Meta: this is video, in French, and there's an annoying typo in the title: it is (probably ...) about CO2 (the greenhouse gas), but it has a zero instead of the letter 'O'.
> Today, video uses 80% of the total bandwidth. Netflix alone uses 13% of the world's internet bandwidth. Netflix is an absolute disaster in terms of greenhouse gases
It's fine to say video uses 80% of bandwidth but doesn't make sense to single out Netflix. You could soilt that 13% thirteen ways and it would still be the same. If anything Neflix saves bandwidth by installing media catalog devices closer to end users.
Rough transcript, sorry for the typos/grammatical errors:
Title: "Why do you pollute when you're on the internet?"
"Netflix alone uses 13% of the world's internet bandwidth. Netflix is an absolute disaster in terms of greenhouse gases"
Jean Marc Jancovici, engineer and essayist, explains digital pollution in simple terms
What is digital pollution ?
"What we call digital pollution is just all the kinds of pollution that are due to the fact that we have a digital system. So when we talk about the green house gases emitted by our digital systems, today that's the same amount as the entirety of the emissions of all the trucks worldwide. It grows by 10% every year. On top of that there are other kind of pollutions, such as the one caused by the minerals and hydrocarbon extraction. There are between 40 and 60 different metals in a smartphone or a computer, which means that between 40 and 60 times we've had to dig a hole in the soil, refine metals ie metallurgy, and all of that is part of industrial process which will always be generating pollution"
The green house gases emissions, where do they come from ?
"
- keeping the data centers up, that's 20%
- the manufacturing of all the terminals (smartphone, computer) and networking gear is roughly 50%
- using those terminals is roughly 1/3
"
What consumes the most on the internet?
"Today, video uses 80% of the total bandwidth. Netflix alone uses 13% of the world's internet bandwidth. Netflix is an absolute disaster in terms of greenhouse gases"
At my scale, what can I do?
The first useful thing you can do, save for stopping watching videos, so starting now you can switch the flip and stop listening to me -- but otherwise use a resolution as low as possible, because the higher the resolution, the more you need to send a high quantity of information so the video can be correctly displayed.
Second thing we can do is to not watch too many, we can avoid sending the video of our youngest child to the whole world, who generally doesn't care. If you have a netflix account you can also terminate it, that's also something that is part of digital soberness"
Digital soberness?
"If you're like, I don't limit my usages, so after I buy one screen I buy a bigger one, and then after having one screen at home I buy a second one then three then four, and after a smartphone I get a second one etc, we can ask engineers to make miracles, they will never catch up to the speed at which the increase in usage is. If we want to limit digital pollution there is only one way, it's to limit the usages:
no, the connected dog collar I don't need, the connected watch I don't need, the connected fridge I don't need"
At a bigger scale, what can we do ?
We do should _not_ deploy 5G. That's a policy, it's solely in the hands of the public authorities to say "we're not doing 5G" or "we won't do autonomous vehicles" which probably is, in terms of data bandwidth, not compatible with digital soberness"
Sorry, I'll curb my snark. Is it however not a valid concern that that posting an anti-streaming message on a streaming site is kind of undermining the message?
If the video makes the message more accessible, then it can be worth it. That is the same question as "is it worth flying hundreds or thousands of people from around the world in a single place so they can agree on large scale changes to enact to curb climate change?" If the net result is better, then the initial reaction to the supposed pollution is not looking far enough
