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Comment by consp | Hacker News Reader

Why not treat both as bad instead of pointing to whataboutism to make a point?

Because some causes are significantly worse than others. If you want to have a big impact, you start with the big levers.

I'll give you an even better example than meat: golf courses in the US consume 2 to 100 times as much water as US datacenters depending on how you calculate.

How many golf-course-water-saving initiatives have you seen? Have they even tried anything at all?

AI data centres are a thing we are choosing to add, we could just not do that.

What benefit is the AI summary on search giving me Vs the actual search for a start.

Eating more meat is a thing we are choosing to add, we could just not do that.

Flying more is a thing we are choosing to do, we could just not do that.

what benefit is it giving to the search engine is what you have to ask.

if you dont leave the page they get more ad-money

Have a look at a graph of meat consumption in the US. We are also adding to that. That's my point, we don't need to add to meat consumption, we can make reductions.

and what benefit does a golf course have to anyone? Unlike golf courses, AI summary is used by pretty much everyone. And if you dont think this is true, then you live in a bubble.

Because they’re not both equally bad.

If you eat meat, you’re producing more CO2 and using more water than 100 vegan vibe coders sitting around creating slop 24/7. It’s not on the same level.

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