reaching “net-zero” will require two to five times as much by 2050. This translates to one million or more new miles of lines. Transmission lines are not benign structures. They have on-site and off-site environmental impacts. So do transformers, substations and other infrastructure, including roads.

In Ashville, Ohio, a corporation wants to build an 800-megawatt industrial natural gas energy facility directly above the area’s aquifer, its sole source of drinking water. The facility would take up about 110 acres and power the data center on the same site

Santa Fe County’s CLEAN ENERGY COALITION (CEC) features a video from More Perfect Union showing the compensation that top executives from TXNM Energy, PNM’s parent company, will receive if Blackstone buys PNM.

In the event of a battery energy storage system (BESS) fire (at the AES Rancho Viejo/Eldorado facility), CEC questions how much water would be needed, and for how long? While the County requires AES to provide 60,000 gallons of water in tanks for “a couple of hours,” videos of recent BESS fires in Boulder City, Nevada and at the Salt River Project in Peoria, AZ show that this would be insufficient. CEC questions how many containers would go up in thermal runaway at AES’ BESS facility if firefighters do not arrive in eight minutes like they did in Boulder City. The videos show that 60,000 gallons at delivery of 1200 gallons/minute last 50 minutes. At 1500 gallons/minute, they last 40 minutes. Has a liability-carrying professional engineer certified that 60,000 gallons of water are sufficient for extinguishing a potential fire at the AES BESS?? If not, why not?

Check out this startling image of solar PVs in Hjolderup, Denmark—and why people now say yes to fields of wheat, no to fields of iron.

EMR SYNDROME

The EMR Syndrome Alliance announces the launch of emrsyndrome.org, a resource for people living with EMR Syndrome (Electromagnetic Radiation Syndrome), a medical condition associated with exposure to man-made electromagnetic radiation (EMR) from wireless technologies and electromagnetic fields. Sources of man-made EMR include cell towers, antennas, cellphones, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, ‘smart’ utility meters, ‘smart appliances,’ implanted medical devices, airport body scanners, and more. Documentation of this condition dates back to military and industrial research decades ago and has been on the rise ever since. Media Contact: Ruth F. Moss. 914.761.7307; 410670@email4pr.com

DAVID V. GOLIATH STORIES

In a landmark unanimous vote, the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma just became one of the first Native American Tribes to pass a complete moratorium on data center development on tribal jurisdiction.

The Cherokee Nation just established a task force to study the environmental and economic impacts of data centers on Cherokee Nation lands.

Pennsylvania farmer hailed as hero for rejecting huge payment to turn his land into a giant data center. https://futurism.com/future-society/farmer-hero-rejecting-payment-data-center

A Missouri Senate bill seeks a pause on industrial solar projects until 2027 over environmental concerns.

GREEN DINO DETOX TEA

From Amadea Morningstar, Easy Healing Drinks from the Wisdom of Ayurveda

Takes a leisurely 15 minutes * Makes 3 (1 cup) servings

1 quart + ½ cup water

1 bunch Lacinato (dinosaur) kale

1 thin slice onion

1 slice (2 inches) fresh lemon

1 inch slice fresh ginger

½ teaspoon ground tulsi

Bring the water to a boil. Tear the kale off the stems into the water, discard the stems or save for a soup stock. Add the rest of the ingredients, simmer until greens are tender. Strain, using the steaming water as your drink. Use the greens in whatever dish you like, including the Artichoke Heart Dip or Tender Green Pesto recipes above.

This detox tea supports: plasma, red blood cells, muscle, bone, liver. Alkalizing.

EXTRA EASY VARIATION: Instead of the fresh lemon, ginger, and tulsi, use 1 Organic India brand Tulsi lemon ginger tea bag. Follow directions above.

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When Iran responded to the U.S. and Israel’s attack by closing the 24-mile-wide Strait of Hormuz (through which about 20% of world oil shipments pass), many people began to notice our dependence on oil and international supply chains. Liquefied natural gas (LNG), crude oil, rubber, tea, sugar, sulfuric acid (an oil by-product needed to make nitrogen fertilizers for mass-produced alfalfa, canola, corn, potatoes, soybeans, wheat and more), plastics, electronics parts and final electronic products…all pass through the Strait of Hormuz.

If anyone aims to expand awareness of modern civilization’s ecological impacts—and reduce them—then we might consider the Strait’s closure a blessing. As Pakistani engineer Ali bin Shahid says, “This…is the most productive policy in modern history. (It) turned out to be a better climate policy than the Paris Agreement, the Kyoto Protocol, and every UNFCCC resolution combined. No compliance framework needed. No carbon tax. Just sea mines.”

Environmentalist Max Wilbert points out that closing the Strait of Hormuz prevents 20 million barrels of oil from being burned per day. “As a person living in an industrialized nation and born into a capitalist society,” he writes, “I get most of my food from the grocery store and my water from an electric well pump. Collapse is not something that I personally look forward to. I have a young son. Already we struggle to make ends meet. But ecologically, collapse is likely the best path forward, given that governments and communities have refused to take meaningful action to halt global warming, the mass extinction of biological life, and the rest of the eco-crisis. The best hope, for my son and for the other children of the world, is to see the global industrial economy, with its machinery of war, fall, so that something new—local, small scale, ecological—may rise in its place.”

Russian physicist Anastassia Makarieva writes, “In light of recent dramatic events, a growing number of people conclude that the energy and material capacities of modern civilization are reaching their limits before our eyes, and that some form of collapse may occur relatively soon…. Instead of giving up too early and alienating ourselves from one another even further as we regain a local focus, I would like to suggest that we still have an opportunity, at least, to discuss what kind of human civilization could remain stable under natural limits.” Makarieva argues “against localization as a global strategy. Besides being intellectually unsatisfactory, it would not work: being well off amid mass starvation is not safe. Now that we are all in one boat, it is in our common interest that nobody be driven to such despair as to destroy the boat for everyone. This requires an increased global coordination and mutual understanding. foster mutual understanding and respect as broadly as possible across cultural landscapes.”

THE INVITATION

The Strait of Hormuz’s closure invites us to learn what our infrastructures require. I refer here to power for electricity and vehicle fuel; to manufacturing supply chains, financial markets, the military, the Internet, telecommunications, A.I.—all needing data centers and access networks, extractions, solvents, international shipping and more.

This closure invites us to learn about the ecological impacts of industrially-processed goods—like food, computers and smartphones, cars, gasoline, batteries, transformers, solar PVs, wind turbines, social media, air conditioners, TVs…and energy.

It’s an invitation to include our personal challenges with big pictures.

We need curiosity, not-knowing and openness—including about our own thoughts. When I find myself thinking I know what someone else should do, I sometimes can recognize that I’ve just named good medicine—for myself.

RELATED NEWS

Check Nate Hagens’ last two podcasts: The Iranian War, Rising Gas Prices and the Single Point Failure, and Uncomfortable Questions in Unsettled Times: Iran Effects, Local Preparedness and End of Empire?

Brian Merchant: “If AI is writing the work and AI is reading the work, do we even need to be there at all?” Education workers reveal a growing crisis on campus and off.

Elizabeth Morris advocates for “one drop of loving-kindness.”

Discovering Power’s Traps: a primer for electricity users.

Mapping Our Technosphere to Discover Our Biosphere

A new peer-reviewed paper by Joel Moskowitz, PhD and Ron Melnick, PhD concludes that current wireless radiation exposure limits are at least 200 times too high to safely protect people from radiation emitted by cell phones, Wi-Fi routers, smart meters and cell towers.

During this interview about social media with Jonathan Haidt, author of The Anxious Generation (about smartphones’ harm to GenZ), New Yorker editor David Remnick acknowledges he’s got to keep his smartphone in the kitchen—or he can’t concentrate.

Moscow residents turn to pagers, printed map and landline phones as human rights groups warn that the state-developed Max messenger could enable mass surveillance.

David Ratcliffe has released the second edition of Understanding Special Operations: Their Impact on The Vietnam War Era and Beyond, with transcribed interviews of L. Fletcher Prouty, Retired Colonel in the U.S. Air Force. “Special operations” is an Orwellian term for military services that support the U.S. government’s clandestine activities and a euphemism for overthrowing governments, sabotage, torture, demolition, espionage, murder, contrived wars and assassination. Prouty served as Chief of Special Operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff under President John F. Kennedy. His stories and insights certainly shed light on the war against Iran.

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I’ve got three items today:

#1. California-based Reflect Orbital wants to deploy satellites covered in mirrors to produce “sunlight on-demand” at night in order to boost solar power production during peak-use morning and evening hours. If the FCC approves this project, Reflect Orbital plans to release up to 50,000 satellites into Earth’s orbit by 2035. By reflecting the sun’s rays onto Earth at night, they could illuminate an area wider than Manhattan. These satellites could damage animals (including humans) and plants that need darkness to thrive and disrupt birds’ migratory patterns. Since roughly half of insect species are nocturnal, it could severely disturb their life cycles as well.

The deadline to submit a Comment on Reflect Orbital’s application is TODAY, March 9. Tell the FCC to reject Reflect Orbital’s satellite plans. Even a brief comment helps. Some people are requesting a minimum 30-day extension to the comment period and also for comments about SpaceX’s request to deploy data centers in space (comments were due March 6).

For instructions on how to submit a comment to the FCC:

https://aas.org/posts/advocacy/2026/02/how-submit-comments-satellite-applications-fcc For information about the mirrored satellites:

References:

1. “Sunlight after dark,” Reflect Orbital, last accessed February 17, 2026.
2. Ellen Montgomery and Lauren Arnold, “How “sunlight on demand” could erase darkness,” Environment America, February 16, 2026.
3. Ellen Montgomery and Lauren Arnold, “How “sunlight on demand” could erase darkness,” Environment America, February 16, 2026.
4. Kyle Horton, “How light pollution can imperil migrating birds by luring them into cities,” PBS, December 17, 2023.
5. Ellen Montgomery and Lauren Arnold, “How “sunlight on demand” could erase darkness,” Environment America, February 16, 2026.

#2. In the wake of the California Public Utility’s Commission’s issuance of its Carrier of Last Resort and Network Modernization Staff Proposal (R.24-06-012), the recognized parties’ Comments and their Reply Comments on the Proposal, it is critical that the public submit new comments to the COLR docket. Reiterate your personal needs for a reliable, safe, good-voice-quality landline. Remind the CPUC how landline degradation or loss would affect (or already has affected) your life or that of family, neighbors, friends. Point out one or more critically-needed revisions in the CPUC Staff Proposal itself (See SAMPLE COMMENTS below).

https://apps.cpuc.ca.gov/apex/f?p=401:56::::RP,57,RIR:P5_PROCEEDING_SELECT:R2406012 Click on Public Comments at the top. Read comments from landline customers and advocates across California.

Click on Add Public Comment to type your own (or copy/paste from text you have previously composed). Note: the site will squish your format into one paragraph, so no need to beautify as if your prose is aimed at your English teacher!

SAMPLES

**Critical consumer protectionsand safeguards are not yet provided in the CPUC Staff Proposal, such as independent verification ofcarrier claims, and assurances that essential services are actually provided in practice.

**The COLR Staff Proposal omits consideration of already-marginalized EHS/EMR-S Californians who cannot tolerate wireless emissions and must have fully-wired connectivity for both voice and internet. Nowhere in the Proposal is there acknowledgement ofthese critical needs. No explanation is made of exactly how wireless-dependent technology included in Modernized Essential Services could functionally replace the wireline voice service and DSL internet on which this often low-income population depends. Already, people who experience EMR-S (Electromagnetic RadiationSyndrome) confront physical and financial barriers in modifying their environment to adequately protect their health.

**The Proposal does not describe specific actions the CPUC will take to enforce requirements when the carrier fails to meet them. Ample evidence exists from Public Participation Hearings and docket comments, that the CPUC has allowed AT&T to neglect infrastructure maintenance, cause landline service to degrade and refuse new connections and modifications to customers.

**Voice over Internet Protocol(VoIP) is NOT functionally equivalent to Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS). VoIP cannot serve as a replacement for traditional wireline voice service. Wireline connection is resilient in emergency conditions and can be life-saving, whereas the limitations of Voice over Internet Protocol can render this technology to be life-threatening.

**Essential voice service must remain available during extended power outages, must reliably support access to 911 and other emergency services and function consistently within indoor environments.The Proposal does not ensure that customers will actually be able to access or operate backup power equipment, for example, or that customers will not face unreasonable costs or other barriers.

Item #3 reports on the tech that ICE uses to create a surveillance ecosystem. Yikes. Another reason to learn to live without a smartphone.

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Almost Everywhere, I notice Artificial Intelligence.

After A.I.s from OpenAI, Anthropic and Google kept recommending nuclear strikes in war game simulations, Anthropic’s CEO Dario Amodei said his company would not help the U.S. surveil unwitting civilians or deploy killer drones. In response, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said contractors don’t get to tell the government how to do its job. Dario Amodei stands by his belief that the decision to kill people must remain a human one.

The Peace Corps has started a new department: The Tech Corps. The Tech Corps’ volunteers will promote American A.I. abroad at farms, hospitals and schools. (Will anyone help people relate with robots and other living creatures?)

San Francisco’s school district bypassed its Board (and disregarded students’ privacy concerns) to approve a contract with OpenAI. Los Angeles and San Diego school districts have also agreed to surveillance of students. No comprehensive federal or California law governs how K-12 schools may use generative A.I.

A recent report showed that at least 41% of the images generated at Elon Musk’s Grok chatbot were sexualized images of women.

Then (while I need weeks or months to organize a substack and years to write a book), several colleagues now have A.I.s “write” their scientific reports and political essays and poetry translations in no-time at all. I have to admit that the work these A.I.s generate is admirable.

Paul Kingsnorth has initiated a Writers Against AI Campaign. To support it, a writer must pledge: #1: I will not use AI in my work as a writer. #2: I will not support writers who use AI in their work. #3: I will support writers, illustrators, editors and others in related fields whose work is entirely human-made.

I can agree to #1 and #3. I can’t promise about #2—even when A.I. weakens human brainpower.

Plus, every A.I. activity engages the energy-intensive, water-intensive global super-factory that designs computers and LLMs; requires mining, smelting and refining of ores; manufactures chemicals, generates toxic waste from cradle-to-grave; and requires assembly plants, intercontinental shipping, building and deploying access networks, building and deploying data centers, etcetera.

A.I. threatens our existence.

Faced with A.I.’s profitability, Tech Bros (and users) don’t pause, notice consequences or adjust technology use to respect the ecosystems on which life depends. They speed forward with upgrades and corporate protections.

WHAT OPTIONS DO WE HAVE FOR THINKING ABOUT ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE?

There’s fighting it. I think of John Henry. Born into slavery in 1848, a giant of a man, John Henry worked for the C&O railroad. In 1867 (post slavery), the company delivered a steam-powered machine to drill through Big Bend Mountain near Talcott, West Virginia. Afraid they’d lose their jobs to this machine, John Henry’s crewmates challenged him (their strongest worker) to race against the machine. The steel-driving man nearly doubled the amount of rock that the steam drill cut.

After winning, John Henry collapsed and died.

Taoists advocate for being in concert with reality and other people.

I do not know how to be in concert with A.I.

We can witness what’s happening and write about what we see. After writing a half dozen books and hundreds of blogs and substacks, I get the message that writing is a hobby—like making compost, growing chard and living without a mobile device: it does not contribute to the economy.

There’s waiting for forces beyond our control to end A.I.: After revealing that drone strikes recently damaged three of its UAE and Bahrain data centers, Amazon.com warned of prolonged disruptions to its services. Then, if China invades Taiwan and cuts off its chip exports to American companies, the tech industry and the U.S. economy would be crippled.

I remind myself that life regenerates from ashes (even if the ashes we generate now are toxic and radioactive).

Here’s a round-up of recent news:

AFTER THE U.S./ISRAELI ATTACKS ON IRAN, INTERNATIONAL ATOMIC ENERGY AGENCY (IAEA) DIRECTOR GENERAL RAFAEL MARIANO GROSSI said, “We cannot rule out a possible radiological release with serious consequences, including the necessity to evacuate areas as large or larger than major cities. To achieve the long-term assurance that Iran will not acquire nuclear weapons and for maintaining the continued effectiveness of the global non-proliferation regime, we must return to diplomacy and negotiations.”

CenturyLink (sometimes called Lumen, now part of AT&T) PLANS TO RETIRE ITS TRADITIONAL COPPER-BASED LANDLINE AND LONG-DISTANCE SERVICES. Customers on these older systems may have to “upgrade” to a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) such as WhatsApp or Google Voice. In December the California Public Utilities Commission issued a proposal, “Carrier of Last Resort and Network Modernization Staff (R.24-06-012)…and opened a Comment period. In their Reply Comments, AT&T asserted that copper landline “legacy service” (also called POTS, Plain Old Telephone Service) is no longer needed or wanted by 97% of the public. If this number is accurate, then 1.2 million Californians still rely on copper landlines.

During power outages, only wired landlines may work.

Individuals disabled by exposure to electromagnetic radiation (or those who choose to minimize radiation exposure) rely on wired, copper-legacy landlines.

Consumer-advocate organizations (EMF Safety Network, TURN/CWA District 9, Small Business Utility Administration, Center for Accessible Technology, Farm Bureau Federation, Empowering Quality Utility Access for Isolated Localities and others) warn that the Commission must monitor and enforce every step of this transition and into the future, because carriers will likely not otherwise comply with COLR (Carrier of Last Resort) relinquishment mandates. They also clarified that providers are inescapably obligated to provide service that leaves no Californian inadequately served.

Rural County Representatives of California (RCRC) supports “reasonable modernization of COLR obligations,” but remains concerned that premature or insufficiently-supported relinquishment risks would “leave rural and high-cost communities without universal, reliable access to essential voice services.”

To preserve California’s landlines, submit comments to the CPUC docket. View Public Comments.

SANTA FE COUNTY FACES ANOTHER PROPOSED SOLAR AND BATTERY ENERGY STORAGE (BESS) FACILITY. If approved, Linea’s Globemallow project (significantly larger than AES’ Rancho Viejo solar/BESS) will be located about 30 miles south of Eldorado. The Clean Energy Coalition (CEC) has posted details and an overall assessment about Globemallow at https://cleanenergycoalitionsfc.org/aes-vs-linea/

CEC notes that Blackstone aims to purchase PNM (New Mexico’s largest utility); and Blackrock just acquired AES (the corporation permitted to build the Rancho Viejo solar/BESS facility) for $33.4 billion. CEC bets that A.I. data centers will play big parts in these corporations’ futures (and New Mexico’s).

Santa Fe County has scheduled a Linea Globemallow BESS hearing March 12, 3pm at the Santa Fe Convention Center. (You can also attend virtually.)

The Planning Commission Hearing will be held April 16, 2026. (Not much posted yet.)

GOVERNMENTS, INDUSTRIES, MEDICAL BUSINESSES, SURVEILLANCE SYSTEMS AND FINANCIAL MARKETS NOW DEPEND ON on A.I. and A.I. DATA CENTERS. The U.S. has over 4,000 data centers–more than the next 14 countries combined. Despite citizens’ concerns about their impacts on electricity bills and water quality, many states have offered financial incentives to attract new data centers’ construction jobs, tax revenues and business opportunities. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman noted that discussions about AI’s energy consumption often overlook that training a human takes twenty years of food!

Every data center server rack uses 328 KG of copper, plus gold, iron, gallium, antimony, tungsten, silver, rare earth elements, indium, tantalum, palladium, barium, niodimium and titanium.

President Trump has directed the Department of the Interior to inventory federal-land mineral deposits and prioritize mineral production where they are found. He’s added mining projects to a Biden-era legislative process intended to speed environmental review for infrastructure projects.

For a strategic response to corporate mining, check out Max Wilbert’s conversation with Tom Grotewohl. In Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, Grotewohl aims to stop the Copperwood Mine. For every ton of extracted material, only 30 pounds will be copper and 1,970 pounds (98.55%) will be waste. Copperwood’s waste would contain mercury, arsenic, cadmium, lead and many other toxins (40+ million tons in total) to be stored forever on downward-sloping topography, in a water-rich environment, in unprecedented proximity to this continent’s largest, cleanest source of surface freshwater. To oppose S.2554 and urge Congress to protect our public lands instead of handing them over for private exploitation, here’s a sample letter with directions to register your opposition.

National Grid/Eversource/Peabody is installing new electric and gas utility meters in Massachusetts, New York and Rhode Island that will reportedly track the use of every device in real time. Ratepayers will bear the costs of “grid modernization”—the infrastructure necessary to collect, analyze, store (and sell) this data. Patricia Burke has posted details and ways to act (before March 18 in Massachusetts).

SLINGSHOTS AT GOLIATH

Mesick, Michigan schools implement ‘No Screens’ literacy initiative that replaces classroom technology with physical books and paper. The district aims to improve student literacy and comprehension by reducing reliance on digital devices during the school day. The program involves removing Chromebooks from classrooms and prioritizing handwriting over typing.

The Big Tech Walkout. Start here. https://blog.rebeltechalliance.org/the-big-tech-walkout-2026/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Against Technoableism: Rethinking Who Needs Improvement by Ashley Shew, WW Norton, 2023. When bioethicist and professor Ashley Shew became a self-described “hard-of-hearing chemobrained amputee with Crohn’s disease and tinnitus,” there was no returning to “normal.” Well-meaning people viewed her as a needy recipient of technological wizardry. Almost everyone will experience disability at some point in their lives, yet the abled persistently frame disability as an individual’s problem rather than a social one. To forge a more equitable world, Shew advocates for eliminating “technoableism”—the harmful belief that technology is a “solution” for disability—while valuing disabled peoples’ expertise and making society more accessible and equitable.

Representing OVER 3,200 FIREFIGHTERS, paramedics, dispatchers, and other emergency personnel within the Los Angeles County Fire Dept. President of LA County Firefighters Local 104 David Gillotte called for an immediate “cease-and-desist” of any energy storage system facility adjacent to Fire Station 43: “Siting of an ESS system next to an occupied fire station—where firefighters work and reside 24 hours per day—constitutes an unacceptable, unsafe, and indefensible action that directly contradicts established fire protection engineering principles, firefighter safety standards and the intent of applicable codes.”

Former Palantir employee Juan Sebastian Pinto has launched a nonprofit design and education studio, Ziggurat, to fight for AI regulation and big tech accountability…as AI weapons are tested in cities like Minneapolis. The role of Palantir and AI weapons in Minneapolis is a wake up call for America. See Ziggurat’s pitch deck for more. Pinto is collaborating with think-tanks, teachers’ unions, legislators, and activists around the country by creating guides to convey complex AI topics to lay audiences. He supports Against Machines, a movement opposing ICE, Palanitr, Flock, and Data Centers. He’s looking for collaborators, contributors, advisors, and supporters of any kind. Here’s his first zine, Offline Underground.

A European group has published a manifesto that “digital connectivity should be an option, not an obligation: All human beings have the natural right to participate in society without electronic devices.” Associations and private citizens can sign onto it here.

The People Say No: Resisting Data Centers in the South, MediaJustice’s report about data centers, complete with an organizer’s toolkit.

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I take in the day’s news.

I notice corporations barreling ahead with abandon, become larger, acquiring more utilities, building more data centers, offering more AI-drive products, engaging children at younger and younger ages.

I see no legislation that protects people or wildlife during the manufacture (mining, smelting, energy consumption, water consumption, making and applying chemicals) or operation (radiation emissions, addiction, energy use, water use) of power plants, computers, Internet and telecom infrastructure, AI or its infrastructure, solar PVs, industrial wind turbines, batteries, e-vehicles or gas-powered vehicles.

Okay. Some schools now ban cell phones. Some countries ban social media.

But daily activities become increasingly hard without an electronic interface. I notice my own increasing time-at-screens.

I think: only crises like power outages, floods, earthquakes, urban fires can slow or stop development of technology or capitalism.

If that’s true, then what’s constructive use of anyone’s attention?

Real sustenance starts with food. That means knowing how to grow, cook and preserve food. Nutrient-dense food starts with nutrient-dense soil and healthy water cycles.

I saw a fantastic video about Ethiopians restoring their region’s healthy water cycles and soil. I post it here with a caveat: I’m pretty that the narrator is an AI.

I don’t see any benefit to ignoring the disasters in our midst.

I also notice lots of people doing wonderful work.

DISASTERS IN THE MAKING

More Perfect Union’s Dan Lieberman reports on Blackstone’s aim to take over New Mexico’s largest utility (PNM)—and ratepayers’ push back against the Public Regulatory Commission. Keep an eye on the relationship between electricity, data centers, water…and profit. Note: I admire New Energy Economy’s Mariel Nanasi’s work enormously. She fights to defend New Mexicans from corporations like Blackstone. However, looked at from their cradles-to-graves, I don’t see anything “renewable” about solar PVs, industrial wind, battery storage or EVs. In fact, we can improve our quality of life without “renewables.”

Christopher Rutledge reports that when mining companies leave, African communities pay. Note the relationship between mining, “clean energy,” ecological ravaging, accountability, public health and human rights protections. Without reliable accountability mechanisms, the clean-energy transition will be neither just nor sustainable. Instead, it will leave behind a trail of abandoned mines, hollowed-out municipalities, contaminated water sources, and displaced families.

Check out this view of data centers’ critical minerals use.

Generative AI consumes—and will consume—significantly more energy than “traditional” AI.

Potomac Sewage Spill becomes ecological disaster and political fight.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is flooding social media companies with subpoenas to identify accounts that protest ICE. Social media companies have pushed back but are largely complying.

Anna Lembke, a professor of psychiatry and addiction medicine at Stanford University’s Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic, says studies conclude that addiction to platforms such as YouTube and Instagram is real and can hurt mental health. Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri told the jury that he does not believe social media addiction is real.

RESTORING LIFE

Here again is a link to Ethiopians “planting rain”—not trees. This water-soil-and-plant restoration project has changed peoples’ attitudes. As one resident says, “We now understand the value of protecting our environment.”

Check out Hugelkultur: An ancient growing method that requires no bagged soil, no fertilizers and almost no watering after the first year—and produces remarkable harvests.

TEN PROPOSALS FOR DIGITAL DE-ESCALATION

1. Secure essential “off-grid” public services.

2. Ensure sober and “de-gafamed” municipal management. GAFAM refers to Google (Alphabet), Apple, Facebook (Meta), Amazon and Microsoft.

3. Guarantee humane public services.

4. Promote jobs, not AI.

5. Ensure security without video surveillance.

6. Ban advertising screens from public spaces and public transport.

7. At schools, promote open and creative education.

8. Combat the “AirBnB-ification” of housing.

9. Refuse the installation of data centers in the municipality.

10. Limit cell towers and electromagnetic exposure.

See also the Manifesto for the Right to Live Without Digital Connectivity.

Grassroots organizers in Wisconsin have a blueprint for beating back data centers. See also Derek Seidman’s report on Truthout about data centers devouring electricity and private equity buying utilities to cash in.

Cities are embracing nature for flood defence, ditching concrete and making space for natural wetlands—from Erica Gies, author of Water Always Wins.

To cool the planet, consider Anastassia Makarieva’s description of the Biotic Pump, mechanisms by which natural forests actively regulate the transport of atmospheric moisture fom the ocean to land.

Rather than distributing basic income, what if people received land? See Manuel Casal Lodeiro’s proposal.

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While so much of our world collapses, we all look for solutions. Israeli historian Ilan Pappé recently offered another approach. Speaking last month about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he said, “There is no need for peace. There is need for decolonization. There is need for transitional justice. And more than anything else, there is need to listen to Palestinians, to hear…their aspirations for the future of Palestine. Start with them. Let them be in the driver’s seat and tell us how they view the future of Palestine.”

I see Pappé calling for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a place where healing can begin, a place where we can listen to stories from Palestinians who’ve lost childhood, limbs, family, neighbors, homes and land. A place where Palestinians can begin to dream again for equality and democracy.

While so much of our world collapses, we need many Truth and Reconciliation Commissions.

Gerry McGovern’s newest book, 99th Day: A Warning about Technology, reads like a Truth and Reconciliation Commission about technology’s impacts on ecosystems and public health. From his start on a small Irish farm, McGovern wanted to be a modern, materially wealthy man. In the early 90s, he developed an online community, a blogging system and a way to manage web content. He became “an evangelistic tech bro, a booster of ‘renewable’ energy who believed there was no innovation that tech couldn’t solve.” In a blink, he made money, money, money.

Eventually, McGovern learned about the ecological effects of manufacturing, operating and discarding electronic technologies. At the end of his dreamy solar system’s usable life, he realized it’s un-recyclable hazardous waste. (His previous book, World Wide Waste, focuses on the two billion tons of electronic waste we humans generate every year.) While moving to Spain, Gerry discovered that the country’s rains were disappearing—and how mining for electronics contributed to the drought. Through his partly Indigenous Brazilian wife, he began to see the living connections between water, soil, rocks, birds, bees and future generations.

In 99th Day, with refreshing honesty, Gerry McGovern names his part in our techno-sphere’s mess; and then he reports the worldwide consequences of digitalized society. McGovern calls his book a warning. For writing it, we owe him hearty thanks.

I’m honored to post “A Confession,” 99th Day’s first chapter.

Chapter One: A Confession

I was a true believer. A full-throated member of the Growth Death Cult. A super-optimistic, evangelistic tech bro. A booster of “renewable” energy and the “Green” Transition, and the idea there was no problem that tech innovation couldn’t solve.

I came across the World Wide Web back in late 1993 in a small flat in Dublin. The first moment I saw it I had this vision of wagons rolling out West to a new frontier. At that time, I was in my early thirties and drifting. Living in shoddy accommodation and scraping by on part-time work. My partner and I had two young children and I felt this intense pressure to provide. The Web would be my way out.

I had been writing rock ’n’ roll and technology journalism. Mixing interviews with Nick Cave, Sonic Youth, Ice T and Lou Reed with stories about computer-aided design and CD-ROM multimedia might have been exciting, but the life of the freelance journalist, and dreaming-to-be fiction writer, was not an easy one.

Some weeks before I came across the Web, I had interviewed a senior executive at the Irish state agency, the National Software Directorate. I decided to write him a snail mail letter. I knew the Web was a bit too new, so I pitched a report about the rapidly growing multimedia industry, with an add-on focus on this emerging thing called the World Wide Web. Amazingly, he got back and said, yes, let’s do this.

In early 1994, I went to this huge multimedia exhibition and conference in Cannes, France. The CD-ROM was being pushed as the future of everything from games to medicine to education. I went around sniffing out the Web. There wasn’t much sign. However, as the year progressed, the Web surged, and the report focus began to change on a monthly basis. Twelve months later, I returned to Cannes and the Web was everywhere. I listened to fevered voices talk about doing all-nighters and lining up finance.

Then I went to Geneva to a packed International Telecoms Union conference. I had a tiny budget and couldn’t afford a hotel, so I slept in a toilet at the airport. I watched bleary-eyed as someone made one of the first phone calls over the Internet. The senior telecom executives sat there horrified. The wave was gathering.

In 1995, my report, ‘Ireland: the Digital Age, the Internet’, was published:

While there is enormous hype surrounding the Digital Age and while it will be a number of years before all the problems and issues are ironed out, there is little doubt but that we are entering a period of fundamental change for society and business. A central engine of this change will be the Internet and for that reason it is the focus of this report.

Meanwhile, I had helped set up a company called Nua, which means “new” in Irish. We had developed this online community / social media idea called Local Ireland. We had also developed a blogging system and the first publication was called Nua Internet Surveys, which tracked surveys and reports on the emerging Web. It was a big success and got us lots of international exposure.

Local Ireland was harder going. It was about creating a platform to allow communities to tell their own story on the Web with simple tools and a unified geographic and classification structure. I heard about an intended trip by US President Bill Clinton to Ireland, and that he planned to visit his relatives in Roslea, County Fermanagh. I drove there in a heavy, smoking diesel car. Every time it had to go up a hill it seemed like it was choking and about to belch out its last breath. I arrived at the Roslea Community Centre and bounded in, thinking I was the bringer of the Good News. The community organizer thought I was mad and said he’d tell me nothing about Roslea for this Web thing, and he certainly would not tell me where the Clintons’ relatives lived.

I walked back out, thinking what an awful fool I was, wondering how on earth I was going to pay next month’s rent. I stood there on a typical grey Irish day. A noise made me turn around. There was a group of men digging a grave. I walked over to them and asked did anyone know where Clintons’ relatives lived. One said he did indeed, and proceeded to give me directions. Local Ireland now had a bit of good content and got some international news coverage.

We kept working away at Nua, building tools and creating content. We got some interest from venture capitalists who said they knew princes on Wall Street. It was all very exciting as they laid out fantastic plans. Then, with great suddenness, they switched from laughing and joking to sneering, telling us we had nothing, demanding a huge share in the company. We declined. Even though we had no paying work, we doubled down on our efforts to build more stuff.

I came across this notification from the European Union about a competition for Internet innovation. Applications had to be sent in by fax. I got ours ready and tried to send it. The line was constantly busy. I got pissed off, grabbed the application, crumpled it up and threw it in the bin. I went out for a walk. Later, when I came back, I noticed the crumpled application. I pulled it out, smoothed it as much as I could. It went through on first try, not that I expected anything from it.

Some months later, I got a call from the European Union saying that it was strongly advised that I should attend a ceremony in Paris. Nua co-founder Niall O’Sullivan and myself went. We were asked to sit at the top row in this huge hall. There were six or so prize categories and we thought that we might have won something in the small business one. It was the first category announced and there were three prize winners. We weren’t among them. I had that outside the Roslea Community Centre feeling. My confused mind tried to figure out where we might have won something. By the final category, we were totally deflated. It was for the Best Overall World Wide Web Business Achievement Award. We knew we had no chance. I can’t remember who came third, but I do remember that the giant multinational, Siemens, came second. Then the award for what the announcer said was the most innovative and forward-thinking Web business in Europe that year was going to … Nua, this tiny Irish company with no money and no customers. It was 1996.

The rollercoaster was picking up speed. We got some good investment, and support from the likes of Ossie Kilkenny, who used to be U2’s accountant. Telecom Eireann, the Irish national telecoms company, got interested in Local Ireland, and millions flowed in. We were regularly in New York and Silicon Valley. We were flying high. Business plans. Business plans. We had good ideas, though the software needed a lot of work. We went around New York peddling an amazing demo for a luxury online jewelry store. Faking it to make it. Money. Money. Money. We even had our very own data center. Expansion. Expansion. Expansion. Big salaries, US senior executives recruited, top New York investment firms courting us. These smartest guys in the room thought we were brilliant. The business plans were being weighed, not read. We didn’t have enough pages in them, we were told. We needed to be more ambitious and seek to open offices in all major European countries within 18 months, we were told. That’s the way it was done. Move super-fast, break whatever you needed to; the winner takes all. Speed is a trip. Don’t think. Just do. Crazy stuff. We were valued at close to what Ireland’s national airline was valued at, and I thought that was crazy. It didn’t make sense. But greed had got in my eyes.

Then, around 2000, the dot com bubble began to fizzle. I went from one frenzy to another, dragged to the bottom, feeling it all crash. Sneaking out the back of the building to avoid the TV cameras at the front. Blood dripping from our gold-plated Nua logo on magazine covers. The sickening feeling of standing before a room full of worried staff and telling them it was all over.

Rising again, this time more slowly. Getting good book deals to explain how to manage all this Web content. Workshop and talk invites flowing in, particularly from Big Tech companies. Traveling the world, usually in business class. Sometimes, a different city every day of the week. Nonstop, thrilling. Explaining user experience, Web content best practice, and the move from organizational centricity to customer centricity. No, customer centricity wasn’t enough according to that visionary of visionaries, Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com. What you needed was customer obsession. “Obsession”, that’s a funny word, a voice in the back of my head whispered.

I was too busy making money to think too much about morality and ethics, though I had convinced myself that I was doing the right thing. Making it easy for people to find things and do things on the Web surely was inherently a good thing, wasn’t it?

Then one day, I read a story about how Amazon was parking ambulances outside their super-hot and unsafe warehouse. That couldn’t be true, I thought, as I prepared another Customer Obsession presentation. I read about Amazon workers being so stressed for time that they were forced to pee in bottles. I heard about Amazon workers getting injured far more often than the industry average. Something was wrong, wasn’t it? Housekeeper staff at a Bezos mansion were being forced to work 14-hour days without a break and with no access to toilets. Staff had to climb out a window to get to a toilet because Bezos had dictated that neither he nor his guests should have to see any of them. I finally realized that you could fill a book with the petty meanness and sadistic cruelty of Jeff Bezos. This was someone I had admired as a Web visionary, whose ideas I was making a good living out of. This was the guy touting customer obsession, and I had thought that was the ultimate expression of a new and better society. A less hierarchical society that was more focused on people’s needs. It was all about focusing on the customer, wasn’t it? A good user experience. Making it easier to consume. We in the user-experience profession felt that the nirvana of our philosophy was expressed in the phrase “Don’t make me think”. Frictionless capitalism. What could go wrong?

Greta Thunberg sat down and protested. I was so struck by her. I thought she was amazing. (Today, I think she is even more amazing.) I considered myself an environmentalist of sorts. When I bought a very large house beside the Irish Sea in 2010—a house much bigger than I needed—I had installed solar energy and a heat pump. I shared a common philosophy in the tech community—that if you use something green, clean, renewable and sustainable, then you can use as much as you want.

I started having problems with my solar. Part of it fell off and smashed on the concrete floor outside our house. It didn’t look good, all this shiny, colored dust and glass and metal. Where would I dump this? I needed repairs too. And so began a journey that took more than a year. The company that had sold me it had been taken over. No, they couldn’t repair, the new company said. I needed to buy a new one. But the one I had was still working. It just needed new parts to bring it back up to full capacity. Company after company I rang. Nothing doing. Finally, I realized this industry does not do repair. It’s install or nothing.

After 10 years of use, my heat pump, which was the size of about two fridge-freezers, started playing up. Couldn’t be repaired either. I was left with a great hunk of metal, plastics, piping, and all sorts of electronics and other stuff, that needed to be taken away and dumped somewhere. It didn’t seem right. Wasn’t this solar and heat pump stuff all supposed to be part of a brave new world of green sustainability and clean renewability?

Two wise women taught me how to love wearing warm caps inside again. I was having an online chat with Viki Harvey, an expert in reducing data waste, and she was wearing a warm cap. In all the thousands of online meetings I have had, I could not remember someone else doing that. Then I was telling Wiep Hamstra, someone who does incredible work on improving online government services, that I was going to buy solar panels for our apartment. She said she was not installing solar. She was wearing warmer clothes, reducing the heat as much as possible, shutting off heat in rooms that weren’t being used.

“It’s a crisis. Act like it’s a crisis,” Greta said, or something like that. That phrase kept repeating itself in my head. I needed to do something more. I had earned enough money to buy back some conscience. What could I do? I was working in digital, the land of the Cloud, this ethereal, dematerialized place, this place of clean energy and green software, so I didn’t think there was much to find.

I began research that would lead to the publication of my book, World Wide Waste, in 2020. If I was truly honest, I always had these niggling doubts about digital. I had worked with data and content for over 20 years at that stage and knew full well that most data was created for no useful purpose and was stored for no useful reason. Most intranets and websites were data dumps. Most software was awful: poorly written voluminous code piled on top of poorly written, voluminous, badly maintained code. Most digital projects went nowhere. All those apps that were developed, hardly anyone ever used them. Waste everywhere you looked. So that became a key theme of the book: reducing digital waste.

All of that got blown out of the water by the surging Bitcoin and AI, of course. Or did it? We now take more photos in one year that we took in the entire 20th century. By the early 2020s, over 10 trillion photos were being stored in the Cloud, the vast majority of which would never be accessed again. We send incredible quantities of emails, create enormous quantities of documents and files. We make videos of the most trivial of things. And on and on. The vast majority of this digital stuff should never have been created in the first place and certainly has no good reason to be stored. Every file, image, video requires materials, energy, water.

As the digital problems we face meta-size—jump, jump, jump—we have found a weird way of not dealing with them. We’re not going to deal with our text email problem because—why bother?—images are a far bigger problem. We’re not going to deal with our images and photos problem because—why bother?—videos are a far bigger problem. We’re not going to deal with our videos problem because—why bother?—Bitcoin is a far bigger problem. We’re not going to deal with our Bitcoin problem because—why bother?—AI is a far bigger problem. In digital, we feel no moral compunction to clean up the previous mess we’ve made because Big Tech is always making a newer, much bigger mess to worry about. And deep down there is this belief that there is a new tech innovation coming that will clean up all the messes for us.

I had brought the same basic tech philosophy to bear about what I now know are fake renewables. They were this wonderful get-out-of-jail-free card. It’s an energy production problem, I told myself. Here’s this new energy innovation that’s renewable, sustainable, clean and green. Except I discovered that it’s not even remotely true. Like that broken glass, twisted metal and strange colored dust from my solar energy system, all this “renewable” stuff is incredibly material intense and toxic. It has huge impacts on nature and indigenous communities.

I began to hear from Indigenous people about Green Colonialism and how their lands had been chosen as Green Sacrifice Zones for the mining of green metals and the placement of wind turbines and solar panels. As I read report after report and found example after example of the devastation all this fake renewable energy was doing, my worldview began to turn. This couldn’t be, I thought. This stuff is supposed to be green, isn’t it? We can consume as much as we want, once it’s green, can’t we? All these huge AI data centers are no problem at all once they’re using renewable energy, aren’t they? That’s how I thought and I know that’s how most of the colleagues I knew in digital thought.

As I raised these new uncomfortable truths, that digital was indeed physical, the response of most was initially disbelief. People would look at me skeptically. When I’d explain that the phone they had in their hand had 60 or more materials, that the mining of those materials caused serious quantities of CO2 and major quantities of toxic mining waste, most shook their heads.

Soon, I began to get pushback. It wasn’t that green software was actually “green”, I was told. Nor that clean nuclear, hydro, solar or wind energy were “clean”, “renewable” or “sustainable”. I needed to understand relativity. Relative to coal, relative to oil and gas, all these things were green. This new energy tech reduces CO2—and reducing CO2 is the only thing that matters. And anyone that opposed “renewables” was “shilling for the oil companies”, I was told. What we desperately needed was a massive acceleration in the mining, manufacture and rollout of all these wonderful life-saving technologies. We needed to move fast, and if we broke some things along the way that was okay, because the sunny uplands of the Green Transition awaited the adventurous and the brave who were willing to embrace change rather than resist it. Yet the stubborn facts show that—even if this tech was truly renewable—it wouldn’t matter because there is no energy transition. There never was one in history and there never will be. It’s always been more coal, oil, gas, wood, hydro, nuclear, solar, wind. More. More. More.

CO2 is one card in a 52-card deck of pollution and poison. And yet reducing it is being held up as the answer to everything. We can kill more fish, destroy more forests, wipe out the Andes ecosystem, dump more nuclear poison in Navajo and Hopi reservations, basically do whatever damage we want, once we can pretend—for most often it is pretending—that we’re reducing CO2 with our fake renewables.

We refuse to face the real problem. We consume vastly too much. We waste vastly too much. The material demands from our advanced civilizations will soon be causing a Mount Everest of mining waste every year. And that, I learned, is where the truest of the true story lies. If you want to see the future of a civilization, don’t go to its great buildings to talk to its great men. Instead, walk among its dumps, particularly its mining dumps. There you will see the future written large. For you will always find the clearest and most honest story among the stuff that we throw away. There you will come to know that collapse is coming. It’s only a matter of time.

The Scientific Revolution. It was great, wasn’t it? Didn’t depend on the massive destruction of nature, not at all. And that wonderful Green Revolution that flowed from it? I grew up on a small farm with no tractor. My father used to cut hay by hand with a scythe. I spent long days walking up and down fields, turning rows of hay with a fork, chasing some rare Irish sun. That ‘10-10-20’ brand of fertilizer we got, and that my father spread on the fields by hand from a bucket, that was magic stuff. It quadrupled the amount of hay we got from a field. And when the neighbor’s tractor roared in through the gap—doing us a favor—that was magic too. Jack Flood did the work in 20 minutes that would take us a day. We never thought about nitrogen and phosphorus overload and slurries damaging rivers and killing fish. We never thought about soil degradation through constant use and monoculture crops. We never thought about killing the birds and wild animals because we ripped up their homes in the hedges to make bigger, neater fields. Those bigger fields were easier for the ever-heavier tractors whose wheels were compacting the degrading soil and killing the life below, along with the liberal use of pesticides and herbicides. This was all wonderful progress delivered by the Green Revolution. I mean, who could be opposed to something that’s called “green”?

I so longed to be away from that small farm where we had to depend on the modern farmers around us for handouts from the table of technology. Bringing in the hay with an ass and cart was fun in a certain sort of way, once I could hide the humiliation. Wearing the same worn out clothes year after year, I so wanted to be a modern man who was materially wealthy. When I made it, I promised myself, I would buy the very latest and greatest and most innovative.

And I was true to my word. Once I made it, I changed my computer set-up every two years. Because so little in tech was standardized, that often meant new cables, docking stations, and why not the latest, biggest “energy-efficient” screen? I had a large closet piled full of computer stuff that became invisible as soon as I closed the door. Around then, I had an African couple that used to clean the house. They told me that they were quitting because they were setting up a new business. They were going to export back to Africa second-hand electronics to support schools and small businesses. What a wonderful idea, I thought, and opened up the closet and let them take everything in it.

The first real digital horror I discovered during my research for World Wide Waste was e-waste—the fastest growing waste stream in the world, and extremely toxic. And the Global North was dumping huge quantities in the Global South, pretending it was for schools and such. Those cables I had given were likely going to be added to a huge pile in a poor neighborhood and set on fire by schoolchildren, who would breathe in their toxic air as they poked and stirred, searching for the useful metals that they would sell for the price of a day’s food, if they were lucky.

E-waste is bad, scientist Josh Lepawsky told me, but it’s nothing compared to the damage mining waste does, hidden among wild nature, in poor and indigenous communities, mainly in the Global South. And so began my journey of documenting some of the horrors of mining. I started off in Ireland, where I lived, expecting to find very little, and discovered the Russian mining oligarch-owned Aughinish Alumina, that had done terrible damage in Limerick.

It was 2022. We were in the process of selling our big house and moving to an apartment in Valencia, Spain. Even then, I hadn’t given up on the hi-tech “renewability” dream. One of the first questions I asked was whether we would be allowed install solar on the communal roof. Arriving in Spain, I decided to dig into its mining history and discovered the Rio Tinto area and the centuries of damage done there. I found Millán Millán and his research on why the Spanish summer rains were disappearing, and how authorities tried to silence him.

My wife, Rosilda, is Brazilian, part-Indigenous. We have often spent time in Brazil, and I used some of it to visit Minas Gerais, the Brazilian state that means “General Mining”. Brumadinho, Bento Rodriques, Mariana, Congonhas—places with toxic mining secrets and barren futures. Inspired by Rosilda, I began to discover more about Indigenous culture. I interviewed Daniel, an Indigenous person who wasn’t supposed to exist in Minas Gerais because white people were sure they had exterminated them all. Daniel told me about the true meaning of being Indigenous. I would come across the same descriptions from Indigenous people all over the world. Indigenous means being truly of the land, staying put and being dedicated to becoming a good ancestor, where you take care of the water, air and soil so that you can lovingly pass something good on to future generations. An Indigenous person sees life everywhere: in the air, soil, rivers, birds, bees, trees. The mountains are alive. The rocks are alive. The mountain is your mother and you’re not going to mine your mother. Everything is deeply connected and loved.

The more I discovered, the more Indigenous protectors I came across, the bleaker the outlook became. Indigenous communities are under so much pressure from mining, from coal, oil, gas. Now it was even worse, as there was a mining frenzy for so-called green metals: aluminum, lithium, nickel, copper, cobalt, rare earths, etc. etc. The harms are accelerating, multiplying. These so-called green metals for so-called renewable energy are an oxymoron, if there ever was one. They may be vital for the construction of solar panels, wind turbines and batteries but there is nothing remotely green or renewable about them. It’s all part of an elaborate con and scam on our environment. We’re being led to believe that if we simply change the energy device and source, we can keep on consuming and that, in fact, not only will our continued consumption not be bad for our environment, it will be good for our environment. Because, the con goes, if we move super-fast and roll out all this so-called clean and green energy tech, we will be able to “transition”—the Green Transition—away from coal, oil and gas. This is a total pipe dream down which oil and gas flows. This is a lie as wide as an open-pit coal mine. In the name of the “Green” Transition and “green” metals, we are accelerating the worst of all worlds: more coal, more oil, more gas, AND hydro, AND nuclear AND solar AND wind. We are accelerating when we should be braking.

The most important thing I discovered while writing this book was not technological. Nor was it material. It was social, cultural. It was obvious once I could see it. There’s a common underlying cause of all this greedy devouring. Macho man. Great men, of whom I had hoped to be one. The stench of power, control, domination. I too wanted to dominate, to compete, to work hard and climb to the top. To be wealthy and have a big car and a big house. So, it was very painful for me to find out that at the bottom of the bottom of causes, it’s not a CO2 problem, not even an overconsumption problem. It’s a greedy man problem. The greedy elite male has gotten way, way, way out of balance. I have met enough of them to know that they will never, ever be satisfied. They will devour everything if they are let. If we don’t bring the male of our species back into balance, everything else we do will be futile. For the engine of destruction has got balls.

As I more deeply explored Indigenous thought, I discovered concepts such as bearing witness and intergenerational struggle. Keeping memories alive over hundreds of years, passing on truths and secrets of how to survive in a particular landscape. Being a good ancestor, after all, means being a long thinker, someone who looks to the future with a sense of care and love. Someone who looks to the past too. A backwards thinker, who longs to commune with all life and materials that have gone before them. Who thinks slowly, acts slowly, is constantly in conversation, and is searching for the solution that is good enough; for the perfect solution is only ever perfect for some. Daniel told me about resistance and being a witness. He urged me to tell their story and when I promised I would, he grabbed my hands and smiled at me with eyes that said: You’ve promised.

Indigenous thought is almost directly opposed to the tech bro Silicon Valley culture I was so much a part of; a valley flooded with lies and deceit. For so long, Silicon Valley has been expert at hiding its true face. It literally hid underground the chemical tanks it needed to make its semiconductors, because it wanted to promote clean tech and green software. When I did workshops for Big Tech, I found bicycle paradises, wooden cutlery, table tennis, all sorts of ethereal, soft stuff. In the meetings, though, the tech bros were impatient. Build. Build. Build. Enough talk. Just do it. They hated meetings. Committees were sneered at. They eulogized the solitary hacker who, fueled with Coca Cola, pizza and Big Macs, stayed up all weekend to hack out some brilliant technical solution in a hundredth the time it would take a sludgy development team to do it. Stories would pass like wildfires about how this or that piece of software was developed in super-quick time. Faking it until you made it—lying through your teeth and stealing data where you could—moving fast and breaking things. What a life!

Good ancestors? Are you joking? The tech bro horizon is at most 18 months to three years, when they’re going to cash out. And literally anything goes—just don’t get caught, and if you do, have a good lawyer. At one stage, a tech bro explained to me that the very best of the very best minds in Silicon Valley were relentlessly focused on “user engagement”. Planned obsolescence was not enough. No, deliberately making products with super-short lives that were really difficult to repair and almost impossible to recycle, that wasn’t profitable enough. A more addictive model was needed.

The Web of all those promises had morphed into the Valley of Pimps and Pushers. That’s the core business of AI: to create functioning addicts that can be sold to advertisers so as to sell more fascism, more trashy planned obsolescence products, and the great wheel of overconsumption keeps on spinning, faster and faster. Accelerating. Accelerating. Energy. We must have more energy! We’ll reopen Three Mile Island and rename it Crane Clean Energy Center. More coal, oil, gas, hydro, solar, wind. More. More. More.

I wasn’t proud of my father. He wasn’t a hard worker. There was no development or progress on our farm, only slow decline. If it were not for my mother’s efforts, we would have been in a bad way. In the end, my father was on his own and he seemed happy that way. He grew most of what he ate. Never took a flight. Never learned to drive. Cycled into his eighties. I was ashamed of him. And now I am ashamed of myself. All that success. Books published. Sought-after speaker. Worked in 40 countries. It felt special sleeping in business class. When I was born, in 1962, Ireland was economically poor and ecologically rich. We are the Irish generation of hard workers who embraced technology and globalization. We’re the generation that did three times more damage to our environment than the previous 8,000 generations combined. And we’re proud of it. We devastated the wild salmon and decimated birdlife and I could go on and on about an Ireland craving to be top of the class in the Growth Death Cult. Growth to me was a religion. Everything was okay once the economy was growing. Infinite growth on a finite planet met impossible-is-nothing optimism. There would only be one winner to take all.

I’m a bad ancestor. I’ve done so much damage. I started out intending to write a history of the evils of mining. Then it became a sort of witness statement. In the end, I found myself out. This is a confession. And a warning about technology.

Have you noticed that while natural and human systems collapse (i.e. Arctic ice, global biodiversity loss, water tables and clean water, affordable food and shelter, health care, environmental protections, free speech protections, local authority over telecommunications)… electronic-digital-wireless systems rev up: A.I., data centers, telecom access networks, smart utility meters, large-scale solar facilities, large-scale battery storage (BESS) facilities (get informed about Linea’s proposal, larger than AES’s Rancho Viejo, proposed north of Stanley, NM), investor-owned power companies (in New Mexico, the PRC will hold a hearing about Blackstone buying PNM on Feb. 5, Thursday, 4-7pm) and robots who schedule doctor appointments and everything else.

As much as possible, I go for nourishing things:

Radio Taiso, a 100-year-old, three-minute Japanese exercise routine.

Bruce Springsteen’s new song, Streets of Minneapolis.

Asking questions.

People who ask questions and listen.

Senator Bernie Sanders’ recent assessment of the U.S.

Giving away stuff (mostly books) I no longer use.

Beiler broth: Chop 1 onion, 2 carrots, 2 stalks of celery, 2 red potatoes, 1 turnip, 1 bunch of spinach, 1 bunch of cilantro. Steam these in 2 c good water with 2 t. salt until soft. Pure in 2 batches with 3 more cups of water, 1 ½ t. fresh garlic and a pinch of cayenne pepper.

People who will go social media-free during February.

My garden’s chard and thyme—even through the winter, they grow!

Learning about the relationship between soil and water: to protect a community from flood and drought and fire, a mini forest (the size of six parking spaces) at every school will generate healthy water cycles and soil within a few years. (I’ll report about this in future substacks.)

Saying thanks, as often as I can.

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Decades ago, someone asked a friend’s parents what they wished for their children. My friend’s father said, “To be useful.” Her mother said, “To know God.”

These aims seem more challenging than ever.

Cheyenne River Lakota elder Tiokasin Ghosthorse recently advised, “Stop learning about the Earth. Start learning from the Earth…. There will not be peace on Earth until there is peace with Earth.” I take this call for deep listening to the Earth as a necessary and extraordinary challenge.

After atmospheric physicist Anastassia Makarieva learned about a proposal to massively cut down boreal forests and bury the wood in the ocean in order to absorb CO₂ from the atmosphere and ease global warming, she wrote “On Nature’s Complexity and Human Morality.” While recognizing that the ability of humans to destroy the biosphere is now unprecedented, she advocates for dissenting from hypnotic, simplistic views, for speaking up and outlasting the propaganda.

I try for peace between my ears. Sometimes, directing myself to soften the space under my chin or to notice the space behind me…allows for fuller breathing while I read the news:

The E.P.A. used to consider how many lives would be saved when setting air-pollution rules. In a reversal, the agency now plans to calculate only the cost to industry.

Richard Heinberg posted a wonderful list of resources for nourishing the bioregional economy. I do not understand his support for e-vehicles or for “renewables” (solar PVs and industrial wind) since they cannot be made without fossil fuels, extractions, water, and international supply chains that may well include slave labor. Since solar and wind provide only intermittent power, they require backup from the fossil-fuel-powered grid OR from battery energy storage systems (BESS), which pose fire and explosion hazards. Why not promote REDUCING our overall use of energy, individually-owned vehicles and digital technologies? Why not encourage living within our bioregion’s offerings of food, water, energy and ores?

Check out the concerns of Worthington Massachusetts’ Coalition Against Industrial Solar and BESS Systems: Environmental contamination poses risks to soil and ground water. Lithium-ion batteries pose fire and explosion hazards. Industrial-scale systems result in lost farmland and forest habitat. Typically, industrial-scale systems are owned by out-of-state and foreign corporations. “By-right” loopholes remove local permitting power. Projects lack decommissioning and insurance safeguards. Small-town planning boards are overwhelmed. Along transmission lines, projects can require removing healthy trees.

To learn yet more about BESS problems, attend Never Again Moss Landing’s retrospective about the Vistra BESS disaster one year later, on Saturday, January 17^th.

What happened? Why do nearby residents still seek answers? Why does the state go for energy targets over public safety? What disinformation does the EPA tell? The Path Ahead: Demanding Transparency. The Path Ahead: Demanding Accountability.

In Ohio, a transformer explosion caused outages, and “electric meters on multiple houses” blew off…like they did in Stockton, California in 2015. People about to get smart meters (i.e. in New Mexico)…beware. Opt out if you can!

In Washington County, Tennessee, after many citizens, including a seven-year-old testified against a proposed rezoning (she’s about 52 seconds in to the video) that would allow a federal nuclear contractor BWX Technologies (BWXT) to expand depleted uranium manufacturing on land that includes floodplain, sits yards from farmland and homes, and would jeopardize drinking water, commissioners voted four to two against the rezoning. This fight is not over yet. The final county vote takes place on January 26.

Australia’s Bureau of Statistics revealed that dementia has massively increased in the country, including among people 30-44. Dementia is now the leading cause of death. Neuroscientist Dr. Mark Williams believes that increased dementia relates to peoples’ increased screen use. “We no longer use our brains… We don’t need to calculate anymore. We don’t have to consider anymore. We don’t have to argue with people anymore. We don’t have to connect with people anymore in the real world…”

Catherine Price and Jonathan Haidt have just released The Amazing Generation. Part graphic novel and part scrapbook, it offers interactive challenges and teens who have regrets around tech use. The book presents The Rebel’s Code: 1)Use technology as a tool. Don’t let it use you. And 2) Fill your life with real friendship, freedom and fun.

After UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced plans for a mandatory digital ID, a record numbers of supporters joined BigBrotherWatch.org.uk—and Starmer dropped his plans.

AN ACTION TO TAKE TODAY

Thursday, January 15^th, is the last day to send a “reply comment” to the FCC about its efforts to eliminate all local control over cell tower placement. The goal is to get a cell tower in everybody’s front yard, next to every school, place of business, work and worship. https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-aims-accelerate-wireless-infrastructure-buildout-0

For yet more info, read Kelcie Lee’s Dozens of Orgs Say No to FCC’s Fast-Tracking Wireless Infrastructure.

See Environmental Health Sciences’ Theodora Scarato’s excellent instructions for submitting comments. https://ehsciences.org/submit-comments-to-the-fcc-25-276/

Thousands of reply comments are needed!

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Years ago, a friend told me, “If you want to create a sustainable society, aim to meet the needs of the poor.” Today I would add: aim to meet your community’s basic needs (food, water, energy, construction materials, governance) with supplies from within your bioregion. (Your watershed defines your bioregion. The U.S. has six main and about 2100 small watersheds.)

To keep local, grow even a wee bit of your own food. Support local farmers. Know your watershed: protect it for local residents and farmers and study how to generate healthy water cycles. Recognize that covering land (with pavement, gravel, data centers, shopping malls, substations) blocks the Earth’s ability to absorb and hold water. Limit short-term rentals to tourists so that teachers, grocery stockers, police officers, nurses and writers (assuming you want such people in your community) can afford housing. Enact ordinances to prohibit data centers, silicon fabs and factory-farmed livestock from consuming and polluting local water supplies—and from consuming energy. Delay children’s use of electronics at least until they’ve mastered reading, writing and math on paper; and prohibit cell phones in schools.

As 2026 begins, federal acts block local authority over telecommunications, AI and data centers, over ecosystems and even the right to repair our own devices and appliances. Local authority has become scarce.

I’m encouraged by people who reduce their tech use, adhere to sustainable directions, sow healing seeds and restore healthy water cycles. Here are some 2025 headlines:

PEOPLE REDUCING TECH USE

In Spain, FUNDACIÓN HERMES envisions a future where technology serves people, not the other way around. It advocates for the right to be offline, to a non-digital life. It promotes access while aiming to ensure that access does not undermine the rights of those who choose to opt out. Individuals should be able to interact with government agencies, access healthcare and engage in other critical activities without being forced to use digital technology. Non-digital options allow individuals a means to protect their privacy and avoid surveillance, tracking and data collection.

Also in Spain, Diego Hidalgo has launched The OFF Movement. It invites users to remove social media apps from their phones during February…and reclaim life in the real world.

On December 10^th, Australia banned under-16-year-olds from social media platforms. The European parliament has also called for an under-16 social media ban. In the U.S., according to a survey of 20,000 public school teachers, stricter school cellphone policies lead to more focused classroom environments.

Julia Angwin (a tech-lover) killed the color on her phone, and her use of it shrunk from eight-plus hours per day to less than five hours.

Oberlin students, part of a new generation of Luddites, have implored their college to opt out of AI.

CHIP FABS

Reducing tech use might start by learning what it takes to manufacture, operate and discard a computer–including what it takes to make semiconductors (chips). Every computer (and every vehicle, appliance, data center, substation, AI search, etcetera that needs a computer) depends on silicon chips. A chip factory hub in the Sonoran Desert north of Phoenix (owned by Taiwan’s TSMC) will span 1,149 acres and cost $165 billion—one of the most expensive projects on Earth. The first three factories will collectively use 16.4 million gallons of water per day—about enough for 200,000 homes. TSMC says its wastewater treatment plant will eventually recycle nearly all of its water…while environmentalists worry about the site’s impact on desert tortoises, protected species of desert flora, and ozone.

We can’t ignore the big semiconductor water problem.

Who will win the water: computers or living creatures?

AI

We need directions for reducing our dependence on technology.

Brian Merchant writes about the future of art and labor in the age of American AI and authoritariansm.

Hank Green explains why everyone is so wrong about AI water use.

A U.S. House bill backs speeding permit reviews for new energy and infrastructure projects—and it would enact the most significant change in decades to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).

DATA CENTERS

You can’t engage AI without a power grid, individually-owned computers; access networks and data centers. Data centers need electricity, water, and servers (computers).

Reports link rare cancers and miscarriages in Ohio and dangerous levels of nitrates in Morrow County, Oregon’s water supply—to data centers. Dublin, Ohio resident Amy Swank says, “There is…a need for education (about) what these (data centers) really do, how they really impact our electricity, our water, our community noise pollution level, light pollution level, and then what are the economic benefits to having one?”

Marty Hart-Landsberg writes about data center resistance.

MediaJustice’s guide to fighting data centers is available in English and Spanish.

SOLAR & WIND

We need to reduce our overall consumption of energy, extractions and water—but chip factories, data centers and crypto-currency mines demand LOTS of power.

Open to respectful discussion of solar PVs and other complex technologies.

China’s green energy ‘revolution’ is powered by coal.

In the Atlantic, offshore wind facilities (DON’T call them farms!) pose severe ecological hazards.

BATTERIES

Data centers, solar PV and industrial wind facilities require fossil fuels and/or BESS—battery energy storage systems. The extraordinary January 16, 2025 BESS fire at Moss Landing, California should have changed anyone’s advocating for BESS systems—but few people know about this fire, the fourth at this facility.

Recycling lead for U.S. car batteries poisons people.

WATER

Some people have dedicated themselves to retaining water in the landscape.

Soil’s ability to absorb and hold water is one of the Earth’s primary cooling mechanisms. Paved roads, cement sidewalks, houses, shopping malls, data centers etcetera…block this mechanism. 13 U.S. cities also face alarming water shortages, including Phoenix, Las Vegas, LA, Salt Lake City, Denver, Atlanta, El Paso, Miami, Albuquerque and Colorado Springs. 25 countries face extreme high water stress, including Bahrain, Cyprus, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Chile, Belgium and Greece.

Read Erin Brockovich on kicking out 6 water contaminants at your tap.

Trace your water from precipitation to tap and back to precipitation.

Explore water cycle restoration.

Watch Andrew Millison’s how to save a drying city (Bengaluru). Andrew Millison.

BIOREGIONALISM

Call me a localist.

Give me ecoliteracy school—and quit schools that promote Earth-ravaging capitalism and AI.

Beware that the Trump administration has nominated former New Mexico Rep. Steve Pearce to lead the Bureau of Land Management and oversee about 245 million acres of public lands. Pearce has advocated for the sale of public lands, opposed protection of national monuments, protected oil and gas companies from paying higher royalties to taxpayers and suggested that he wants to reverse the “trend” of public land ownership. Contact the Senate Committee on Energy & Natural Resources to let them know you object to Pearce’s leading the BLM.

ELECTROMAGNETIC RADIATION (EMR) & TELECOMMUNICATIONS

We’re all challenged by rapidly increasing electrosmog and EMF exposure.

Erica Rosenberg, Assistant Chief of the Competition and Infrastructure Policy Division at the FCC until her retirement in 2021, now works with NGOs on improving FCC NEPA compliance. Read her essay, Whatever Industry Wants: How the FCC Is Steamrolling Locals in the Cell Tower Rollout. Here’s the audio version.

LIBRARIES & READING

Journals, letters, I’ve loved you: an accounting of archives, history and digitalization.

NASA’s largest library has closed. Holdings from the library at the Goddard Space Flight Center, which includes unique documents from the early 20^th century to the Soviet space race, will be warehoused or thrown out.

James Marriottsep writes about the dawn of the post-literate society and the end of civilization.

GAZA

The Palestinian writer Heidar Eid recently observed that Israel is at the height of its strength—and this means that its influence will begin to wane.

Check out Co-Existence, My Ass!—a 2025 film about Noam Shuster Eliassi, who became a comedian after growing up in a Jewish-Palestinian village in Israel. The film has been short-listed for an Oscar.

Inspired by Jijmegen, Sweden, a group of Santa Fe, New Mexicans read the names of 828 Jewish Israelis and nearly 69,000 Palestinians who died in Gaza between October 7, 2023 and October 1, 2025. The event’s organizers note a poem by Joseph Fasano:

RUMI

In a dream I asked him

What can I do

if I can’t change it

and he pointed

to the graves

and whispered witness it

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Here’s my December 9, 2025 talk on Hart Hagan’s Climate Café: Mapping Our Technosphere to Discover Our Biosphere.

Here’s my (partial) list of resources related to this talk. I look forward to your comments and questions!

EDUCATING OURSELVES ABOUT THE BIOSPHERE AND THE TECHNOSPHERE

Educating children and ourselves as if life depends on nature

Digital Enlightenment

A bioregional quiz

Watershed questions

THE POWER GRID & MAKING TRANSISTORS ELECTRICALLY CONDUCTIVE

Discovering Power’s Traps: a primer for electricity users

The Big Semiconductor Water Problem

SOLAR PVs & INDUSTRIAL WIND

Why do we burn coal and trees to make solar panels? By Tom Troszak

Opening for Respectful Discussion of Solar PVs and Other Complex Technologies

21 questions for solar PV explorers

Call Me a NIMBY

Bright Green Lies—book by Derrick Jensen, Lierre Keith, Max Wilbert; documentary by Julia Barnes.

Planet of the Humans: film by Jeff Gibbs; produced by Michael Moore

Big Solar vs. Forests by Judith D. Schwartz

BATTERIES/BESS (Battery energy storage systems)

Never Again Moss Landing: The battery fire that should change the world.

DATA CENTERS

The People Say No: Resisting Data Centers in the South, by MediaJustice.org

“Resisting, Refusing, Reclaiming, Reimagining: Charting Challenges to Narratives of AI Inevitability,” by Tania Duarte, Ismael Kherroubi Garcia, et al. https://zenodo.org/records/17382120

More than 200 environmental groups demand halt to new US datacenters.

The International Energy Agency expects that data centers’ global electricity demand will double by the end of this decade. Goldman Sachs Research predicts that 60 percent of this increased demand will be met by fossil fuel sources. https://www.resilience.org/stories/2025-11-26/electricity-price-squeeze-somethings-going-to-give/?mc_cid=d90edeb8c6

Jim Doherty an Oregon cattle rancher and former county commissioner noticed a rise in medical conditions, surveyed 70 wells, found 68 violated the federal limit for nitrates in drinking water. Megafarms using fertilizers generate wastewater laden with nitrates. Then, to cool its servers, Amazon’s data center draws millions of gallons of water from toxic groundwater. Evaporation further concentrates the wastewater, which may contain nitrate levels eight times higher than Oregon’s safe limit.

CELL TOWERS

Cell Tower Health Effects: Science and Policy/Internationally

Cell Tower Fires & Collapses

Electronic Silent Spring (book and website by Katie Singer)

MINING

Photographer

https://www.edwardburtynsky.com/

: Over 40 years of bearing witness to the impacts of human industry on the planet

Trump’s Congo Venture: A Scramble for Minerals Under the Guise of Peace by Maurice Carney.

When Land I Love Holds Lithium: Max Wilbert on Thacker Pass, Nevada

A longer-lasting Internet starts with knowing our region’s mineral deposits

Mining the sacred: questions for a sustainable relationship with the Earth (co-authored with Aaron French)

E-VEHICLES

How/can we protect the Earth when we need a car?

Who’s in charge of EV chargers?

WASTE

Josh Lepawsky: Reassembling Rubbish; Discard Studies; Electronic Waste: A Reference Handbook.

How to prevent waste and make money (when manufacturers don’t reduce production, and consumers don’t reduce consumption)

www.ifixit.com (127,000 free repair guides

Gerry McGovern: World Wide Waste; (forthcoming) 99^th Day.

RULES & REGS

Policies for More Ecologically-Sound Tech

The Fix Our Forests Act (FOFA, S.1462) would fast-track large-scale logging, including in mature and old-growth forests, by gutting core environmental laws like NEPA and the Endangered Species Act. It would expand industry loopholes, block public oversight, and allow commercial logging under vague “emergency” declarations.

Several states have banned the Rights of Nature.

The Trump Administration EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers recently announced The Polluted Water Rule. If enacted, it would let polluters dump in and destroy more waters all across the country than any time in the last fifty years. For more info, see The Clean Water for All Coalition’s toolkit.

The FCC has introduced bills that would fast-track cell tower permits and end the local authority that remains over cell-site placement. To help to stop HR 2289, tell your Congressmember to vote against it.

And then come bills that support AI and data centers. In early November, The Trump Administration and big tech followed up with “Eliminating State Law Obstruction of National AI Policy.” If enacted, this law would penalize U.S. states that pass (or have already passed) laws that limit AI…by threatening litigation against the state and by withholding federal funds for broadband. On November 24, 2025, President Trump launched The Genesis Mission, a “dedicated, coordinated national effort to unleash a new age of AI-accelerated innovation and discovery.”

Again, to resist data centers, check out The People Say No: Resisting Data Centers in the South, by MediaJustice.org.

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Petition to the FCC Petition to the FCC: Don’t Fast Track Cell Towers Near Homes- Preserve Local Control

LIVE FREE WEBINAR TUESDAY DECEMBER 9 at 7pm ET, 4pm Pacific with KATIE SINGER on Hart Hagan’s Cafe: MAPPING OUR TECHNOSPHERE TO BUILD RESPECTFUL RELATIONS WITH NATURE . Katie will map how mass-produced technologies impact nature from their cradles-to-graves. She’ll outline technology’s four pillars (the power grid, manufacturing, access networks and data centers); share what she’s learned to decrease extractions, energy use and water use; then invite each of us to explore how changing our tech use could reduce biodiversity loss, water pollution and extractions.

Here’s an excellent piece from Marty Hart-Landsberg about data center resistance. MediaJustice will host a conversation Wednesday, December 10th at 3PM Pacific/6PM Eastern, From Project Blue to Stargate: How the Southwest is Resisting Data Centers. Their guide to fighting data centers is available in English and Spanish.

A mysterious company went to Doña Ana County, NM with a $165 billion idea for a data center. Officials are eager for a deal—even if they don’t quite know the terms—and some people post carry signs saying “Water Over WiFi!!”

To identify monarch butterflies’ overwintering path, the Xerces Society has glued transmitters to the insects that weigh the equivalent of a 22 lb. backback on humans. The transmitters will transmit microwave pulses every three seconds. These transmitters will be activate mid-December. To inform Xerces about how this tracking will harm the butterflies and to urge them to stop the activation and halt further damage by placing transmitters on other butterflies, write the Xerces Society monarchs@xerces.org and/or Executive Director Scott Black, scott.black@xerces.org.

https://www.montereyherald.com/2025/12/06/local-butterfly-trackers-bluetooth-tech-monarch-migration/

Wow! Starting on December 10^th, Australia will ban under-16-year-olds from major social media platforms. Meanwhile, the European parliament calls for social media ban on under-16s.

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Like many people born in a city, I grew up thinking that food comes from grocery stores; water comes from a faucet; electricity comes from flicking a switch; cheap long distance phone calls start at 11pm; medicine = aspirin, antibiotics + birth control pills; driving to work gives people time alone; everything sold is safe (except for cigarettes); garbage gets picked up on Tuesdays; everyone has enough money; and nature is where people go for summer camp.

I’ve had a lot to un-learn.

In my twenties, when sugar and bread made me sick, I started questioning pesticides, GMOs, MSG and soy. At 32, I could identify carrots and onions in a garden.

After a prescription made me sicker than the infection I needed to heal, I began looking for alternatives to pharmaceuticals.

By 40, I pined for Internet access, but my eyes simply would not tolerate a computer screen. (I bought and returned about ten of them.)

And then I began learning our society’s rules and regulations around technology: they supported corporations. They usually failed to protect the public or environmental health. Meanwhile, very few people knew these laws.

RULES & REGULATIONS

Throughout history, many societies have recognized that human survival depends on a healthy environment. Indigenous children learned to respect water, soil, animals and plants as relatives. People considered land and water part of the public commons, not for individual “owners.”

The Hippocratic Oath gave physicians the clear direction to first, do no harm.

As technologies emerged, some societies created ways to ensure their safety. Hammurabi’s code, written around 1750 BCE in Babylon (modern-day Iraq), determined that if a bridge collapses and harms a person, the bridgemaker holds responsibility.

At the turn of the 20^th century, with the introduction of electrification, states enacted statutes that required liability-carrying professional engineers (PEs) to ensure the safety of a project (i.e. a power plant, a water treatment facility, a telecommunications network, a smart utility meter system) before it could go live.

SHIFTING RULES TO SUPPORT CORPORATIONS

With the Industrial Revolution and electrification, rules and regulations began to prioritize tech developments and corporate profits over public or ecosystem health.

In 1886, lawyers representing corporate interests used the Fourteenth Amendment (created at the Civil War’s end to grant rights to freed slaves) to extend “personhood” rights to businesses and corporations. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that corporations are “persons” who hold the same protections held by natural persons. (Until 1886, corporations were considered “artificial persons” and subject to significant regulations.) Since 1886, U.S. laws have prevented natural people from significantly regulating corporate behavior.

In 1934, the FCC defined “harmful interference” as anything that interferes with existing radio, TV or (now) Internet broadcasts. Nearly 100 years later, no agency defines biological harm (to people or wildlife) from transformers or broadcasting equipment that emit electromagnetic radiation.

The Endangered Species Act of 1973 makes it unlawful to “take” (harass, harm, pursue, hunt, shoot, wound, kill, trap, capture or collect) any endangered species of fish or wildlife within the United States. However, if an applicant (wanting to drill oil or mine lithium or deploy wind turbines, for examples) submits a habitat conservation plan and the Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS) or the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) finds that the project’s harm to endangered species will be “incidental,” will be mitigated, and will not appreciably reduce the survival of the species in the wild, then FWS and NMFS will issue a permit for the corporation to conduct business.

Section 704 of the 1996 Telecommunications Act prohibits a municipality from denying a telecom corporation’s request to install radiation-emitting antennas based on environmental concerns. After this law’s passage, at city council meetings and judicial hearings about cell-site deployments, I saw legislators (scared that a telecom corporation might sue their city) warn citizens not to speak about the health effects of living near a cellular antenna. When I showed my state senators an image of a cell site in front of a California house, one asked an AT&T lobbyist, “What could I do if you install a cellular antenna in my yard?” The lobbyist said, “You could make a comment”—and the legislator joined his colleagues in voting to permit the telecom corporation-supporting rule.

I began to wonder: realistically, legally and ecologically, what can we control?

MANUFACTURING REALITIES

More rapidly than answers came to that question, I received reports about industrial manufacturing (of computers, refrigerators, air conditioners, gas-powered cars, EVs, solar panels, you name it). Manufacturing these goods (and data centers, access networks and battery energy storage systems) requires electricity, mining, smelting, chemicals, fossil fuels and international shipping—which wreak havoc on ecosystems and public health. While most products’ toxic waste is generated during manufacturing, at the end-of-life, electronics do not biodegrade.

Then, like rats, cell sites, solar PV facilities (not “farms”), wind turbines, battery energy storage systems, EVs and data storage centers (for AI) started infesting urban and rural neighborhoods. People nearby these facilities reported power outages, no water or dirty water at their tap, and doubled utility bills. They wondered how to restore local authority.

THE NEW RULES & REGS

Meanwhile, the FCC and others serving corporate interests presented lots of new bills in Congress.

The Fix Our Forests Act (FOFA, S.1462) would fast-track large-scale logging, including in mature and old-growth forests, by gutting core environmental laws like NEPA and the Endangered Species Act. It would expand industry loopholes, block public oversight, and allow commercial logging under vague “emergency” declarations.

Several states have banned the Rights of Nature.

The Trump Administration EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers announced The Polluted Water Rule. If enacted, it would further restrict The Clean Water Act’s ability to protect water bodies from pollution and destruction. This rule would let polluters dump in and destroy more waters all across the country than any time in the last fifty years. Upon publication in the Federal Register, there will be a 45 day comment period. For more info, see The Clean Water for All Coalition’s toolkit.

The FCC has introduced bills that would fast-track cell tower permits and end the local authority that remains over cell-site placement. House Bill HR 2289 (formerly HR 3557) is now at the House Energy & Commerce Committee. To help to stop HR 2289, tell your Congressmember to vote against it. Reinette Senum also explains calls to action around FCC bills in Congress.

And then come bills that support AI and data centers. Last May, when Republicans amended the 2025 budget reconciliation bill with a statement that “no State or political subdivision thereof may enforce any law or regulation regulating artificial intelligence models, artificial intelligence systems, or automated decision systems during the 10-year period beginning on the date of the enactment of this Act,” it drew critical headlines. In early November, The Trump Administration and big tech followed up with “Eliminating State Law Obstruction of National AI Policy.” If enacted, this law would penalize U.S. states that pass (or have already passed) laws that limit AI…by threatening litigation against the state and by withholding federal funds for broadband. On November 24, 2025, President Trump launched The Genesis Mission, a “dedicated, coordinated national effort to unleash a new age of AI-accelerated innovation and discovery.”

Good news: from Steve Bannon to Elizabeth Warren, bipartisan backlash has erupted over the push to block states from regulating AI.

WHILE DROUGHT & DATA CENTERS (& OTHER TECH) FLOURISH

Manufacturing a data storage center’s cement, computers and cooling systems requires an energy-guzzling, water-guzzling, toxic waste-emitting global super-factory.

A single data center can consume the equivalent electricity of 50,000 homes. For one example, the Utah Data Center (part of the U.S. National Security Agency) daily guzzles seven million gallons of water. Also see Jon Y’s Big Semiconductor Water Problem and Data Centers in Southeast Asia.

Tech-loving-rule-writers apparently don’t notice that people need water or that people and wildlife matter more than data. They don’t notice that some countries and cities are running out of water. In Tehran, Iran, rainfall has decreased 82% in the past year. Iranian President Massoud Pezeshkian says: “If it does not rain in Tehran by December, we should ration water; if it still does not rain, we must empty Tehran.” (Tehran houses nearly 10 million people.) 13 U.S. cities also face alarming water shortages, including Phoenix, Las Vegas, LA, Salt Lake City, Denver, Atlanta, El Paso, Miami, Albuquerque and Colorado Springs. 25 countries face extreme high water stress, including Bahrain, Cyprus, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Chile, Belgium and Greece.

But even in areas with water shortages, corporations build water-guzzling transistor fabs and data centers. From 2017 to 2024, the number of data centers in the U.S. increased from 318 to 5,208.

More than ever, we need laws that protect people and waterways.

Because of data centers, electricity demands are also growing—along with risk of massive power outages during intense cold snaps. New York Governor Kathy Hochul just approved a natural gas pipeline that will carry Pennsylvania fracked gas through Raritan Bay and New York Harbor to Rockaway Beach, where it’ll connect with another pipeline off the Long Island coast…probably to help power the state’s 144 AI data centers (with more on their way). Environmentalists warn that building this pipline will churn up copper, mercury and other toxins, harm marine life and sicken swimmers.

In North Carolina, legislators have passed The Power Bill Reduction Act: if there’s a contest between consumers and data centers over who gets the power, data centers will get it. Today, consumers use 40% of power and pay 40% of the cost. With this bill’s passage, consumers will still use 40% of the electricity; they’ll pay 50% of the cost. Electricity bills will go up 30%.

In Mumbai, Amazon’s coal-powered data centers keep the city in toxic hell.

TOOLS FOR FIGHTING DATA CENTERS

The People Say No: Resisting Data Centers in the South, MediaJustice’s report about data centers, complete with an organizer’s toolkit.

Communities like St. Louis are considering a temporary ban on data centers. Protesters in Indianapolis got Google to withdraw its plans for a $1billion data center on 460 acres…at least temporarily. Tucson’s city council has rejected Beale Corporation’s water plan for a new data center.

30-minute documentary about data centers from Business Insider.

Alistair Alexander reports that every Sora AI video burns 1 Kilowatt hour and…

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez warns about AI’s threat to the American economy and warns that we should not bail out the industry if it fails.

But our technosphere involves so much more than data centers and AI. (I haven’t said anything about digital ID or crypto-currency.)

RETURNING TO QUESTIONS

I return to questioning my assumptions. Does facing development of AI, data centers, solar facilities, battery storage—and the rest of our technosphere—require facing our dependence on technology and our powerlessness over corporations?

How do YOU keep healthy in a toxic world? How do you deal with rules and regulations that prohibit local authority? What do you consider constructive use of your attention at this time?

WEBINARS & A FILM

CO-EXISTENCE, MY ASS! A film about Noam Shuster Eliassi, literally the poster child for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process before she became a stand-up comedian and political satirist. Available online THANKSGIVING WEEKEND.

Bereaved Israeli and Palestinian parents come together to grieve and build peace.

MediaJustice will host a conversation Wednesday, December 10th at 3PM Pacific/6PM Eastern, From Project Blue to Stargate: How the Southwest is Resisting Data Centers. Their guide to fighting data centers is available in English and Spanish.

Here are highlights from Safe Technology’s November 1rst webinar, Unplug to Uplift, about creating safer technology choices for children.

When these people rewild, nightingales, grass snakes, slowworms, bats and insects return in droves.

KATIE SINGER will present MAPPING OUR TECHNOSPHERE TO BUILD RESPECTFUL RELATIONS WITH NATURE on Hart Hagan’s December 9 webinar at 7pm/Eastern, 4pm/Pacific. Katie will map how mass-produced technologies impact nature from their cradles-to-graves. She’ll outline technology’s four pillars (the power grid, manufacturing, access networks and data centers); share what she’s learned to decrease extractions, energy use and water use; then invite each of us to explore how changing our tech use could reduce biodiversity loss, water pollution and extractions.

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When talking about Fierce Vulnerability, Kazu Haga names that the changes happening now are unprecedented. Rather than an “us versus them” mentality or a search for solutions, he advocates for escalated listening, including to ourselves. He explains that for anyone who aims for collective healing and change, personal healing is crucial.

Osteopath Christof Plothe’s substack, The Unplugged Mind: What Japan’s 2-Hour Rule Teaches Us About Digital Addiction, explains Toyoake, Japan’s (unenforceable) rule to limit time on digital devices outside of work and school…to two hours per day.

While plastic production increases, Lynn Dekleva, who studies toxic microplastics, explains how she protects her family: If you bottle-feed a baby, use glass. Eat food that’s organic, not packaged or ultra-processed. Don’t microwave food, especially in plastic. Wash dishes by hand. (Dishwasher water is super hot, and heat degrades plastic material.) Choose cotton, wool and linen clothes—not polyester or rayon—and shop at thrift stores. (Because it likely involves plastics, manufacturing harms the environment.)

To maintain clean air, water, and land for future generations, Honor the Earth has launched a No Data Center Coalition.

Formerly incarcerated women are building a global network to fight imprisonment.

In Albuquerque, Kids Cook! brings hands-on nutrition and cooking education into classrooms and homes to build healthier habits and foster children’s love of good food.

Santa Fe New Mexico’s Burrito Brigade is a grassroots, all-volunteer collective that weekly cooks and distributes 100 burritos every week. Now, they’re expanding through the SNAP Solidarity Project to strengthen local food access and mutual aid networks. They invite people to help cook on Saturdays and distribute meals on Sundays—or support new projects that help neighbors access food with care and dignity. If anyone needs a meal, they’re at De Vargas Park every Sunday at 10 a.m.

To support the Blackfeet community’s children and elders, instead of paying fines, Blackfeet Tribal Court’s Honorable Chief Judge Misty Rides At the Door has issued an order to accept food donations.

Would you help keep this substack going and buy me a cup of tea each month?

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A decade ago, I heard someone ask Suzan Shown Harjo, the Cheyenne and Arapaho writer and Indian policy advocate, “What’s the most important event in Native American history?”

While I imagined her saying something like “the arrival of Europeans to North America” or “the Battle at Wounded Knee,” Harjo replied, “We received teachings about using nearby plants to heal wounds and diseases.”

I still think about her response. In the context of an ecoliteracy school, I wonder what teachings other cultures have received to keep life going.

We have the thought that there isn’t enough. Therefore, I need to get what I can.

DIRECTIONS for ECOLOGICAL HEALTH

• Taoists (somewhere between the 8^th and 3^rd centuries BCE): Avoid extremes. Go for the middle way. Balance yin and yang. Recognize that all life evolves from cycles of heating and cooling and drying and moistening.

• Ancient peoples: plant seeds and extract ores with reverence.

• Respect that soil’s ability to absorb and hold water is one of the Earth’s primary cooling mechanisms. Covering soil with paved roads, parking lots, shopping malls, data centers, battery energy storage facilities, airports (etcetera) blocks this mechanism.

• Herman Daly (1938-2022): Don’t take from the Earth faster than it can replenish. Don’t waste faster than it can absorb the waste.

• Bioregionalists: Know how much rainfall your region receives, how much groundwater is available and how to restore healthy water cycling. Live within the offerings of your watershed’s water, fuel, ores, energy. Build soil that can absorb and hold water. Reduce dependence on international supply chains.

• United Plant Savers (1994): Preserve native medicinal plants. Don’t over-harvest plants whose survival is endangered.

• Robin Wall Kimmerer: “In Potawatomi and most other Indigenous languages, we use the same words to address the living world as we use for our family.”

TO SUSTAIN PEOPLES’ HEALTH

• Ayurvedic medicine (1500 – 1200 BCE): Ayurveda means the study of life. It’s based on the idea that everything in the universe is connected. Therefore, an imbalance in one area can cause illness. To reduce inflammation (for example), avoid warming foods—like chili, garlic and heated oils, and dehydrating foods like chard and parsley. Enjoy cooling mint, coconut, cucumbers, steamed foods.

• Taoists (8^th to 3^rd centuries BCE): Balance yin and yang. Avoid extremes. (Consider sugar and large portions of meat extreme.) Go for the middle way. Aim for simplicity and humility.

• Hippocrates (about 400 BCE): First, do no harm. Let food be thy medicine.

• The Precautionary Principle (1980s): Do not use a substance or product when there’s reasonable suspicion of its dangers. While it may have been around for a while and/or it may not cause immediately noticeable adverse reactions, we might assume that the product is safe. However, used alone, repeatedly or in combination, items such as pharmaceuticals, pesticides, phthalates (plastics), PFAs, mobile devices, solar PVs, e-vehicles, etcetera, may damage health. Use alternatives whenever possible. (The Precautionary Principle also relates to ecosystem health.)

• Ten Commandments (around 1446 BCE): Observe the Sabbath. One day each week, do not interfere with nature. Do not light a fire, carry anything outside of your home, handle money, use a knife, etcetera.

• Advocate for healthy menstrual cycles: Recognize that all life evolves from cycles of heating and cooling and moistening and drying. Learn how to observe and chart your menstrual cycles for an introductory gauge of your gynecological health—and to know when you are fertile and infertile.

• For a successful breastfeeding relationship, start nursing within 30 minutes after birth. For a healthier family, space children at least three years apart.

• Cook. Compost. Reduce buying processed and packaged foods.

• When you’re sick, drink plenty of water and fast from food.

• Take responsibility for your death and your possessions. Update your health care directive and your will, annually. Keep your possessions to a minimum. Recognize that while a body decomposes, mercurial dentistry, formaldehyde (used to keep a body in tact for viewings) and electronic medical implants are hazardous waste.

LONG-LASTING FARMING PRACTICES

• Leviticus 25:2-7: Every seven years, let the land rest.

• Kosher and Halal law: When butchering, the animal should feel no pain.

• Maintain soil health. Maintain waterways’ health. Do not till soil.

FOR A LONG-LASTING GOVERNMENT

• The U.S. Constitution (1789): Allow freedom of speech.

• Confucius and the Bible: Do not do unto others as you would not have them do unto you.

• Deuteronomy 23:19: When loaning money, do not charge your brother interest.

• Aim to meet the needs of the poor.

• In the 19^th century, most U.S. states granted corporate charters for no more than 30 years (rather than in perpetuity). They prohibited corporations from making political contributions and imposed many other limits on corporations.

• Matt Pearce: To become sovereign—to control the most meaningful decisions about your own life—is to exit an existing status quo, sometimes at steep cost.

FOR SAFE AND RELIABLE TECHNOLOGY

• Hammurabi’s Code (1750 BCE): If a bridge collapses and causes harm, the bridgemaker is responsible.

• Professional Engineering (PE) statutes (starting in 1907): No technology is safe until proven safe. Only a licensed, liability-carrying PE’s seal “proves” safety. (Technology here refers to bridges, water treatment facilities, electrical equipment, telecommunications infrastructure, home wiring, building structural support.)

• In 1925, when car mechanic Joseph Olhoeft’s son, Roy, asked his father to let him buy a Model T Ford for $25 with a problem, Joseph told his son to lay every part of the car on the lawn, identify the problem and repair it. If Roy could reassemble the car and get it to drive correctly, he could have the Model T.

• Keep wired whenever possible. Avoid wireless devices whenever possible.

• Move toward using only tools that biodegrade.

WAR

• Sun Tzu, author of The Art of War (5^th century BCE): The goal of war is peace. Know your enemy and know yourself.

• Talmud (between the 3^rd and 6^th centuries): Do not trap your enemy, because that endangers the trapmaker.

• The Work of Byron Katie (2003): All war belongs on paper. When you’re angry, stuck, depressed or confused, investigate your thinking. Write down your thought and ask, Is it true?...and play with turning around your thoughts.

AFTER WE HUMANS HAVE NOT FOLLOWED MANY OF THESE DIRECTIONS

FOR CENTURIES—

I wonder which ones could still apply. I acknowledge that I depend on international supply chains for significant portions of my food and health care—and my car. In 2021, 94% of the highly packaged U.S. food supply was grown with pesticides, herbicides, fungicides and genetically-modified organisms (GMOs). Every day it seems, I have to contend with an energy guzzling, water guzzling, extractive, toxic waste-emitting, radiation-emitting digital/AI interface.

Our society does not aim to meet the needs of the poor. In wars, we focus more on maintaining U.S. supremacy rather than creating cooperative, peaceful mutual aid.

Still, to my surprise, I found that I could practice about half of these directions. I can study traditional medicine ways. When I’m sick, I can fast. I can keep a garden—even if it’s just at a windowsill. I can keep a digital Sabbath. I can reduce my possessions and get my health care directive and my will in order.

Here are other viable options that would reduce human impacts on Earth—and maybe also support community:

• Voluntarily, each woman limits herself to one chid.

• Aim to reduce your consumption by two percent per month. Quit your car, TV and dryer. At Xmas and birthdays, do an activity—like making a meal together or taking a hike. When you need to replace a computer or appliance or car, first see if you can repair it. Visit www.ifixit.com. If your device isn’t repairable, rather than a new one, buy a refurbished one.

• Before giving a child an e-device, ask, What would we gain from this? What would we lose or replace?

PLEASE COMMENT!

What do you do to sustain your life and your community? Please share.

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Regenerative farmer Richard Daley recently defined ecological literacy as understanding how living systems work, how they break down and how they can be restored. To get there, Daley suggests learning the names of local plants, tracing the flow of water through a watershed, observing seasonal shifts, knowing where your food comes from and understanding who holds power over land and the Earth’s life-giving systems. He calls ecoliteracy practical, place-based and rooted in observation and responsibility. With it, we focus on material change—compost food waste, protect local wildlife, build mutual aid networks, plant gardens, reimagine governance and work toward a truly regenerative future.

Then, pollinator-gardener Hart Hagan wrote that when we have “a cooperative, supportive relationship with the natural world, we learn how life works and how life supports our climate.”

Daley and Hagan inspired me to spell out ecoliterate thinking and skills—and to realize that in many cases, I am not (yet) literate. Here’s the list. Please add to it!

ECOLITERATE THINKING AND ACTIONS

• Recognize that all life depends on nature. Nature is our teacher.

• Consider that unless you’re aware that you are part of the problem, you cannot be part of the solution.

• Acknowledge that the fossil fuels and ores our technosphere requires took billions of years to form—and they cannot be regenerated.

• Aim to live within your bioregion’s offerings—your watershed’s food, water, energy and ores. (The U.S. has six main watersheds and about 2100 smaller ones.)

• Reduce dependence on international supply chains.

• Ask questions. Welcome not-knowing. Build relationships with people (not screens) who welcome questions.

• Learn how to do daily activities—cooking, drying clothes, communicating with family—with less digital interface and less electricity.

• Recognize the Jevons Paradox: efficiency increases consumption of energy, water and extractions.

FOOD

• Learn what foods keep you healthy—and expect that this list will change. Know how to cook healthy food.

• Know what foods make you unhealthy and how to avoid them.

• Grow even a few culinary herbs or greens—or buy from local farmers.

• Trace the supply chains involved in your favorite meal, including its packaging.

WATER

• Trace your water from precipitation to tap and back to precipitation.

• Know how much rain fell in your region 100, 50 and 10 years ago—and last year.

• Know people who restore healthy cycling—and teach. Name at least three ways to do so.

• Know what minerals are available, mined, refined and discarded or recycled in your bioregion (within your watershed).

SOIL

• Understand that soil’s ability to absorb and hold water is one of the Earth’s primary cooling mechanisms. Paved roads, cement sidewalks, houses, shopping malls, data centers etcetera…block this mechanism.

• Build and protect nutrient-dense soil by covering it with fallen leaves, mulch, plantings and/or compost. Compost kitchen and landscape scraps.

• Study the soil-food web.

HEALTH

• Rest. Rest well.

• Study self-help health care with people you like.

• Avoid toxins (in cleaning materials, nearby industries, pharmaceuticals, medical procedures, etc.); pesticides, herbicides, fungicides (in food, nearby lawns, golf courses, farms); man-made radiation (emitted by mobile devices, cell towers, utility meters, switch-mode power supplies, e-vehicles, gas-powered vehicles, etc.); PFAs (in dental floss, Teflon pans, waterproof raincoats, solar panels, plastics); lead (in paint, cast iron-enamel pans); addictive substances (opioids, alcohol, sugar) or behaviors (screen-time).

• Know people who support sobriety—i.e., 12-step programs. Acquire techniques for making peace between your ears.

• Keep menstrual cycles healthy. Use contraception that does not harm your body or waterways.

• Before conceiving, consider whether or not your community has sufficient ecological health to welcome a baby.

• If you decide to try to conceive, enhance your fertility without harming your body or waterways.

• If you have a child, connect with parents who work to give children smartphone-free childhoods.

• Annually update your will with a health-care directive, a pre-need obituary and an affordable green burial option. (This will save your survivors a lot of energy.)

UTILITIES, INCLUDING TELECOMMUNICATIONS

• Learn a basic understanding of our power grid.

• Trace the cradle-to-grave ecological and public health impacts (from manufacturing, operation and discard) of air conditioners, solar PVs, industrial wind turbines, smartphone or laptop batteries, battery energy storage systems (BESS), natural gas-powered plants, coal-powered plants, nuclear power plants, hydro-electric dams, geo-thermal energy, biomass power plants.

• Know how much electricity and water the data centers near you consume.

• Live where you are not exposed to toxins in your water or air—or to ambient radiation (including chopped current on electric wires).

• Elect legislators committed to local authority over food, forest health and utilities (water, electricity and telecommunications).

TELECOMMUNICATIONS

• Know what we ask of the Earth to send a text, an email, play a video, do an online search, attend an online webinar, ask AI to create a report or an image. (A manufactured computer, an access network, data storage centers, international shipping systems…and the power grid.)

• Trace the cradle-to-grave ecological and public health impacts of one substance in a smartphone—and share your research with classmates and colleagues.

TRANSPORTATION

• Trace cradle-to-grave ecological impacts of a gas-powered car, an e-bicycle, an e-vehicle, EV chargers (including their impact to nearby transformers).

THE RULES THAT FRAME US

• Learn policies for more ecologically-sound technologies, including including Community Rights and Rights-of-Nature.

• Recognize that while the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) requires a Full Environmental Impact Statement before permitting any project, corporations can still “take” endangered species…legally. Know your state’s laws, which may require conditional-use permits with strict environmental review before permitting any project.

• Recognize the 1996 Telecommunications Act’s Section 704, which states that no municipality may prohibit cellular facilities (cell towers) based on the environmental effects of exposure to their radiation emissions. The FCC’s newest proposal, Build America: Eliminating Barriers to Wireless Deployments, would require municipalities to approve of cellular facility permits within 120 days of an application’s submission. It would prevent local authority over placement of antennas and over monitoring of cell tower radiation emissions.

• When utility-scale solar facilities, wind facilities or battery-energy storage systems (BESS) stop providing profits, the corporation may file for bankruptcy to avoid taking responsibility for disposal of the project’s hazardous waste. Unless your county requires the corporation to post a bond as a condition for its permit, at the project’s end-of-life, taxpayers could pay to dispose of hundreds of acres of hazardous waste.

• Protect the right to choose a non-digital or digital life.

COMMUNITY

• Recognize that our community’s web of life includes insects, birds, lizards, trees, plants, clouds, oceans, rivers, lakes, fish, whales, sharks, volcanoes, rocks, mountains, goats, chickens, monkeys, giraffes, micro-organisms in soil—and all of this life decomposes to regenerate. (Our electronics do not biodegrade.)

• Ecoliteracy can’t happen alone; it requires community. Build relationships with neighbors to exchange fresh food, health care remedies, home repair, child care, transportation, computer help, etcetera. Over laundry lines or monthly potlucks, discuss ways to reduce overall consumption by three percent per month.

• Build book and tool-lending libraries.

• Walk or bike to your grocery store.

• Elect legislators committed to local authority over utilities, including water, electricity, telecommunications.

• Support the new generation of Luddites.

• Ask the youth in your neighborhood what they need to become ecoliterate.

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