alt Hacker NewsFunny because the way I look at it is, all the things I've ever done or will do in my life to reduce energy consumption, including shipping efficiency improvements to billions of installments of consumer software, means nothing because suddenly the investors of the world have an insatiable appetite for compute and all of big tech's talk about social progressivism is thrown out the window.
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I think it's both, in the worst way.
1. From "We can't do X, it'll have to be a very slow transition over decades" to "alright, this is how it's going to work"
2. From "we need to be more efficient in power use at every iteration, we constantly need to be looking to do more with less" to "build as much of this, most power hungry thing humanity has created, as possible as quickly as possible, no there was never a forest there, go go go"
I call it the "paper straws vs private jets" problem.
It's often overlooked that large wealth gaps are incompatible with a sustainable society. High prices will save the Tuna from extinction (economists were right!), except if there's a market for $10,000/plate sushi.[0] People are motivated to live efficiently, except if we see gross unfairness in the rest of society.
"Don't use trees faster than they grow" is the obvious part of sustainability. This is less obvious but no less important.
[0] shamelessly ripped from Donella Meadows keynote talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhSpzQhvFS8