• Jack@lemmy.ca
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    1 month ago

    Some things are sustainable, others are not - by orders of magnitude.

    Growing a tree, and then cutting it down to boil water is sustainable.

    Producing more oil than any country ever has, is absolutely not sustainable.

    Accessing the internet using an open source OS on hardware other people threw away, is sustainable, even when following the categorical imperative where the other 8 billion people also do it.

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      A single router consumes 10,000 watts, and a very large data center comes close to 100 million watts, or one-tenth of the output of a thermal power station. Plus, in addition to the consumption required to run the servers, electronic circuits have to be cooled using air conditioning. How about a web search? The search for a web address represents about .8g of CO2, but for searches that produce five or more results, that number rises to 10g. Consider a web user who makes an average of 2.6 web searches per day. That person is contributing 9.9 kg of CO2 equivalent per year. Finally, when browsing the web, an average person on a yearly basis needs electricity and water that equates to about the same amount of CO2 that is emitted when traveling 860 miles by car.

      https://shift.com/blog/news/the-carbon-footprint-of-the-internet/

      All of that carbon you’re responsible for just by being on the internet to do frivolous things like post on Lemmy doesn’t sound sustainable to me, but it sounds like you’ll come up with any excuse you can to avoid the fact that you’re being very hypocritical.

      No one is forcing you to use the internet. It is your choice to contribute to that CO2 because you want the luxury of things like Lemmy. You want your luxuries but you also want to point your finger and blame others for doing the same thing.

      Hypocritical.

      • Jack@lemmy.ca
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        1 month ago

        860 miles by car

        So about 0.272 tonnes of CO2e per year per https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/how-much-ton-carbon-dioxide ?

        Of a total of about “2.1 tonnes per person annual emissions budget necessary by 2050 to meet the 2 °C climate target (Girod et al 2014)” per https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa7541#erlaa7541r22 (Girod 2014 seems to be paywalled).

        • 0 of 58.6 tonnes of CO2e/year because I’m childfree,
        • 0 of 2.4 tonnes since I’m carfree (never bought a car, I don’t even have a driver’s license),
        • 0 of 1.6 tonnes per flight (tho I did fly once in my life, more than a decade ago),
        • 1.47 for electricity because I don’t buy ethical green energy,
        • ? because I’m vegan, so that reduces my footprint a lot, but I’m not sure what to deduct the 0.82 from,
        • ? because of cold washing laundry, but I don’t know what to deduct the 0.25 from,
        • 0.272 tonnes for using a computer to access the internet,
        • ? for several other things tho at an order of magnitude lower than the big ticket items.

        That total seems below the 2.1 tonnes of CO2e per year sustainable target per person by 2050.

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          Yes, again, you are excusing your being complicit in this because of your need for a luxury. You know full well that adding CO2 to the atmosphere is not a good thing. You just want to feel like you don’t contribute.

          And as far as your righteous veganism goes, I bet you aren’t even considering the vast amount of carbon that is needed to farm and ship all the plants and possibly fungi you eat that can’t be grown in your area.

          Or are you now going to claim you only eat locally-sourced vegan food at farmer’s markets in enough bulk to survive the winter?

          And then we get into the spices. If you claim you only use local herbs when you cook, I won’t believe you.

          Sorry, you help contribute massive amounts of CO2 to the atmosphere as well. You just want to blame everyone but yourself.

          • Jack@lemmy.ca
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            30 days ago

            There is a difference between sustainable, non-sustainable, and catastrophically unsustainable; and it’s an important difference. Having a locavore diet is very easy where I live, except for vitamin B12 supplements which are not locally sourced or made. I don’t know what you mean by “survive the winter”, it’s not an issue where I live. I only use salt and turmeric when I prepare food - tho some processed food I buy contains other spices.

            • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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              30 days ago

              Good thing a ton of carbon wasn’t used to get that salt and turmeric to you.

              Oh wait, it was.

              Also that processed food, half of that came from across the planet.

              But hey, you have to have your luxuries, so everyone else has to sacrifice.