Do we still have a climate movement?

On AI and the left’s failure of imagination

I’ve been reading a lot about data centers this week: their water and electricity usage, their strain on the grid, their environmental impact. For a cogent explanation of just how big the scope of the problem is, I recommend this article from MIT Technology Review. I don’t understand how AI is supposed to keep scaling. The math just isn’t there. AI isn’t like other software, and costs rise exponentially. Unfortunately, our planet has finite physical resources, even though tech companies don’t seem to care about that. For people who are concerned about climate change this should be a priority, but what are environmental groups doing about this? Do we even have a climate movement anymore?

It feels like the last time people on the left had any kind of sophisticated popular understanding of the climate crisis was in 2018 when the Green New Deal was introduced. We have not updated our collective knowledge of the situation since then, even though technology has changed, the political landscape has changed, we went through a paradigm-shifting pandemic, the weather is worse and we are much closer to staring down the edge of the climate cliff. I can’t even remember the last time climate activists made the news. They used to occupy a very visible space in the progressive movement (remember the Sunrise Movement? Remember climate marches?) but those days are over. If there was ever a time to double down on climate organizing, it would be now; we are almost two years into a genocide in Gaza that has not only rendered the entire Strip basically uninhabitable but has a carbon footprint bigger than many countries.

There is definitely energy for a reckoning among the public. The internet is full of people complaining about AI. There are significantly less of them than people who use LLMs without reservation, but they’re loud enough to compete for airtime online. They believe in the sanctity of human artistic potential and they won’t let you forget it. And that’s great! I agree using AI to create art is a desecration of the human spirit and all that. But there is obviously a much bigger problem at hand, which is that these data centers are bleeding the planet dry and no one seems to really care.

We could wait for these companies to run out of money and go bankrupt. There’s something to that. Anthropic has already instituted rate limits on Claude, possibly because they can’t afford to keep up with how popular it’s gotten. But is that the best we can do? Hoping this problem resolves itself while we complain on Twitter?

I don’t have any policy prescriptions for this problem; I’m not an expert in environmental science or digital infrastructure. I think it will be tough to convince billions of people to stop using a digital product that has become as integral to their lives as the smartphones in their pockets. ChatGPT is the fifth most visited website in the world. AI is going to be a part of the future whether people online like it or not. That doesn’t mean there isn’t anything to fight for.

Of course there are activists who are fighting campaigns against data centers; I’m not saying they don’t exist. In Northern Virginia, which has the highest concentration of data centers in the world, a bipartisan coalition is pushing back. Almost a billion dollars in proposed server farm projects have been blocked or delayed. That’s encouraging, but there’s not early enough of it!

I am surprised at how many people who call themselves socialists seem to believe bullying people for using AI is a viable strategy; can you think of any other structural problems that are solved with individual solutions? Maybe I’m reading too much into people blowing off steam, but I think it’s more likely that their political imaginations are constrained. It is hard to believe that tech companies could ever be reined in when they own so much. I know Donald Trump is president and things look bleak, but this is a profound failure of the left. Tech billionaires are not invincible. We can fight for a dignified future, both in the digital world and our real one.

We deserve a climate movement that takes the world we live in seriously. The last time Trump was president, the Green New Deal was introduced to the public consciousness, and Sunrise Movement was occupying federal offices and protesting complacent Democrats. We used to have courage. We didn’t know how good we had it.

FEMA employees are being reassigned to ICE. Right on time for hurricane season. The DHS claims the reassignments are temporary and will not affect FEMA’s ability to respond to natural disasters, but who knows if that’s true. Executive agencies do have the power to reassign federal workers to other departments. I’ve been noticing that some of the most destructive actions this administration has taken this year have all been technically legal, but our collective understanding of how Trump is dangerous—that he’s always breaking laws—has not really been updated.

TikTok workers in Berlin are on strike. Content moderation is an extremely difficult, psychologically demanding job, and workers put in long hours to make the internet safer for everyone. These are not jobs that can be replaced by AI. What these workers are doing is historic; there has never been a strike like this at a tech company anywhere.

All signs point to Beyoncé’s next album pivoting to rock and roll. And thank God for that! I thought Cowboy Carter was good but I’m too much of a godless cosmopolitan to ever truly appreciate country music. Don’t Hurt Yourself is one of my favorite Beyoncé songs of all time, and I’m excited to see her continue in that direction. Highly recommend playing over and over again at full volume the next time a man hurts your feelings.

Speaking of which, Trump’s plan to defund public broadcasting could be disastrous for Americana music. Community radio stations are a lifeline for small artists, introducing listeners to tracks they may not necessarily find on algorithm-driven streaming platforms like Spotify or Apple Music. Radio stations are trying to bridge the gap through fundraising, but the future is uncertain.

The teens want to vote. “I don’t think that most of the 16- and 17-year-olds that I know would be, like, worse at voting than the adults I know.”