Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know anti-car attitudes annoy some people, but we really should drive this home(pun not intended but taken advantage of). People keep using "a tank of gas" as a fungible, graspable unit of carbon emissions while not realising reducing that very thing often has an out-sized impact on carbon emission, sometimes more than other things like reusing clothes, internet usage of this or that services or saas, and so on. Tr…
I don’t have the numbers for US wildfires this year. But the emission caused by the wildfires in Canada this year was about 2x the annual emissions generated by transportation.
We are not sustainable
71–80 of 138 posts
Re: We are not sustainable
#72If the whole tech industry generated 50 million metric tons per year, that’s about 6 kilograms per person on the planet per year, about a watermelon, and if you consider that even half of those are served by it, it’s a manageable amount of waste. The fact that it’s consolidated is a responsibility but also an opportunity to make big changes with every gain. I wish the tone here focused more on that opportunity.
The world CO2 emissions are 36 billion tons. 4.5 tons per person per year. The tech industry is .1% of that. There are more important things to worry, like how got to the store. More importantly, the tech industry is a lot of electricity and some other energy in production. Decarbonize electricity and electrify everything possible, which we must do, will solve the problem with tech. There is nothing extra that needs…
Except that you don't have a miracle low-emission energy source. So whatever you "waste" in the tech industry, you don't use in, say, electric trucks.
Also the tech industry emissions are growing pretty fast. For what? Mostly for people to swipe TikTok 4h per day.
Re: We are not sustainable
#73Everyone forgets the first two Rs of conservation. Buying one electronic gadget and holding on to it for 5-7 years or longer, including being able to make repairs and upgrades, is vastly better for the planet then getting that new iDevice every year or two and feeling better about yourself because it is advertised as "sustainably made".
I still use 12y laptop and I'm very of that even though people around me make jokes
They should realize that it makes them optimize their software for the latest hardware, and it forces everybody else to buy new hardware. People who make jokes about keeping old hardware need to understand that they are part of the problem.
Re: We are not sustainable
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
No idea what your issue is, but I had no problems with the site on mobile.
I'm on mobile now. I'm using plain old chrome
I think the takeaway here is frontend development is difficult and finnicky especially when browsers don't cleanly conform to standards and users are allowed to run whatever plugins they want against web pages.
No need to point the blame finger at the developers for imperfectly operating in such an imperfect environment. :)
Re: We are not sustainable
#75Re: We are not sustainable
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
And what exactly is the solution there? For most Americans a car is literally their ONLY option for transport. > I never buy this, because corporate behaviours are driven by the market, which is driven by public behaviours. I’ve heard this many times, but it’s simply not true. There was no demand for glued-in batteries, lightbulbs that die prematurely, or SaaS. However, when something is required to maintain your job…
So what do you think the answer is?
Re: We are not sustainable
#77I really wish they would ship their laptops faster. I would buy one but don't really want to wait a year+. Guess my next laptop will probably be a ThinkPad.
Re: We are not sustainable
#78The life cycle assessment shows that over a five year life span, production is responsible for 65% of CO2e, and usage about 25% (out of a total estimated 200kg - roughly 86L of gasoline) using "a typical US energy mix". Component wise (during production), the largest CO2e contributor was the display at ~25%, then the mainboard at 20%, and then battery around 15%. Take aways for me are that: from a sustainability stan…
Re: We are not sustainable
#79Cost aside, is an i5 cpu and nvme laptop from 6yrs ago noticably underperformant enough to consider an upgrade under standard web browing and document editing workloads? I think plastic-free metallic casing is a big deal for ewaste. But also, SoC convergence is a terrible thing. It would have been nice if components were modular. Imagine if the 4g/5g, bluetooth and wifi modules if the billions of phones out there cou…
Older hardware takes substantially more power to do the same work (and more power at idle); in a datacenter environment, this also means more power consumption for cooling. There's a case to be made for keeping old hardware in service where possible, but this isn't a situation where it makes economic or environmental sense.
Re: We are not sustainable
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
When I've pointed out to people that if they really want to be green then they should stop driving their car, I got a response along the lines of "the top ten producers of CO2 are all private companies. It's not about changing public behaviours, it's about regulating corporate behaviours". I never buy this, because corporate behaviours are driven by the market, which is driven by public behaviours. If we all stopped…
And what exactly is the solution there? For most Americans a car is literally their ONLY option for transport. > I never buy this, because corporate behaviours are driven by the market, which is driven by public behaviours. I’ve heard this many times, but it’s simply not true. There was no demand for glued-in batteries, lightbulbs that die prematurely, or SaaS. However, when something is required to maintain your job…
As for you continuing to insist that tut-tut-ing corporations is enough, the numbers are clear that just because 1 airplane moving packages produces more carbon per km, it doesn't matter as I said above, the majority of transport emissions are passenger cars and trucks, just because they are so many of them. There is room for amelioration for industry transportation numbers but it will not matter if you just touch that and still continue existing usage in the US. Even getting to European levels of car usage would change things significantly for the US. Regardless, know putting an onerous tax on gas producers will immediately see gas prices rise for everyone, so even if it is indirect, you still are disincentivizing driving. There is no way out of this problem without disincentivizing driving.
Now, of course, you have to believe this really is a problem. Because only then do you think something as difficult as changing the prioritized mode of a transport for a country is a worthwhile thing to do.