If climate change is not anthropogenic, it is a bit arrogant to think that humans can do much about it. If climate change is anthropogenic, it is a bit arrogant to think the species that caused such a calamitous problem is the same species that can fix that problem. The Dust Bowl in the U.S. was just the tiniest taste of how powerless humans really are.

I have tried to go the cloud route route for development with a Chromebook. (I have tried both web development and general programming using remote services.) For development, it might work five years from now, but it does not work today (for me) for professional development.

The first problem is availability. Even the best services are not "always on." Part of this is on the service provider, part is on their service provider, and part is on your own local Internet provider. I always have deadlines for projects, and unpredictable reliability is a job-killer.

The second problem is performance. When I work on a task, I expect to immerse myself into the task and get into the flow. Remote services do not have reliably high performance. I spent far too much time waiting on the editor, command prompt, etc. Perhaps I am spoiled by modern computers, but I find waiting more than 250ms for editor feedback is unacceptable. Remote services are not always this slow, but they are slow frequently enough to significantly degrade my performance.

The third problem is what I would call compatibility. Remote services offer a suite a capabilities, with updates from time to time. As a developer, I find myself very frequently wanting to dip into this-or-that latest update, feature, etc. I found remote services to feel too restrictive with their fixed or slowly-evolving feature sets.

Remote services / cloud development are a great option for hobbyists, but today I find them too restrictive for professional work.