The AI Energy Argument Has Two Camps and No Shared Map

The argument dividing the AI-and-environment conversation is not about whether data centers use energy — it is about who or what caused them to exist at this scale. One position holds that AI is being blamed for an infrastructure trajectory that predates large language models and would have continued regardless; the other holds that AI demand is qualitatively new, fast enough to overwhelm any grid planning assumption made before 2022. Both positions are internally coherent. Neither has the other's concession.