The AI Energy Debate Is Louder Than the Data Behind It

Environmental concerns about AI have spiked in online conversation without a corresponding spike in new data. The conditions that generate heat in this debate are cultural and political — AI as symbol of unchecked capital, or as scapegoat for infrastructure problems that long predate it — not new findings about emissions or water draw. Honest accounting of AI's actual environmental cost remains rare precisely because both camps are motivated to avoid it: critics want the number to be damning, defenders want it to be trivial, and neither camp is well-served…