You Want to Stop Climate Change? Don’t Press ‘Enter’ on that ChatGPT Prompt
This is an independently submitted op-ed for our Quill section. Views and statements made in this article do not necessarily reflect the opinions of The Tower.
Image Courtesy of BWCFLA
By Maria Wraback
Do you remember middle school science class? Listening to your teacher drone on about the water cycle, renewable and nonrenewable energy sources, and that future problem called climate change or something? If you’re like me, you were told that to save the planet, you should take shorter showers and “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.”
But we’re not 13 anymore. Climate change is here. And showering isn’t stealing the world’s energy; Hitting ‘Enter’ on that ChatGPT query is.
AI use and development have skyrocketed over the past 4 years: Stanford reports that the number of AI patents worldwide has increased by 62% from 2021-2022, National University reports that 77% of businesses already use AI or are planning to incorporate AI into their products; and AI usage is booming, with ChatGPT reporting 400 million users in February, Meta reporting 700 million users of app AI tools, and 45 million regular users for Google’s Gemini, to name a few.
The fact is, wherever we look, an AI system is primed to assist us. These products seem free and inconsequential to the tactile world, residing in immaterial cyberspace. But the AI boom comes with a very real cost: the fate of our environment.
Every time you Google search, stream a video, save a photo, or send a Word document to the Cloud, you’re actually sending data to be processed and stored in a data center. Data centers house hundreds or thousands of servers, hard drives, networking equipment, cooling towers, and other infrastructure to ensure the safe and reliable transmission of data.
Even before AI, these facilities required substantial supplies of electricity and water to power and cool their servers. With a majority of electricity consumption coming from fossil fuels, data centers emit high amounts of electronic waste and climate-warming greenhouse gases. However, with the expansion of AI, these data centers are not only growing in number but in environmental impact.
According to a report from Navigating New Horizons, AI technology takes more advanced computers (GPUs) with chips made from—often unsustainably mined—rare earth elements. These advanced systems need far more energy than conventional CPUs: One ChatGPT entry takes 10 times more electricity than a Google search, which is “approximately as much electricity as could light one lightbulb for about 20 minutes,” according to Jesse Dodge from the Allen Institute for AI. What’s more, in a published paper studying AI models’ water consumption, UC Riverside researchers estimate that “every time you ask 5-50 questions, ChatGPT gulps up 500 milliliters of water (close to what’s in a 16-ounce water bottle).” The amount varies based on season temperatures and location, but when multiplied by the 400 million users reported this month? That water and that electricity add up.
And that’s only for one AI system.
With tech giants like Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Apple competing for AI innovation, global power consumption will only increase. UC Riverside estimates that “globally, AI-related infrastructure may soon consume six times more water than Denmark, a country of 6 million.” Meanwhile, by 2026, the International Energy Agency reports that data center electricity consumption “will be double that of 2022 — 1,000 terawatts, roughly equivalent to Japan’s current total consumption.” With 25% of the world’s population struggling to access clean water, and carbon emissions flooding from data centers already, scientists worry that an unchecked AI industry could propel the world further into climate chaos.
Now, AI could help solve the climate crisis by improving climate models, finding ways of cutting water and energy use, and investing in projects like Google, whose “A.I. fast-crunching atmospheric data can guide airline pilots to flight paths that will leave the fewest contrails [which] create more than a third of commercial aviation’s contribution to global warming,” according to Yale Environment 360.
But these benefits mean nothing if the costs outweigh them. Tech companies must continually choose sustainability over technological dominance, and it’s proving a struggle. In 2020, Google and Microsoft pledged to become carbon-neutral and carbon-negative by 2030, but their 2024 sustainability reports tell a concerning story. Google’s emissions have risen by 48% since 2019, and Microsoft’s by 29% since 2020. According to UC Riverside, Google’s water consumption increased by 20%, and Microsoft’s by 34%.
And still, both companies (along with other tech giants) plan on spending tens of billions of dollars on AI development this year, no doubt encouraged by President Trump’s Executive Order repealing Biden’s AI restrictions. Microsoft President Brad Print says, “In 2020, we unveiled what we called our carbon moonshot. That was before the explosion in artificial intelligence.”
In the face of world collapse and fighting corporations, you might think, “One ChatGPT prompt doesn’t matter!” But you weren’t told to shower shorter because that one decision would save the world; you were told because if everyone who could make that decision did, then maybe that would save the world. The power of the individual lies in its capacity to become the conglomerate. Which assembly will you be today?
