Having the political will to do something now has zero to do with having the political will ten or fifteen years ago when it literally wasn't a problem. Further, this idea that the democrats should just spend all their time and political energy finding ways to prevent all future possibilities of republicans doing bad stuff is stupid on its face, as it's a flatly impossible task (both in scope and actual ability) and takes away from time spent solving other problems.
Obama had a supermajority in 2009 and could have passed a national law protecting abortion rights, but didnt.
I specifically asked in my prior comment what would stop republicans from repealing such a law when they had control, such as in 2017.
States that swing back and forth could have passed similar laws that protected abortion, or put forth ballot initiatives to defend it, but didn’t. They knew what the Republicans wanted to do, and did nothing to prevent it.
Man, the same thing over and over. Political will rarely exists to fix problems that might happen, it exists to fix problems that are material.
You know, climate change is important to me, so I think democrats should be expending all their efforts to make the EPA more durable so the next republican congress/administration doesn't ruin it. Oh wait, anything they pass into law can be repealed by the next congress? Executive orders can be revoked? People can be appointed to run government organizations that only have an interest in destroying that organization? Things can be undone?!
Man, maybe prior administrations should have done some sort of magic with the Iran deal/Paris Accords/[any issue the Trump admin undid] so it couldn't have been undone. I don't know what that magic is, and its probably anti-democratic, but you seem convinced it exists.
There are layers of wrong and stupid to this article.
"The cloud" accounts for something like 80% of the internet across the entire planet. I'd be curious what 80% of transportation infrastructure would end being in comparison... no takers? We're only comparing to (some) flights instead of, I dunno, the vast bulk of our fossil fuel powered transport infra?
Oh no, the most popular song in the world used the same amount of energy as 40k homes in the US. The US probably has something in the range of a hundred million homes. The efficiency of computing equipment increases by a sizable percentage every single year, with the odds being good the same data could be served at 1/20th the cost today. So why aren't we talking about, say, heat pumps for those homes? You know, since they're still using the same amount of energy they did in 2018?
What is this idiocy? You realize that a chip fab uses something to the tune of ten million gallons of water per day, right? Ten million. Per day. I'm not even looking at other industrial processes, which are almost undoubtedly worse (and recycle their water less than fabs) - but if you're going to whine about the environmental impact of tech, maybe have a look at the manufacturing side of it.
Man, we're really grasping at straws here. More complaining about water usage, pollution, water security, labor standards, human rights violations... wait, were we talking about the costs of data centers or capitalism in general? Because I'm pretty sure these issues are endemic, across every industry, every country, maybe even our entire economic system. Something like a data center, which uses expensive equipment, likely has a lower impact of every single one of these measures than... I dunno... clothes? food? energy production? transport? Honestly guys, I'm struggling to think of an industry that has lower impact, help me out (genuine farm to table restaurants, maybe).
There are things to complain about in computing. Crypto is (at least for the time being) a ponzi scheme built on wasting energy, social media has negative developmental/social effects, etc. But the environmental impact of stuff like data centers... its just not a useful discussion, and it feels like a distraction from the real issues on this front.
In fact I'd go further and say its actively damaging to publish attack pieces like these. The last few years I didn't drive to the DMV to turn in my paperwork, I did it over the internet. I don't drive to work because I'm fully remote since the pandemic, cutting my gas/car usage by easily 90%. I don't drive to blockbuster to pick out videos the way I remember growing up. The sheer amount of physical stuff we used to do to transmit information has been and is gradually all being transitioned to the internet - and this is a good thing. The future doesn't have to be all bad, folks.