The internet now accounts for a significant portion of global CO2 emissions, currently more than the entire global airline industry. It will soon be responsible for more emissions than the automobile, if it's not already. The rapid rise in the amount of data storage and transmission is a key driver of this increased environmental impact. There are 2 experimental web standards that have at least partial support from Chrome, Edge, and Opera browers. These are: 1. The CSS media query prefers-reduced-data 2. The HTML header less-data Both of these allow users to let websites know that they would like a lighter version of a page. It would be great if Firefox introduced support for these as a way to encourage adoption and use. Options like these not only have the potential benefit of reducing carbon emissions related to data storage and transmission, but they could also keep older, slower devices out of the e-waste stream. This reduces the emissions associated with device manufacturing, as well as the many environmental impacts from mining of the raw materials that go into those devices.
... View more