In reply to Ryan Hellyer.

Hi Ryan, Nice to see you pop up here, hope you're doing well!

I think you make a good point here. Performance and optimisation of the web are important and do relate to sustainability. They also tie into better experiences and sometimes reduced costs. Mostly its a no brainer. However, there's a lot more to think about than just energy usage, especially if you think of sustainability in a wider context. I give my thoughts on that wider context at the start of the episode.

Mainly, we can't optimise our way to sustainability. There are a few reasons for that. A key one is because of Jevon's paradox and the rebound effect. The more efficient you make something the more it get used. So it doesn't actually help us find the reductions we need. We have to think beyond that and come up with other ways of finding reductions such as switching all tech to be powered by renewables, making software more carbon aware and also asking deep questions like what is all this tech for. It's one heck of a rabbit hole once you start going down this train of thought!