There are many legitimate reasons to not use ecosia, and yes, from the ecological perspective.

Planting trees has shown to be not as effective at curbing the effects of climate change as previously thought. Contrary to popular belief, the oceans have a much larger effect on our climate than our forests, and we aren’t doing nearly enough to clean those up because the task is far more difficult for a multitude of reasons.

This isn’t to say planting trees doesn’t have some benefit, but there are much better ways to curb your CO² emissions which you can see at the end of this rant/post.

Sneak peak though, if you eat meat, and actually give a fuck about the forests, perhaps you should stop consuming animals. Eating meat in particular is directly related to deforestation, as often deforestation is done to make room for massive CAFOs, which even if the deforestation didn’t occur, would still significantly contribute to climate change.

Ecosia’s funding comes from advertisements, which incentivizes consumption, which itself contributes to climate change innately. Every purchase you make, every meal you eat, every time you travel by automobile or airplane, contributes to the ever growing mass of CO2. Advertisements and marketing exacerbate climate change by cultivating a never ending consumerist mindset for goods and services that are inherently responsible for climate change.

Ecosia is a moldy old band aid on a gushing neck wound that honestly is causing more harm than good by distracting people from the real source of the climate crisis, which is modern capitalism and the resulting consumerism.

Actually fighting climate change requires more of you than some passive empty gesture., Here’s a bullet point list of things you can do today to make a real difference:

• Stop eating and utilizing animal based products.
• Stop eating foods that were grown using petroleum derived fertilizers (aka, Organics).
• Stop eating foods that had to be trucked in from over 100 miles away (aka local).
• Stop buying plastic packaged goods.
• Stop traveling by any means that require oil.
• Stop living in or working in places which utilize electricity from the standard fossil fueled grid.
• Abandon the fast fashion industry.
• Only buy local goods and services.
• Stop buying new electronic devices unless absolutely necessary.
• Stop buying things you don’t absolutely 100% need to survive.
• Don’t use AI as it utilizes an insane amount of fossil fuel generated electricity and consumes an exorbitant amount of water.
• Same goes for playing AAA video games on high end GPUs.
• Same goes for participating in Cryptocurrency mining.
• Get politically involved to pressure your local governments to implement safer spaces for pedestrians and cyclists.
• Spend all your spare time fighting the fossil fuel, plastic, and privatized water industries, because all of the above only makes a difference if that industry is GONE FOR GOOD.
• Don’t have children (biggest contributor to climate change is more consumerist humans).

There is a reason climate scientists are increasingly becoming climate activists. This is not something you can buy, recycle, or search engine your way out of.

As I’ve pointed out, there simply are far more impactful ways you can make a difference today than using a search engine that gets in bed with Microsoft and makes relatively empty gestures while playing nice with corporations that, I guarantee you, are far more interested in pursuing business as usual than preserving the planet for their own children, let alone you and me.