Top Highlights

• U.S. climate governance cannot overlook how recent developments in AI and cloud technology contribute to the environmental burdens that communities of color and low-income families face.
• CEJ means that everyone—irrespective of race, ethnicity, income, or ability—has the right to the same environmental protections and benefits, as well as the opportunity to be meaningfully involved in decisionmaking. And it cannot just be an aspirational goal—it’s an indispensable factor in crafting effective climate governance.
• Despite their operation in a virtual space, AI and the cloud have considerable tangible effects. They will intensify greenhouse gas emissions, consume increasing amounts of energy, and require larger quantities of natural resources. This emerges, in one form, through rising energy demands.
• uggests a single generative AI query consumes energy at four or five times the magnitude of a typical search engine request. Image-generating tasks are also far more energy-intensive compared to those involving text alone. By perpetuating high-carbon-emitting behaviors, AI systems play a significant role in exacerbating the climate crisis. And as t...
• there’s no guarantee that these jobs will be accessible or targeted to those who need them most.

Domain