Sure, I'm not arguing that it doesn't use power, I'm arguing that it is ridiculous to believe that sending an email with an attachment is somehow a very intensi

Sure, I'm not arguing that it doesn't use power, I'm arguing that it is ridiculous to believe that sending an email with an attachment is somehow a very intensive prospect (or that sending an email can really be measured in grams of CO2). I can do it in my house, using extremely inneficient machines for 1/1000 the carbon emisions being claimed. To put it into context, 50g of carbon is more than all of the carbon that will be emitted by a disposable lighter if you burn it until the butane is gone. That is an incredible amount of energy to claim that sending an email costs. Especially when you consider that in the same breath they claim that sending an email without an attached e-ticket uses 1/250th the energy. I just refuse to believe that sending a QR code in a PDF is somehow polluting more than burning all of the butane in a light. of course the real answer is that power isn't free, and emitting carbon costs power. If sending an email cost that much power, each email would cost more than $.01 to send in energy costs. Given the number of emails I can arbitrarily send and receive I wouldn't expect email sending to be so cheap, and I would expect large attachments to be extra.