this post was submitted on 15 Jun 2024
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I'd rather switch the datacenters to green energy before trying to convince people to give up cheeseburgers.
We cannot afford to do one before the other. We're need to do both
(emphasis mine)
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aba7357
Quick googling shows that in 2021, agriculture produced 10.9 billion tons of emissions, while fossil fuels produced 36.8. There might be some overlap between the two, but I'm assuming not for ease of math.
The way I see it, doing both would be nice, but if we try that, fossil fuel companies and bacon enjoyers are going to end up on the same team, and that's going to be very difficult to fight. The corporations can easily push propaganda like "Fight this legislation, they want you to eat bugs and tofu instead of real meat for your Fourth of July barbecue," and then nothing gets done.
On the other hand, if we target fossil fuels first, we may be able to cut 77%, and by doing so we overcome the "it's too late, there's nothing we can do about it" mindset, and no longer have fossil fuel industries trying to fight us when we target agriculture next. Plus, getting people to drop meat keeps getting easier as meat alternatives get better.
We've got to strategize. Targeting both at once may be the only way we can hit the target, but it's so much less likely. I'd rather stop emissions after missing the target than fail to stop them at all.
Those figures are likely to be concerning CO2 emissions only because I know that methane, a significant part of agriculture's climate impact, increases climate heating far more than CO2 does, per ton, and this makes it hard to quantify climate harm due to emissions. (Though I'm not personally familiar with the figures or how they're calculated, so it's possible that yours were an aggregated comparison or similar)
I understand what you're saying about lobbying forces clubbing together, but we simply don't have time to attack one, then the other: Consider a world where we win the fossil fuel fight, but we're still fucked because of all the other sectors killing the planet — how do we overcome the "there's nothing we can do about it" when it too late. Ofc, "too late" isn't a hard cut off deadline (because if it were, we'd have already passed it), but we are exponentially heading to a complete climate collapse.
I'm arguing that if we want to avert the climate catastrophe, the average bacon eater does need to eat a heckton less bacon. But it's not the average bacon eater I'm worried about, it's the massive agricultural industry, which has financial interests that massively overlap with the fossil fuel industry. They're functionally already on the same side, and my opinion is that we won't start making progress in the battle against climate change until we acknowledge that.
Are these datacenters doing scientific research or are they generating AI images and crypto? These things do not have equal value to society.
You know very well what the data enters in question are doing. They’re making money, that’s why they get funding. Science does not make enough money to fund it.
I'm not computer worker person but I'm pretty sure most are just serving websites and podcasts and music and all the shit we actually love about the Internet. Websites like this, and Netflix, Amazon (horrible company but so glad I can buy shit on my phone that shows up in an hour or 2) even ones like Plex, pirate Bay types, or foss things. But also crypto and AI bullshit, and probably sex trafficking and illegal dangerous goods . Modern luxuries we enjoy come with bullshit attached. It's all or nothing as far as I see.
Crypto and AI are crazy power intensive to run. Far beyond what it takes a streaming service to send you a video file and considering many people are choosing streaming over driving their gasoline fueled car to the theater, it's a net gain.
That’s not the kind of data center its talking about
People giving up cheeseburgers and SUVs has been on the table for at least forty years. If you’re younger than forty, that’s your entire lifetime. It has never not been a problem. It has always been exacerbated by republiQans. It will not change, it will not go away, it will never be wrong. Give up cheeseburgers and SUVs or kill the planet with arrogance and greed.
Guess which one we’ve picked for forty years. G’head. Guess.