It’s easy to understand the environmental cost of sending a letter. A tree is cut down to create the paper. A jet-fueled plane flies the envelope across the country. A postal service truck coughs out exhaust as the mail finally arrives at its destination.

Email, not so much.

“Most people literally just don’t think there’s an environmental cost,” social media researcher Danah Boyd told The Huffington Post’s Caroline Modarressy-Tehrani at the annual World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland. “All they can think about is the silicon that goes into your device or, maybe, the lithium that goes into your battery.” [Read more…]