[rsify]

I don't understand why this essay was written. It's an interesting train of thought until you actually compare savings it proposes with real world data.

The iMessage case is particularly horrid, the article states that 45 million images sent through the service daily produce an equivalent amount of CO2 as flying 11,000 people from Paris to New York. The images are uncompressed, but had only those anti-environment programmers somehow reduce their size by 50% without significantly degrading quality iMessage would only burn 5,500 worth of passengers in jet fuel daily!

Such a big save, until you compare it with the amount of total number of daily airline passengers, which is 13 million [1]. In comparison that's 0.04%, which wouldn't even make the tiniest scratch and you're proposing to degrade a service that's daily used by 1.3 billion people.

Taking the quote from the text: "The moment we create digital products or services we become part of the problem." it seems a huge stretch the intentions of which I can only speculate on.

The whole point seems incredibly stupid, but I'd really like to be proven wrong.

[1] https://www.icao.int/annual-report-2018/Pages/the-world-of-a...

[ballenf]

Especially if 0.01% of the people who would have sent an iMessage now decide to mail a photograph. As an example.

Every incremental degradation in a product results in alternative-seeking behavior.

[adrianN]

There are extraordinarily few actions that can be taken by just a small group of people that have more than a vanishing impact on carbon emissions. But that doesn't mean that these actions shouldn't be taken.

[rsify]

Unless you provide any numbers I think most people would rather enjoy life than think how many nanograms of CO2 they’re releasing when sending an email.

[adrianN]

Yeah, maybe the email provider should think about how many tons their equipment causes. Shoving everything on the consumer is silly. Consumers almost never have the data to make informed choices.