iPhone users raged on social media after they discovered why their devices have been a bit sluggish on the charging front… ‘Clean Energy Charging’ is a new feature introduced to iOS version 16.1 by Apple to ‘reduce the carbon footprint’ of their iPhone. Like all things ‘environmental’, it’s also a pain in the arse.

When enabled, the setting only charges a person’s iPhone if the energy grid tells the phone that it is being powered by so-called ‘clean’ energies like solar and wind – which means your phone can be plugged into a perfectly good power source and do absolutely nothing, rejecting energy flowing through the grid (which isn’t saved). It’s about as pointless as the energy wastage that goes on during Earth Hour.

Apple says their new feature ‘lowers your electricity usage’ as well as making you feel all warm and squishy about being a virtuous climate warrior – although they might have phrased it slightly differently in the fine print nobody read.

According to makeuseof.com, ‘When you connect your iPhone to a charger, iOS downloads a carbon emission forecast automatically in the background and relies on your device’s location to find the nearby energy grid. Having retrieved this forecast from the load balancing authority for your region, iOS has the knowledge it needs to automatically restrict charging to lower carbon emission electricity.’

In true Silicon Valley style, this feature kicks in when you connect to your favourite locations, ensuring maximum irritation and inconvenience. Most people who plug their phone in, expect it to charge – not behave like a vegan at an all-you-can-eat BBQ.

So much for the good old days when your iPhone only stalked you for the purpose of Google Maps. Now, in a Chinese-dystopian-style upgrade, your phone is stalking you to place moral limitations on your energy use.

This virtuous upgrade wasn’t exactly well publicised, because furious users are turning it off in fits of anger. They thought their phones were broken, now they find out they’ve gone Woke. It’s almost worse. How do you fix ‘Woke’?

Thankfully, Apple hasn’t spread this ideological infection to all its users. Americans are the lab rats, but rest assured your phones in Australia will soon start having a sook, going flat in the presence of perfectly good charging outlets.

While Apple include this as part of their ‘battery optimisation’ function, telling your phone not to charge itself because its Silicon Valley parent prefers wasteful, short-lived, Chinese-owned power systems has nothing whatsoever to do with the future health of your battery.

Clean Energy Charging is turned on by default by the upgrade without users being made aware of their phone’s sudden eco-fascist identity disorder.

The discovery of this feature in a few viral posts this week has answered concerns from iPhone users who could not work out why their phones had been underperforming since the end of October, 2022. When the feature is turned off, users are rewarded with a ‘shaming’ message by Apple. Essentially, How dare you reject the gift of virtue from your Silicon Valley gods!

If you noticed your iPhone is charging a little slower recently it may be due to a new setting Apple added in iOS 16.1 — Clean Energy Charging

With it turned on, iOS will only recharge the iPhone’s battery when the electrical grid uses cleaner energy sources like solar or wind… https://t.co/r35GkgivQl pic.twitter.com/ANW3GZwYSd

— Chief Nerd (@TheChiefNerd) February 26, 2023

Does the system cut your carbon footprint? No, it does not. Users do not control the energy production of the city grid so even if you were to take wind and solar as ‘lower emission’ (which they are not over their lifetimes), the poor sod with the wonky iPhone is not changing the total carbon emission of the grid and therefore making precisely zero difference to net emissions – which is what matters to the planet. It is like trying to claim that drinking from a melt-water river impacts the rate of glacial retreat in the mountains above. The two things are unrelated. The only thing you achieve by not drinking is making yourself thirsty.

Sarah Jameson of Green Building Elements was honest when she admitted this function is about ‘raising awareness’.

‘Small adjustments add up over time. What Apple is doing is making it easier for iPhone users to become more aware of their role in reducing carbon emissions. It serves as a reminder of the importance of reducing carbon emissions and that even the most mundane activities, such as charging your phone when power grids are less constrained and more clean energy capacity is available, are significant in the grand scheme of things.’

If Apple is desperately worried that their carbon-induced footprint is bringing about the apocalypse, it wouldn’t be running so many factories in China, encouraging the enormous mining industry for the raw materials of their products, or shipping them around the world as a ‘must have replacement’ every year or so. They’d shut up shop and go home for the sake of the ‘Greater Good’.

In essence, these eco settings are not about saving the planet, they’re about creating a ‘Carbon Credit Score’ by which the user can then be judged – a score embedded in your phone which is connected to your bank account, social media, and government ID. Discussions like this were being salivated over at the last few Davos meetings where tech companies couldn’t wait to collaborate with government leaders where your civil rights sit on the table as a type of currency.

They tried a similar thing in China where a person’s ‘agreeableness’ was treated like a social game, granting them freebies and rewards. This positive re-enforcement, just like a carbon credit score, soon turns to a system of punishment. Western Silicon Valley companies were involved in the creation of China’s Social Credit system and supporting surveillance network and now they are copying that dystopian idea back home.

The problem is, human vanity is leading the population straight into a trap.

Instead of tracking people for ‘trustworthiness’ and ‘agreeableness’, the West is controlling people by their ‘virtue’. The godless children of the new millennium might be disappointed to learn that this is a very evangelical dystopia not dissimilar to previous eras of collaborative State and Church control.

Carbon Credit systems are the exact same game as Social Credit scores, except that they are re-branded to fool (let’s face it, extremely stupid) citizens. If you are seeking government and corporate approval for your behaviour – stop. You’re one of the muppets holding open the gates of Rome as the barbarians approach.

In China, people with the wrong Social Credit score are trapped in their regions, denied public transport tickets, locked out of employment, their children are punished by restricting the type of schooling they can access, their internet is slowed, and they are publicly shamed.

It’s easy to see how Apple’s carbon virtue could run off the rails with a very slight nudge from climate puritans. First, they’ll track your carbon score. Then, those with a ‘good’ carbon score will get discounts, faster internet, and priority charging. For every benefit, other users will be punished until the product you buy is no longer based upon the money you spent, but rather the company’s judgment of your worth as a customer. It is the beginning of the end of capitalism.

Best to chuck out the iPhone and pick a device that doesn’t stalk you and assign a moral value. I’m sure there’s an old Nokia around here somewhere…