Is there an environmental argument for, if not getting off the internet, curtailing photo uploads and avoiding unnecessary uses of search engines, especially if they use AI?

This morning’s Dispatch newsletter on “Preparing for an AI Energy Boom” reminded me of something I read back in July, from Arthur Holland Michel:

Every time we make a new video or send an email, or post a photo of our latest meal, it’s like turning on a small light bulb that’ll never be turned off. This points to an uncomfortable, and eminently modern, question. “Everyone says it’s really bad to fly,” Tom Jackson, a professor at Loughborough University, in England, who studies the environmental impact of data, told me. “But also we’ve got to think about whether it’s really bad to carry on with our current digital practices.”

[M]aybe we don’t need to turn everything into data. If I put down my phone the next time I’m on a train, it won’t save the planet. But I’ll be looking out the window with my own eyes, creating a memory that emits no carbon at all.