Those arguments just don’t amount to much more than “I don’t care”. I don’t even know what “more of a desktop experience” is supposed to mean, and any MacBook is perfectly adequate for virtualization.
They are also pretending this is an environment vs performance argument, when their choice of old processors clearly shows it is rather environment vs costs. They could get far better performance with newer CPUs, both absolute as well as per Wh.
Use profile matters a lot. Leaving one of these one 24/7 is a noticeable amount of juice; turning one on for a few hours every few days is probably lost in your noise floor of all the other things you're doing. You also have to consider the processing cost for recycling and the displacement of the new machine and all of its processing and production costs to the environment. You probably do come out environmentally ahead in a lot of scenarios if you take account of the whole picture as a result.
They are also pretending this is an environment vs performance argument, when their choice of old processors clearly shows it is rather environment vs costs. They could get far better performance with newer CPUs, both absolute as well as per Wh.