If people used less bandwidth, less new equipment would be bought to serve the increasing demand. Less bandwidth = Less carbon.
Maybe, or maybe the new equipment is much more efficient than the one it's replacing. It sounds true, but you can't really tell if it is or not, and really my annoyance is in saying it costs any estimated amount of energy, or carbon, to transfer 1GB of data. It does not, the transfer itself is basically cost-less. What costs money is running the infrastructure that makes it possible, and that's much harder to measure.
> Bandwidth is extremely carbon intensive.
and the reasoning that supports that statement.