That response might surprise some people, but I promise I’m not living under a rock, and I have seen all the concerning projections about how much electricity AI is using. Data centers could consume up to 945 terawatt-hours annually by 2030. (That’s roughly as much as Japan.)
But I feel strongly about not putting the onus on individuals, partly because AI concerns remind me so much of another question: “What should I do to reduce my carbon footprint?”
That one gets under my skin because of the context: BP helped popularize the concept of a carbon footprint in a marketing campaign in the early 2000s. That framing effectively shifts the burden of worrying about the environment from fossil-fuel companies to individuals.
The reality is, no one person can address climate change alone: Our entire society is built around burning fossil fuels. To address climate change, we need political action and public support for researching and scaling up climate technology. We need companies to innovate and take decisive action to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. Focusing too much on individuals is a distraction from the real solutions on the table.