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Everything you bring up requires mass amounts of energy, which consumes mass amounts of fossil fuels and natural gases, and is not “free”.


How much energy is stored in the chemical bonds of the materials that make up a camera? Or a Garmin GPS? Or a newspaper?


Camera is made of materials which need to be mined, transported, refined, milled, soldered, molded, etc.

So quite a lot of energy has been used to make the camera. It is not really about of the chemical bonds in the camera, but about the the energy the whole manufacturing chain uses.



A petty bit of libertarian propaganda not especially relevant to this discussion.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26714928


The more usual description is of the embedded energy of various products and services.

Electronics have an exceedingly high embedded energy, given the tolerances, purities, rare minerals, etc., utilised within them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embodied_energy

The bond-energy of goods is less significant, particularly if that bond-energy existed in the raw form of the material (e.g., wood or plastic (petroleum)). It's the energy used in transforming, processing, and transporting materials that matters.




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