I hate environmentalists. Don't get me wrong, I love the environment, I even call myself a geolibertarian at Mises conferences, but the problem I have with environmentalists is that they think "the world doesn't boil down to dollars and cents" (This was actually said to me).

Let's be very, very generous here and assume that it would take twice as long to code something in C that it would in Python. Let's assume that the code isn't a static library, but something like a web app or equivalent. Doubling the number of developers to get the 10x speed up / 90% reduction in server use is not worth it from an environmental perspective. Those developers use resources to live. They burn fuel to heat their dinner. They drive their car to work.

These types of arguments are trying to make an emotional plea to a perceived market failure. The solution is to fix the market, not waste time implementing stuff in C. Tax pollution at the rate at which it would take to clean it up and the market will automatically allocate resources efficiently.