Authors: Maya Richman

These days I have the feeling that I am caught in a digital flood of information. Each week brings new doomsday predictions of ecological collapse or fanatical promises of technological innovation. I wonder if we are talking about two entirely different planets. Is it possible that one message is simply the signal of a faroff star whose radio and television transmissions have been intercepted and woven amongst our own? Alas, I fear we are all planted firmly on this earth but looking at the world from radically different perspectives.

Michelle Thorne and I sit and stare at an industrial tulip farm in the Netherlands in spring of 2023.

Much of the planet is living through a severe water crisis while tech moguls and governments leave the tap open for massive infrastructure investments–more data centers, more nuclear power plants, more semiconductor chip factories, more mines. Where is the just or the transition in just transition? As more money from civil society is funneled to research and development budgets, and AI mega-projects, what world are those in positions of power fueling? Those who have fought to protect and be-with their indigenous lands know that is not so much a crisis as a long and escalated unfolding of slow violence on people and the planet. Ultimately, it often comes down to land, who is given carte blanche and who must live with the consequences? When we center land, we engage questions of territorial sovereignty, spatial justice, stewardship of so-called “natural resources”, industrial policy, and cycles of “disaster capitalism” that bring brief periods of relief packages or humanitarian aid.

Whose waters are these? A stream with mossy rocks nestled between private properties in Norway in 2024.

How clear is the boundary of inside/outside, nature/humanity? View from a small castle in Germany in 2018.

If some of these terms are new to you, don’t fear! Whether it’s environmental justice terminology, just transition or extractivism there are lots of resources that break these complex topics into something more digestible. More helpful links can be found at the bottom of the piece. Wherever you are in your learning journey (which never ends) here is a roundup of some recent research, news and actions that might feed your curiosity or spur action:

1. Prominent industry and media narratives say it’s too late to change course–we must double down and go all in on AI. Misleading and false solutions appear like the 1990’s arcade game Whack-a-mole (which I now realize was a very violent game of hitting plastic moles on their heads). As one greenwashing scheme (e.g. carbon credits) appears to be debunked, another rears its head promising to bring the next wave of innovation to pull ourselves out of the climate crisis. There are existing reports and blog posts that outline what is needed to make current AI models more efficient or develop more sustainability in the supply chain but there are limits to efficiency and improvements in manufacturing need massive financial incentives and time. As Eric Schmidt stated at a recent AI summit: ‘We’re not going to hit the climate goals anyway because we’re not organised to do it,’ and that he would rather put his faith into AI to solve future problems than constrain current development.” The climate promises of this miracle technology have not arrived, yet the harm is well-documented but those who profit off this infrastructure want us to bet on it. We at the Green Screen Coalition do not believe the AI domination is inevitable and are countering misleading narratives on AI for climate.

Neverending reactive game of hitting the “enemy”. Example of a Whack-a-mole arcade game.

Source: By sa_ku_ra / sakura - Source: Flickr image., CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=36174230

2. AI drives emissions and ecocide through fossil fuel expansion and warfare. Industry likes to play all cards simultaneously and see how the game turns out. While Google, Amazon and Microsoft were publishing their net zero commitments, they were working directly with US military contractors and fossil fuel companies to expand surveillance infrastructure, AI-driven autonomous weapons, and AI tools for automating and accelerating oil extraction. Meanwhile the resistance inside and outside of these companies have been linking and building across the globe, from the No Tech for Apartheid movement to strategic litigation holding companies to account for greenwashing and raw earth mining in the Congo. There are direct and indirect ways to account for environmental costs from mining of minerals to e-waste. Demanding transparency and environmental accountability for the tech sector is essential and should be supported by philanthropy.

Tesla Gigafactory in Brandenburg in October 2024

3. From “green” to “clean”, conversation on nuclear energy has restarted in the EU and the United States. We are seeing language shifts in the EU commission fueled by desire for sustainability of critical raw materials for AI and data center expansion. In the previous commission strategy, there was discussion of the twin transition with ample references to sustainability and green transition. The language has been updated to “clean” which is dogwhistle for the inclusion of nuclear energy. In the US we are seeing a resurgence of investment in nuclear, both building of new infrastructure and restarting of existing plants. Alongside White House announcements this year about massive AI investments and nuclear energy investments. OpenAI and other industry players are looking to rapidly expand nuclear energy access to power their data center expansion, which requires exorbitant energy use. Here we see there are clear costs when we conflate remediating the harms of internet infrastructure with carbon emission accounting. Fieke Jansen, co-lead of the Green Screen Coalition and co-principal investigator at the critical infrastructure lab, proposes discussions of investments in data centers and other internet infrastructure should have limits at the center, rather than a current model predicated on infinite growth and infinite natural resources.

Where to from here?

There is so much to explore, understand and work together on. As Green Screen Coalition, we are continuing to build community and catalyse action in these streams of work. We will be publishing a joint statement this month that is a collective summary of what AI for the public interest could mean. Stay tuned for more on that!

It’s possible that in your work, you don’t engage directly on environmental justice or digital justice nor the intersection of the two. But break open the silos of funding, academia, and policy and you will find that these themes crosscut conversations on securitisation, migration, housing, health, democracy, gender justice, media freedom, and more. If you want to learn and discuss more how your current grantmaking can be in support of climate and digital justice, join our monthly newsletter or get in touch with me directly (maya.richman@ariadne-network.eu).

References

Paddison, L. (2024, October 16). The system that moves water around the Earth is off balance for the first time in human history. CNN. https://edition.cnn.com/2024/10/16/climate/global-water-cycle-off-balance-food-production/index.html

Edwards, B. (2024, September 19). AI’s hungry maw drives massive $100B investment plan by Microsoft and BlackRock. Ars Technica. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/09/100-billion-ai-infrastructure-fund-launched-by-microsoft-blackrock-uae-firm

European Chips Act. European Commission. (n.d.). https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/priorities-2019-2024/europe-fit-digital-age/european-chips-act_en

Just Transition according to REO Collaborative “…describes both where we are going and how we get there.” And speaks to the movement from extractive to regenerative economies.

AI requires large computing power in the form of data centers to be able to be run. As internet infrastructure for AI expands, the projects reflect massive investments from local and federal governments in the form of allocations of energy, water and land.

Nixon, R. (2013). Slow violence and the environmentalism of the poor. Harvard University Press.

Kenneth Bailey, L. L. and K. N., Olmsted Now, Bailey, K., & Stephen Gray, J. L. (2021, May 7). An introduction to spatial justice. Olmsted Now. https://olmstednow.org/an-introduction-to-spatial-justice/

Jansen, Dr. F, & Thorne, M (2024, October 16). IV. Predatory Delay and Other Myths of “Sustainable AI.” AI Now Institute. https://ainowinstitute.org/publication/predatory-delay-and-other-myths-of-sustainable-ai

Klein, N. (2008). The shock doctrine. Penguin Books.

Luccioni, S., Trevelin, B., & Mitchell, M. (n.d.). The environmental impacts of AI – Primer. Hugging Face – The AI community building the future. https://huggingface.co/blog/sasha/ai-environment-primer

Hess, J. C. (2024, June 20). Chip production’s ecological footprint: Mapping Climate and Environmental Impact. Interface. https://www.stiftung-nv.de/publications/chip-productions-ecological-footprint

Smith, H & Adams, C (2024): Thinking about using AI? Here’s what you can and (probably) can’t change about its environmental impact. Green Web Foundation 2024.

Robinson, D. (2024, October 8). Eric Schmidt: Build more ai, climate goals not in reach. The Register® - Biting the hand that feeds IT. https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/08/eric_schmidt_speech/

Democracy Now! (2024, April 17). No tech for apartheid: Google workers protest company’s work with Israel. https://www.democracynow.org/2024/4/17/no_tech_for_apartheid_google_israel

Stone, M. (2024, May 10). Microsoft employees spent years fighting the Tech Giant’s oil ties. now, they’re speaking out. Grist. https://grist.org/accountability/microsoft-employees-spent-years-fighting-the-tech-giants-oil-ties-now-theyre-speaking-out/

Zoe Rasbash, E. L. (2024, September 12). Behind the green curtain: The truth about big tech’s carbon footprint. Shado Magazine. https://shado-mag.com/columns/can-tech/behind-the-green-curtain-the-truth-about-big-techs-carbon-footprint/

2022 strategic foresight report. European Commission. (2022, June 28). https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/strategic-foresight/2022-strategic-foresight-report_en

Strategic autonomy and the future of nuclear energy in the EU: Use and availability of high-assay low-enriched uranium and its potential role in securing a clean, safe energy supply https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2024/757796/EPRS_BRI(2024)757796_EN.pdf

Valinsky, J. (2024, September 20). Three mile island is reopening and selling its power to Microsoft | CNN business. CNN. https://edition.cnn.com/2024/09/20/energy/three-mile-island-microsoft-ai/index.html

Fact Sheet: Biden-Harris Administration Announces New Steps to Bolster Domestic Nuclear Industry and Advance America’s Clean Energy Future. (2024, May 29). The White House. Retrieved November 7, 2024, from https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2024/05/29/fact-sheet-biden-harris-administration-announces-new-steps-to-bolster-domestic-nuclear-industry-and-advance-americas-clean-energy-future/

O’Brien, I. (2024, September 15). Data center emissions likely 662% higher than big tech claims. Can it keep up the ruse? The Guardian. Retrieved November 13, 2024, from https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/sep/15/data-center-gas-emissions-tech