The life cycle assessment shows that over a five year life span, production is responsible for 65% of CO2e, and usage about 25% (out of a total estimated 200kg - roughly 86L of gasoline) using "a typical US energy mix".

Component wise (during production), the largest CO2e contributor was the display at ~25%, then the mainboard at 20%, and then battery around 15%.

Take aways for me are that: from a sustainability standpoint, if you're going to buy new, then it makes sense to buy the most capable model that makes sense, and try to milk it for as long as possible. Also, I never would have guessed how high the impact of display production was. Certainly makes the harvesting of screens from dead laptops seem like a good option.

Regarding display production: I recently bought a Studio Display from Apple with the thought that it should last a very long time.

It bricked itself with a software update after maybe 3 months. I realized these things depend on Apple supporting the A13 chip in order for it to remain compatible with new technologies and, absurdly, to remain secure from exploits. A monitor.

I couldn’t regret my purchase much more and feel pretty stupid for not figuring this stuff out before I pulled out my credit card.

To add insult to injury, the display has been getting repaired for almost 2 months and there’s still no ETA on a fix. I highly recommend looking elsewhere for a display, both for ecological reasons but also because these things likely have a software-driven expiry date, with their hardware being relatively complex and error prone compared to most displays.

Also, they come with a barely usable camera. Audio is fine but it’s mind boggling how bad the camera is. What a waste.

https://github.com/RedBalloonShenanigans/MonitorDarkly https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32634467