Will AI Fight Climate Change Or Make It Much Worse? Hot Debate On The Topic Now

AI is obviously the Next Big Thing.

Illustration from Appen 

Like it or not, it's invading all aspects of our lives. And of course, AI will have an enormous effect on other Big Things. Like climate change.  

Whether or not AI is good or bad, there was certainly a lot of interest in it at the recently concluded COP30 sessions.

That's the big annual UN shindig where countries from around the world try to come up with agreements on how to fix climate change. 

Usually, including this year, they didn't make much progress. And, the United States sat this one out all because our Glorious Leader says climate change is a hoax. 

But back to AI and climate. 

The Associated Press said they counted at least 24 sessions related to AI during the conference. 

They included using AI to help neighboring cities share energy, and a ceremony for the first AI for Climate Action Award for a project on water scarcity and climate variability in Laos.

All the tech bros at the converse are telling anyone that will listen that AI will solve climate change. Or at least make it less bad.  Or maybe help us deal with it better. They give examples. For instance, it can increase the efficiency of electric grids. 

AI can help farmers more accurately predict whether to save their crops. It can design buildings, roads and other infrastructure to withstand ever-increasing weather extremes. 

AI can also directly fight climate change. It's being used to detect methane leaks. Methane is an even more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. 

As NPR reported back in January, 2024 that methane leaks were seldom found and monitored. Now, scientists and companies use AI daily to find methane emissions by by interpreting enormous amounts of satellite images.   

That data is now used by the United Nations to verify the accuracy of corporation and government reports on methane emissions. 

Forest managers use AI to detect forest fires before they get out of hand. The technology can also ensure conditions are right for controlled burns to prevent future huge forest fires 

These are just some examples of how AI could save the world from a climate catastrophe, goes the theory. Or something like that. 

OR IS AI KILLING US 

It takes a TON of energy to run the data centers that keep AI afloat. So maybe AI will just make climate change even worse.

Per the Associated Press: 

"Climate groups, however, are sounding the alarm about AI's growing environmental impact, with its surging needs for electricity and water for powering searches and data centers They say an AI boom without guardrails will only push the world farther off track from goals set by 2015 Paris Agreement to slow global warming."

We'll probably blow past that 1.5 degree Celsius goal with or without sincere climate action. But AI might make us go far beyond that goal.

AI relies on data centers that use tremendous amounts of electricity, Data centers accounted for 1.5 percent of the world's electricity consumption in 2024. Since 2017, electricity consumption in data centers has grown by 12 percent, more than four times faster than the total rate of electricity consumption. 

Since a pretty big share of electricity is still generated via fossil fuel generation, data centers contribute to climate change. 

According to cornell.edu:

"Cornell researchers have used advanced data analytics - and, naturally, some AI, too - to create a state-by-state look at that environmental impact. The team found that, by 2030, the current rate of AI growth would annually put 24 to 44 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, the emissions equivalent of adding 5 to 10 million cars to U.S. roadways. 

It would also drain 731 to 1,125 million cubic meters of water per year - equal to the annual household water usage of 6 to 10 million Americans. The cumulative effect would put the AI industry's net-zero emissions targets out of reach."

Sounds really bad. But then again, maybe not that bad?

Says cornell.edu again:

"On the upside, the study also outlines an actionable roadmap that would use smart siting, faster grid decarbonization and operational efficiency to cut these impacts by approximately 73% (carbon dioxide) and 86% (water) compared with worst-case scenarios."

So, the bottom line is AI is maybe one of the biggest new thing of all big new things we've ever had. AI could let us swim or make us sink. 

Only the future will tell us. And the future might come sooner than we think. 

U.S. Sat Out Major UN Climate Conference, But Lobbyists Swarmed It

The United States is AWOL from the UN climate
talks in Brazil, while fossil fuel lobbyists
are there big time. 

The United States embarrassingly sat out this year's 30th annual UN Climate Change Conference - known as COP30 -  which surprised nobody, given Donald Trump's horror at anyone who even thinks climate change is a thing.  

But that fact is to our detriment, since the United States had no say in the kinds of climate change fighting prescriptions that might emerge from the conference.

Beside the U.S., the only other nations not at COP30 are Afghanistan, Myanmar and San Marino, notes Carbon Brief. 

The absence of the United States is striking because the nation is also the world's largest historical emitter of greenhouse gases. 

Overall, a total of 56,000 people from 193 countries attended the conference, which is the second largest crowd at any of any past conference. 

Unsurprisingly, this year's largest delegation comes from Brazil, since that's the nation hosting the whole thing.  The next largest delegations, in order of size are China (again no surprise) and of all countries, Nigeria, Indonesia and Democratic Republic of Congo. 

The annual COP meetings have become this huge thing, attended by at least 50,000 in each of the past four years. Most rounds of this conference drew few than 20,000 annual, except the 2015 iteration in Copenhagen and the 2021 gathering in Paris. 

The Paris COP was the year the world decided to try and limit planetary warming to 1,5 degrees of the 20th century average.  

This year, the United States backed out of the international agreement to try and limit the warming to 1.5 degrees. 

Of course, we'll probably blow past the 1.5 degree goal  anyway, as emissions continue to rise. 

At last report, delegates at COP30 were still struggling to come up with an agreement to set a global path away from the use of fossil fuels. But a draft deal doesn't mention coal, oil and gas, which are almost the entire reason we have a climate change problem. 

Which might be related to this tidbit from The Guardian, which reports that more than 1,600 fossil fuel lobbyists have been granted access to COP30. That's more than every single country's delegation aside from the host Brazil. 

The group Kick Big Polluters Out says one in every 25 participants at this big meeting is a fossil fuel lobbyist. 

Within the next couple of days, we'll see how well all those fossil fuel lobbyists did. Stay tuned!  

Was Four-Lane Road Through Amazon Forest Construction To Facilitate A (Checks Notes) Climate Summit?

A big highway is being cut through the Amazon rainforest
in northeast Brazil, and according to sources, it's 
hypocritically being built to facilitate a major
UN climate change conference in November. 

 Critics are accusing a Brazilian state of building a four-lane freeway through tens of thousands of acres in sensitive Amazon rain forest to, of all things, facilitate a major UN climate summit.  

The summit is scheduled for November in the city of Belem in northeast Brazil, in the Amazon not too far inland from the Atlantic Ocean. 

Officials in the  Brazilian state of Para where the highway is being built, deny the summit was the impetus behind the highway construction. 

Those officials say construction on the highway started in 2020, before Belem was announced as the location for the climate summit, known as COP30.

Brazilian and  Para state officials also said the nation's federal government is not funding the project. 

Still, locals and environmentalists are highly suspicious, to say the least, noting the sudden, fast progress of highway construction after decades of resistance. That fast pace came after Belem was selected as the COP30 site 

Per Reuters:

"Still, some locals tie recent progress on the long-discussed highway to the approaching UN summit, when tens of thousands of delegates are expected to swarm the Amazon city home to 1.3 million."

 Plus, local officials basically admitted to the BBC the highway was being built to service the COP30 climate summit.  

Per BBC

"Adler Silveira, the state government infrastructure secretary, listed this highway as one of 30 project happening in the city to 'prepare' and 'modernize' it, so 'we can have a legacy for the population and more importantly, serve people for COP30 in the best possible way."

Silveira also said the highway would have wildlife crossings for animals to pass over, bike lanes and solar lighting 

All wonderful, but they're chopping down part of a critical rain forest to do all this.   

There's other projects ahead of COP30 that might harm the Amazon rain forests too, mostly by bringing in more people. The more people there are, the more harm an ecosystem will suffer.  The Belem airport is being expanded, new hotels are under construction and the port is being redeveloped to accommodate cruise ships. 

Like unloading a 1,000 people off a cruise ship into the Amazon, or at least near it, won't harm anything. Jeez! 

As usual, it's the locals who depend on the rain forest that got screwed the most. 

People who live adjacent to the new highway so they weren't compensated for land takings. They also fear the  highway will cause an explosion of new development like warehouses, stores, gas stations and such that would mow down much more of the rain forest. 

As the BBC reports, the road would leave two disconnected areas of protected forests, fragmenting the ecosystem and disrupting the movement of wildlife.

The bottom line:

We're having a big UN conference to combat climate change. And we're flying thousands of people from all over the world to the Amazon to attend this conference. I'm not advocating a ban of air travel, but airliners are a major contributor to climate change, so there's that.

Then, we're cutting a major highway through the Amazon, which is essential a large part of the Earth's lungs. The Amazon is a major natural ally against climate change because it absorbs huge amounts of carbon dioxide.

So, the solution is to cut down some of the Amazon to bloviate about climate change in political setting.

It makes no sense.