Was SETI @ Home a waste of energy? What did it accomplish?

Is the internet worth the environmental cost?

"according to Ethic (2024), if the Internet were a country, it would be the sixth most polluting country in the world in terms of emissions."

Source: https://mayfirst.coop/files/justicia-ambiental-infra.en.pdf

If these things were not a waste of energy, what is the basis fort claiming AI is environmentally wasteful?

I have very concrete answers to this, but I want to inspire people to think critically and come up with a consistent way of thinking about what is "wasted" or "worth it".