[likeabatterycar]

Little plastic discs are killing the Earth but building massive datacenters which require continuous power, cooling, and other resources, not to mention all the intermediate network transport - whether or not they're being used, all for the sake of convenience - is little impact?

A CD requires no power sitting on your shelf unplayed. The same as cups and dishes sitting in a cupboard. If the threat to the environment is as real as you say, consider pouring food directly into your hands.

[movedx]

Those DCs and those cables are serving PBs of traffic from music to movies to emails to gaming and way way way way more. Your CD provides access too one form of data in one format and eventually ends up on a landfill.

Are you really this blind?

[ericd]

Plastic in a landfill and carbon dioxide in the air are two very different forms of environmental damage, even though they frequently get lumped into the same catchall, and only the latter has the potential to be a civilization-ender, so most people mostly care about that.

[movedx]

> carbon dioxide in the air

Because CDs just appear out of thin air and involve absolutely zero CO emissions during their production; during the extraction of their base materials; during the logistics of the final product; the sale of the product; and the CO produced by the consumer travelling to the shop and back again, multiplied by 10,000,000 consumers per year… none of that counts because of wishy thinking and space-star-ology.

[ericd]

Sure, materialism generally is a problem, but CDs are just not a significant contributor.