Moving towards climate accountability

Pop Culture by Ed Zitron

AI’s power demands … are likely so significant that utility companies will have to spend nearly 40% more in the next three years to keep up with the demand from hyperscalers like Google and Microsoft.

+

Google’s carbon footprint balloons in its Gemini AI era by Justine Calma (The Verge)

Google has a goal of cutting its planet-heating pollution in half by 2030 compared to a 2019 baseline. But its total greenhouse gas emissions have actually grown by 48 percent since 2019.

+

A question of power by Joan Westenberg

But the AI energy argument is a red herring.

It’s not a problem with AI. It’s a problem with energy.

[A]t a systemic level, we need to be clear-eyed about the real sustainability bottleneck: the fact that in 2024, we’re still burning hundred-million-year-old carbon sludge to keep the lights on.

Agree we need to modernize the grid, disagree it’s a distraction for many reasons, including induced demand, but importantly because:

+

“your energy demand will kill poor people” (TikTok)

Whose power gets shut off first? This is part of (environmental) justice ✊

+

Workers, Not Technocrats, Can Secure a Sustainable Planet by Alec Fiorini

Protecting our public commons against the acquisitive interests of corporate shareholders has always required political contestation.

Lol I’m totally the science communicator type in this… I agree what’s achievable through legislation is too little, too late, but I’m not sold that workers would take up the mantle if environmental staff in local government stopped advocating for policies and told the public it was on them to speak truth to power 🤨 Also, the public often has misconceptions about the most impactful next step to take — so much energy went into plastic straw bans when straws make up a minute part of the waste stream (and also compostable straws are likely nearly as harmful in the marine environment) (but that sad turtle video 😿😿😿 I can’t blame people for wanting to help 🤷‍♀️)

I think addressing climate change requires lots of people taking many different approaches, chipping away at the problem from all sides; only together can we achieve the scope and scale of changes we need. There’s no one right answer on how to deal with climate change — it’s a Yes, And situation.

I’m a pro-regulation gal because otherwise workers across industries will have to keep fighting the same fights over and over again. And a lot of the solutions to climate change amount to doing the basics that businesses know they should but aren’t incentivized (or mandated) to do — like compost their food waste. Washington State now requires certain businesses in some parts of the state to compost food waste and yard waste — in eight years with a voluntary city compost program we were delighted to have ~100 businesses and apartments participate. Building codes and policies, baby. Voluntary only is feel-good.

+

Low-carbon summer by Prof. Kimberly Nicholas

We’re moving from the age of:

climate action (acknowledging the need to act) →

to climate ambition (announcing targets) →

to climate accountability (implementing policies and practices that deliver emissions reductions and meet targets).

 

I grew up in California and remember the summer of rolling blackouts and brownouts. No one used to have AC here in Washington, but with climate change, summers will keep getting hotter and hotter. The strain on the grid will continue to grow. (The heat pump is where it’s at, let me tell you.)

I (just barely) remember saving bathwater for the garden during The Drought. With climate change, Washington will have warmer, wetter winters, which paradoxically means drier summers because we won’t get summer snowmelt. Much of the state is in a drought this year, and I expect there will be more to come.

What I really worry about is the day Western Washingtonians start to take fire seriously — *grumbles in Californian* neighbors blasting off (illegal) fireworks for Fourth of July — because it won’t happen till we have a bad burn on the westside. None of us is ready for a fire here — everyone’s got shrubs right up against our houses (me included). (I *also* remember watching a helicopter fight a fire in the invasive eucalyptus grove up the street from my house in the suburbs in California and having the dawning realization that if they couldn’t put it out that would be Very Bad Indeed.)

Some Washingtonians are disgruntled about Californians moving here, but maybe we got some lived experience to share for the future 🤷‍♀️

Today it was very hot (for Seattle). I just joined a program by my power utility that pays you for saving energy during peak events — our first one was today and we unplugged everything we could, down to the microwave 😂 I’m very curious how much energy we saved by turning off the air purifier and unplugging the bathroom nightlights for four hours 👀

I’m professionally kinda opposed to paying people for prosocial behaviors, but I’m also sure they’re not asking office buildings to turn out their unused lights or turn the AC down, so I’ll take a couple bucks for the labor of turning everything off and back on I guess 🤷‍♀️

It’s the same story, time and again, with anything related to the environment: corporations pay lip service (or throw PR dollars at fusion 🙄) and it becomes our individual responsibility. Carbon emissions, recycling, energy conservation… The “demands of business” are rarely pushed back on, even when minor changes would have outsized impacts compared to what individuals can accomplish. How many people have to turn off their computers to match a single office building turning off unused lights and upping the temperature a couple degrees? 🤷‍♀️ Maybe the numbers run, but I’m skeptical.

 

See also:

Hidden Systems

Will we let data centers have all the water they want for AI?

The injustice embedded in our infrastructure

Enough is a dirty word in America