I agree wholeheartedly. It irks me when people critique automation because it uses large amounts of resources. Running a machine or a computer almost always uses far less resources than a human would to do the same task, so long as you consider the entire resource consumptions.
Growing the food that a human eats, running the air conditioning for their home, powering their lights, fueling their car, charging their phone, and all the many many things necessary to keep a human alive and productive in the 21st century are a larger resource cost than almost any machine/system that performs the same work. From an efficiency perspective, automation is almost always the answer. The actual debate comes from the ethical perspective (the innate value of human life).
Growing the food that a human eats, running the air conditioning for their home, powering their lights, fueling their car, charging their phone, and all the many many things necessary to keep a human alive and productive in the 21st century are a larger resource cost than almost any machine/system that performs the same work. From an efficiency perspective, automation is almost always the answer. The actual debate comes from the ethical perspective (the innate value of human life).