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by piocho 2795 days ago
Here is a link to another thread on HM regarding the same problem : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18276987

I definitely think that we can't do anything as developers (maybe optimizing process to consume less, but that's not obvious). And here is why :

- we used computers/servers/hard disks/etc that are made of rare-earth metals (which required a lot of energy to be extracted and are a environmental disaster (first link in google : https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/aug/07/china-ra...). - big datacenters, in which our compagnies are involved into, require a fabulous amount of energy to work (cooling système, electricity, etc), proably more that average cities.

However, what you (and we) could do as citizen could be : - buy from local/bio producers - do not buy shitty products coming directly from china that will last 1 week and then will be broken for no reason. - think twice before buying new product (not only electronic ones). do I need this new smartphone (which, by the way, his cost is half a salary or a all salary for most of the people ?) can I repear it ? - do not buy big companies' products (coke,nutella,etc). They are destroying environement (mexican vilages have less and less water because of coca-cola, nutala are heavily using palm oil...) Those are only 2 examples.

Easy to write, not to do ...

> Sadly I'm just a Software Engineer and I feel that I cannot help as, for example, a Genetic Engineer to make those ideas become true. I'm not a genius, nor a millionaire philanthropist, neither a clever startup founder.

Most of us are in the same case. I'm actually reading Gunter Pauli's books regarding the "Blue Economy". -> https://www.theblueeconomy.org/ There are plenty of "simple" ideas that might be "easy" to implements in our life as side-projects.