Sorta like how corporations pushed recycling onto the public to deflect from their own culpability for pollution. Why would we regulate the companies building huge data centers when we can get average people to absorb the cost? It’s not like they’re making obscene profits while laying off untold thousands.

I mean, if that was the case, sure, let’s have them pay to clean up the waste they generate. But have you seen NVIDIA, Microsoft, or Meta lately? These companies are barely staying in business. Their CEOs can hardly afford to ride the bus to work. Let’s cut them a break.

TLDR: It’s your fault the earth is dying because you horde emails.

  • FishFace@lemmy.world
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    23 hours ago

    That’s not the take-home here. We should regulate large companies, but as ever, individual choices both have direct effects on the environment, and indirect effects which influence the behaviour of a small number of more powerful organisations. Also important is that individual choices in the political realm influence what regulations get made, so we’re never absolved of a responsibility to the environment.

    The take-home for me is that the government is using long-discredited statistics relating storage to water usage. Stored emails don’t increase water usage by an appreciable percentage.