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The main thing I struggle to downsize or make sustainable is my work. As a programmer, I depend on an immense infrastructure of earth-harming systems to get my

The main thing I struggle to downsize or make sustainable is my work. As a programmer, I depend on an immense infrastructure of earth-harming systems to get my equipment (both in my possession or leased in the cloud). My employers use a lot of energy. In the scheme of things we aren’t the worst polluters, but it’s undeniably bad. I’ve dramatically reduced my personal energy usage, I don’t eat animal products, my family has found ways to generate remarkably little garbage, and other “nice” things, but it’s pretty much meaningless. It’s all theatre compared to the damage we do with our car, jobs, community and provincial infrastructure we depend on, etc. I feel like I’m willing to change my life, and I have already I guess. I’m just not willing to give up my livelihood when it means so little in the bigger picture. I’m no different from someone working on an oil rig or forestry or whatever. What I do looks nicer, but my rationale is no different.

Scea91 3y ago
What percentage of global emmissions is spent on computing infrastructure? Last time I saw the numbers it was practically negligible if we exclude cryptocurrencies.
- steve_adams_86 3y ago
  As I recall it's about 2%, but I'd need to dive much deeper to get numbers I can trust. Computing infrastructure is one thing, but then there's also the enormous waste footprint of electronics in general. So many billions of people are now cycling through devices, and our recycling story is disturbingly poor. My job is quite close to this problem, whether it directly supports it or not. My livelihood more or less depends on humanity using connected devices, so this problem works in my favour (so to speak).
- corethree 3y ago
  This is the tragedy of the commons. Every industry contributes a negligible amount. It is logical and rational to maximize your own benefites by contributing negligible damage to the environment. The tragedy arises in aggregate. When every industry contributes negligible amounts at the same time the aggregate contribution is no longer negligible. Rational individual action leads to total destruction. Yeah we are all guilty. Even when we contribute negligible amounts.
  - rcpt 3y ago
    > Every industry contributes a negligible amount. What? No.
    - corethree 3y ago
      Practically yes. You have to look at it more granularly. Likely you're looking at it by economic sector. You need to look at it by sub industries in industries. That's more closer to the logical perspective people are acting on.
      - Scea91 3y ago
        What stumbles me is information like the following [1] > Indeed, making the much bigger model, the GPT-3 with 175 billion parameters, emitted over 550 tons of CO2e while consuming 1,287 MW hours of electricity, per computer scientist Kate Saenko. It’s the same amount of emissions as a single person taking 550 roundtrip flights between New York and San Francisco. Specifically, I struggle with the interpretation where this is presented as significant amount. To me, training GPT-3 at the cost of about a SINGLE New York-San Francisco return flight is practically negligible. I wonder whether for example at a conference like NeurIPS the carbon cost of all the experiments is exceeded by the carbon cost of participant travel to the conference. My guess is that probably yes. [1] https://carboncredits.com/how-big-is-the-co2-footprint-of-ai-models-chatgpts-emissions/ https://carboncredits.com/how-big-is-the-co2-footprint-of-ai...
Aachen 3y ago
Anyone who drives a heavy vehicle alone is using immense amounts of power (hundreds of horses' at once, by approximation), it takes some infrastructure but with wind, sun, and water we can power that. What makes you say that your livelihood depends on an amount of energy so large that it's really bad? Why couldn't that be generated sustainably? Why not talk to your employer about a step in that direction, given that solar panels are typically profitable within a handful of years for an average household, let alone if you can 100% offset the kWh generated because all the energy can be used in-house?
- steve_adams_86 3y ago
  > Why couldn't that be generated sustainably? It very likely could, and I'd happily pay for it. Like, my Mac Studio with an M2 Max in it probably took, all said, and absurd about of resources to create... But it only cost me $3k or something. Well, if it works as long as it should, it'll easily help me earn over half a million dollars. I'd rather pay far more for the computer and cover the expenses of the externalities of its production, but I don't have the choice. Otherwise, a lot of the energy used in the production could be sustainably produced, but it's not incentivized enough in the countries (or any countries, I suppose) in order for that to occur. Perhaps I could make improvements by switching to different computers. I know the framework offers opportunities to reuse the same chassis such you can use mostly-the-same hardware for a very long time, and that could be the right path forward. I love the philosophy. As for the driving issue, that's very hard to overcome. I personally ride an electric bike just about all the time, but at the moment I'm on vacation in Whistler, BC, having driven through 2 full tanks of gas so far on my way from Victoria, to Squamish, now Whistler, and all the little stops in between. My Toyota Highlander produces more pollution than any other single thing in my life. My wife drives it for work and we both regret the purchase quite a bit. Yet, something electric would take a very long time to "break even" on the footprint before improving on our situation, even with how clean our electricity is here in BC. I need to do more research to understand how I could purchase my way out of this problem.
  - Huppie 3y ago
    I can look up the study if you want but a little under ten years ago the Dutch government had a full well-to-wheel analysis done to figure out the advantages (as far as pollution goes) and it includes the break even point for their chosen EV (a classic Nissan Leaf.) IIRC the break even point when powered by renewable energy was about 60k kilometers. Depending on where you live and your driving habits that could be seen as a lot, but considering that after those ~40k miles every mile can be considered 'clean' I don't think it's all that bad. Edit: Source in Dutch: http://publications.tno.nl/publication/34616575/gS20vf/TNO-2015-R10386.pdf http://publications.tno.nl/publication/34616575/gS20vf/TNO-2... TL;DR: Assuming a car lifespan of 220k km (136k miles) and including emissions for fabrication, repairs, etc. emissions will be 70% lower for an electric vehicle powered by renewables. When powered by non-renewable energy it's still 30% less total emissions than a regular petrol car. Other than that you also emit less of various other pollutants. And (personal opinion alert) it's just a way nicer drive ;-)
otachack 3y ago
I've hit a similar wall and one answer to hurdle over is to organize with more people to push for bigger, community wide changes. This can include making your roads safer for biking, getting your local governments to penalize local polluters, etc. Getting the right politicians to vote in your collective ideals helps, too. It all takes work so you have to brace yourself to sacrifice your free time and balance everything. It's not easy, but there are countless people already trying to do it.

Scea91 3y ago

What percentage of global emmissions is spent on computing infrastructure? Last time I saw the numbers it was practically negligible if we exclude cryptocurrencies.

steve_adams_86 3y ago
As I recall it's about 2%, but I'd need to dive much deeper to get numbers I can trust. Computing infrastructure is one thing, but then there's also the enormous waste footprint of electronics in general. So many billions of people are now cycling through devices, and our recycling story is disturbingly poor. My job is quite close to this problem, whether it directly supports it or not. My livelihood more or less depends on humanity using connected devices, so this problem works in my favour (so to speak).
corethree 3y ago
This is the tragedy of the commons. Every industry contributes a negligible amount. It is logical and rational to maximize your own benefites by contributing negligible damage to the environment. The tragedy arises in aggregate. When every industry contributes negligible amounts at the same time the aggregate contribution is no longer negligible. Rational individual action leads to total destruction. Yeah we are all guilty. Even when we contribute negligible amounts.
- rcpt 3y ago
  > Every industry contributes a negligible amount. What? No.
  - corethree 3y ago
    Practically yes. You have to look at it more granularly. Likely you're looking at it by economic sector. You need to look at it by sub industries in industries. That's more closer to the logical perspective people are acting on.
    - Scea91 3y ago
      What stumbles me is information like the following [1] > Indeed, making the much bigger model, the GPT-3 with 175 billion parameters, emitted over 550 tons of CO2e while consuming 1,287 MW hours of electricity, per computer scientist Kate Saenko. It’s the same amount of emissions as a single person taking 550 roundtrip flights between New York and San Francisco. Specifically, I struggle with the interpretation where this is presented as significant amount. To me, training GPT-3 at the cost of about a SINGLE New York-San Francisco return flight is practically negligible. I wonder whether for example at a conference like NeurIPS the carbon cost of all the experiments is exceeded by the carbon cost of participant travel to the conference. My guess is that probably yes. [1] https://carboncredits.com/how-big-is-the-co2-footprint-of-ai-models-chatgpts-emissions/ https://carboncredits.com/how-big-is-the-co2-footprint-of-ai...

Aachen 3y ago

Anyone who drives a heavy vehicle alone is using immense amounts of power (hundreds of horses' at once, by approximation), it takes some infrastructure but with wind, sun, and water we can power that. What makes you say that your livelihood depends on an amount of energy so large that it's really bad? Why couldn't that be generated sustainably? Why not talk to your employer about a step in that direction, given that solar panels are typically profitable within a handful of years for an average household, let alone if you can 100% offset the kWh generated because all the energy can be used in-house?

steve_adams_86 3y ago
> Why couldn't that be generated sustainably? It very likely could, and I'd happily pay for it. Like, my Mac Studio with an M2 Max in it probably took, all said, and absurd about of resources to create... But it only cost me $3k or something. Well, if it works as long as it should, it'll easily help me earn over half a million dollars. I'd rather pay far more for the computer and cover the expenses of the externalities of its production, but I don't have the choice. Otherwise, a lot of the energy used in the production could be sustainably produced, but it's not incentivized enough in the countries (or any countries, I suppose) in order for that to occur. Perhaps I could make improvements by switching to different computers. I know the framework offers opportunities to reuse the same chassis such you can use mostly-the-same hardware for a very long time, and that could be the right path forward. I love the philosophy. As for the driving issue, that's very hard to overcome. I personally ride an electric bike just about all the time, but at the moment I'm on vacation in Whistler, BC, having driven through 2 full tanks of gas so far on my way from Victoria, to Squamish, now Whistler, and all the little stops in between. My Toyota Highlander produces more pollution than any other single thing in my life. My wife drives it for work and we both regret the purchase quite a bit. Yet, something electric would take a very long time to "break even" on the footprint before improving on our situation, even with how clean our electricity is here in BC. I need to do more research to understand how I could purchase my way out of this problem.
- Huppie 3y ago
  I can look up the study if you want but a little under ten years ago the Dutch government had a full well-to-wheel analysis done to figure out the advantages (as far as pollution goes) and it includes the break even point for their chosen EV (a classic Nissan Leaf.) IIRC the break even point when powered by renewable energy was about 60k kilometers. Depending on where you live and your driving habits that could be seen as a lot, but considering that after those ~40k miles every mile can be considered 'clean' I don't think it's all that bad. Edit: Source in Dutch: http://publications.tno.nl/publication/34616575/gS20vf/TNO-2015-R10386.pdf http://publications.tno.nl/publication/34616575/gS20vf/TNO-2... TL;DR: Assuming a car lifespan of 220k km (136k miles) and including emissions for fabrication, repairs, etc. emissions will be 70% lower for an electric vehicle powered by renewables. When powered by non-renewable energy it's still 30% less total emissions than a regular petrol car. Other than that you also emit less of various other pollutants. And (personal opinion alert) it's just a way nicer drive ;-)

otachack 3y ago

I've hit a similar wall and one answer to hurdle over is to organize with more people to push for bigger, community wide changes. This can include making your roads safer for biking, getting your local governments to penalize local polluters, etc. Getting the right politicians to vote in your collective ideals helps, too. It all takes work so you have to brace yourself to sacrifice your free time and balance everything. It's not easy, but there are countless people already trying to do it.