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Perhaps instead of all of these feel-good blaming the end user for systemic issues we could actually solve of the low hanging fruit surrounding climate change?

Perhaps instead of all of these feel-good blaming the end user for systemic issues we could actually solve of the low hanging fruit surrounding climate change? I'm tired of the blaming of regular people for not composting or recycling instead of the corporations who routinely behave poorly on a global scale. Instead of CO2 generated by computers we could talk about CO2 generated by heavy industry? Which is actually a large emitter? Or maybe we could talk about regulating corporate giants who routinely abuse environmental regulations by doing them in the 3rd world such as Conagra, Shell, or Dupont? These are companies which release untested chemicals and incentivize rainforest burning and yet we give them a free pass to focus on trivialities.

iostream24 4y ago
Is crypto mining heavy industry? All those poor miners with black lung and cave-ins and such…
hkt 4y ago
CO2 generated by Facebook and Amazon would be interesting to see. Worldwide computing usage too. Fair point though: companies should be embargoed for wrecking the environment at this point. Even a handful of big western countries doing it would likely make waves, even without the US.
cuteboy19 4y ago
0.1 % of the world's energy is used by this, and growing. It is no longer ignorable. And anyways most mining is inaccessible to regular people. It is gigantic corporations doing all the mining these days. Etherium runs mostly on AWS. E: AWS claims that 25% of ETH workloads run on AWS https://aws.amazon.com/blockchain/ https://aws.amazon.com/blockchain/
- thorncorona 4y ago
  > The industrial sector accounts for 30% of global emissions and roughly 37% of global energy consumption. This huge share of climate-changing emissions from one sector is an equally huge opportunity for emissions reduction on a global scale. It's quite literally a rounding error. You're focusing on trivialities compared to actual polluters. It doesn't really matter whether it's accessible to regular people. Container ships aren't exactly accessible to regular people either. Eth most definitely doesn't run off AWS. Way too expensive lol. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/01/decarbonizing-heavy-industry-industrial-clusters/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/01/decarbonizing-heavy-i...
  - dralley 4y ago
    Replacing cryptocurrency can literally be done overnight. That's not true of international shipping.
    - GaylordTuring 4y ago
      Yes, it could, if you don’t account for the psychology of humans who might be caught in tragedy of the commons situations, stuck in local maxima, or simply have irrational thoughts across the board. That’s a big if though. For example, we have already “solved” global warming with the invention of nuclear power. The only thing holding us back is the psychology of people who thinks that using nuclear power is bad.
  - rvz 4y ago
    > Eth most definitely doesn't run off AWS. Way too expensive lol. Then what are all of these Ethereum nodes doing on Amazon.com then? [0][1][2] The evidence here satisfies the claim that >25% of ETH workloads are running on AWS. Worse than the original claim of just 25%. Don't bother denying it. [0] https://coinful.net/amazon-managed-blockchain-supports-ethereum/ https://coinful.net/amazon-managed-blockchain-supports-ether... [1] https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2021/03/announcing-general-availability-of-ethereum-on-amazon-managed-blockchain/ https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2021/03/announcin... [2] https://ethernodes.org/networkType/Hosting https://ethernodes.org/networkType/Hosting
dralley 4y ago
This 100% falls into the category of low hanging fruit. It's merely a far less efficient way of doing things we already know how to do. No worthwhile functionality would be lost.

iostream24 4y ago

Is crypto mining heavy industry? All those poor miners with black lung and cave-ins and such…

hkt 4y ago

CO2 generated by Facebook and Amazon would be interesting to see. Worldwide computing usage too. Fair point though: companies should be embargoed for wrecking the environment at this point. Even a handful of big western countries doing it would likely make waves, even without the US.

cuteboy19 4y ago

0.1 % of the world's energy is used by this, and growing. It is no longer ignorable. And anyways most mining is inaccessible to regular people. It is gigantic corporations doing all the mining these days. Etherium runs mostly on AWS. E: AWS claims that 25% of ETH workloads run on AWS https://aws.amazon.com/blockchain/ https://aws.amazon.com/blockchain/

thorncorona 4y ago
> The industrial sector accounts for 30% of global emissions and roughly 37% of global energy consumption. This huge share of climate-changing emissions from one sector is an equally huge opportunity for emissions reduction on a global scale. It's quite literally a rounding error. You're focusing on trivialities compared to actual polluters. It doesn't really matter whether it's accessible to regular people. Container ships aren't exactly accessible to regular people either. Eth most definitely doesn't run off AWS. Way too expensive lol. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/01/decarbonizing-heavy-industry-industrial-clusters/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/01/decarbonizing-heavy-i...
- dralley 4y ago
  Replacing cryptocurrency can literally be done overnight. That's not true of international shipping.
  - GaylordTuring 4y ago
    Yes, it could, if you don’t account for the psychology of humans who might be caught in tragedy of the commons situations, stuck in local maxima, or simply have irrational thoughts across the board. That’s a big if though. For example, we have already “solved” global warming with the invention of nuclear power. The only thing holding us back is the psychology of people who thinks that using nuclear power is bad.
- rvz 4y ago
  > Eth most definitely doesn't run off AWS. Way too expensive lol. Then what are all of these Ethereum nodes doing on Amazon.com then? [0][1][2] The evidence here satisfies the claim that >25% of ETH workloads are running on AWS. Worse than the original claim of just 25%. Don't bother denying it. [0] https://coinful.net/amazon-managed-blockchain-supports-ethereum/ https://coinful.net/amazon-managed-blockchain-supports-ether... [1] https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2021/03/announcing-general-availability-of-ethereum-on-amazon-managed-blockchain/ https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2021/03/announcin... [2] https://ethernodes.org/networkType/Hosting https://ethernodes.org/networkType/Hosting

dralley 4y ago

This 100% falls into the category of low hanging fruit. It's merely a far less efficient way of doing things we already know how to do. No worthwhile functionality would be lost.