From Bronek Kozicki, London, UK
Hugh Cooke is concerned by the carbon emissions of the rockets used to launch satellites to provide internet services, and the energy required to run the “internet of everything” (Letters, 21 March). Yet pushing electrons is vastly cheaper than pushing people or goods.
Granted, launching satellites is polluting, but I am convinced that this is small compared with the pollution caused by international air travel. If we can replace such travel with videoconferencing, that would lead to a big net drop in emissions. I do agree with Cooke on one thing, though: we don’t need everything to be connected to the internet, for reasons including security, privacy and reliability.
