Anyone who drives a heavy vehicle alone is using immense amounts of power (hundreds of horses' at once, by approximation), it takes some infrastructure but with wind, sun, and water we can power that. What makes you say that your livelihood depends on an amount of energy so large that it's really bad? Why couldn't that be generated sustainably?
Why not talk to your employer about a step in that direction, given that solar panels are typically profitable within a handful of years for an average household, let alone if you can 100% offset the kWh generated because all the energy can be used in-house?
It very likely could, and I'd happily pay for it. Like, my Mac Studio with an M2 Max in it probably took, all said, and absurd about of resources to create... But it only cost me $3k or something. Well, if it works as long as it should, it'll easily help me earn over half a million dollars. I'd rather pay far more for the computer and cover the expenses of the externalities of its production, but I don't have the choice.
Otherwise, a lot of the energy used in the production could be sustainably produced, but it's not incentivized enough in the countries (or any countries, I suppose) in order for that to occur.
Perhaps I could make improvements by switching to different computers. I know the framework offers opportunities to reuse the same chassis such you can use mostly-the-same hardware for a very long time, and that could be the right path forward. I love the philosophy.
As for the driving issue, that's very hard to overcome. I personally ride an electric bike just about all the time, but at the moment I'm on vacation in Whistler, BC, having driven through 2 full tanks of gas so far on my way from Victoria, to Squamish, now Whistler, and all the little stops in between. My Toyota Highlander produces more pollution than any other single thing in my life. My wife drives it for work and we both regret the purchase quite a bit. Yet, something electric would take a very long time to "break even" on the footprint before improving on our situation, even with how clean our electricity is here in BC. I need to do more research to understand how I could purchase my way out of this problem.
I can look up the study if you want but a little under ten years ago the Dutch government had a full well-to-wheel analysis done to figure out the advantages (as far as pollution goes) and it includes the break even point for their chosen EV (a classic Nissan Leaf.)
IIRC the break even point when powered by renewable energy was about 60k kilometers.
Depending on where you live and your driving habits that could be seen as a lot, but considering that after those ~40k miles every mile can be considered 'clean' I don't think it's all that bad.
TL;DR: Assuming a car lifespan of 220k km (136k miles) and including emissions for fabrication, repairs, etc. emissions will be 70% lower for an electric vehicle powered by renewables. When powered by non-renewable energy it's still 30% less total emissions than a regular petrol car. Other than that you also emit less of various other pollutants. And (personal opinion alert) it's just a way nicer drive ;-)
> Yet, something electric would take a very long time to "break even" on the footprint
Of course, replacing a fossil car that is still nearly new is the greater evil. I fully support driving on gasoline if that's genuinely the better thing to do.
What one can do in the meantime is use one of the available options to suck the CO2 back out of the air. It's expensive, but if you say you're happy to pay the premium given your income if only there were options, well, that's an option, and can be applied to the computer purchase or electricity production, too. It does get prohibitively expensive when including every emission, but it's not all or nothing, and also, with solar panels reducing the electricity need, a green energy provider covering the grid demand (that's the best one can reasonably do after solar panels), etc., it should be possible to reduce the need for carbon capture quite a bit already today, and more in the future as more industries greenify
Why not talk to your employer about a step in that direction, given that solar panels are typically profitable within a handful of years for an average household, let alone if you can 100% offset the kWh generated because all the energy can be used in-house?