I've heard this argument often, but I don't buy it. 1. The environmental cost of ineffective software is negligible, when compared to Bitcoin mining or other f

I've heard this argument often, but I don't buy it. 1. The environmental cost of ineffective software is negligible, when compared to Bitcoin mining or other forms of hardware planned obsolescence. 2. By using more efficient software, surely, you can save a lot of CPU cycles, and it can improve the energy efficiency of some specific workloads under some particular scenarios. However, on a general-purpose PC, the desire for performance is unlimited, the CPU cycles saved in one way will only be consumed in other ways, and in the end, the total CPU cycles used remain a constant. Running programs on a PC is like buying things, when you have a fixed budget but everything is cheaper, often people will just buy more. For example, I only start closing webpages when my browser becomes unacceptably slow, but if you make every webpage use 50% less system resource, I'll simply open 2x more webpages simultaneously. LED lightning is another example, while I think the overall effect is a reduction of energy uses, but in some cases, I think it actually makes people to install more lightnings, such as those outdoor billboards. This is called the Jevons paradox [0]. For PCs, certainly, as I previously stated, in specific workloads under some particular scenarios, I totally agree that there are cases that energy use can be reduced (e.g. faster system update), but I don't think it helps much in the grand scheme of things. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox