nevergiveup
This afternoon I drove about 120 km to a customer's site, carrying roughly 50 kg of equipment.
One of their younger guys, I'd say around 20, was talking about the trips he'd taken this summer, all by plane. He also mentioned that he'll be flying somewhere again in two weeks, hoping that "compared to last year they'll turn the air conditioning up a bit at the hotel. It was actually 25 degrees in the room!"
His colleagues, around the same age, were talking about their own trips too, showing each other short videos from TikTok.
I unloaded everything, put it in place, then called the customer over to explain a few things, and he called the guys as well.
When I switched the server on, one of them asked how much power it used. I hadn't measured it, so I couldn't really answer, although I don't think it's particularly high.
He smiled and said, quite amicably: "Well, your generation is the one that destroyed the environment anyway. You people never cared much about these things."
I smiled. It's not the first time I've heard our generation blamed for all of this.
So I replied, still smiling: "Really? I actually think ours was the first generation that at least tried to do something about it. Emissions regulations, reducing consumption, improving efficiency... If you really want to look for generations that didn't care at all, you'd probably have to go further back. But we can't go back. What matters is what we do now."
His answer was also something I've heard more than once from people of his generation:
"We won't do anything. Our generation has stopped doing anything. It's too late. You ruined our future."
I smiled and left it there. There was no point continuing.
Or at least that's what I thought.
A little later, one of his colleagues picked up the subject again, this time rather dismissively:
"So all this equipment... how much power is it going to use? What's its environmental impact?"
I lost a little of my patience.
"In a year? Less than the air conditioning in your hotel will use to keep your room one degree cooler than the 25 degrees you were complaining about."
The subject ended there, helped by a look from my customer, and everything remained friendly.
When I was leaving, the first guy followed me outside to ask a couple of technical questions. Then he saw me getting into my car and smiled.
"Ah, the car too... that pollutes, you know. You really don't care, do you? God forbid anyone takes your car away."
I smiled too.
"I came here for work, from 120 km away, carrying about 50 kg of equipment, to an industrial area nowhere near a railway station. How exactly was I supposed to get here?"
We said goodbye amicably.
And as I drove away, I kept thinking that it would actually be interesting to do the maths properly: the kilometres I've driven for work, flights, hotels, air conditioning, and everything else.
I have a feeling the result would be rather less obvious than he thought.
It's always much easier to notice the environmental cost of somebody else's choices.