"But AI pollutes too"

Column: from the perspective of a student who asks himself the same question.

It is the new variant of "but you fly too": say anything about sustainability online and sooner or later the digital footprint gets thrown back at you. Data centres! Streaming! And these days, with an audible exclamation mark: AI!

The annoying thing about this reproach is that it is correct. Data centres consume a few percent of all electricity worldwide and the rise of AI is accelerating that. Waving it away is exactly the kind of selective accounting we find so transparent when oil companies do it. But the conclusion that usually follows, so you're no longer allowed an opinion, is wrong, and it pays to keep those two things apart.

First, the proportions. An hour of video streaming costs roughly 50 to 100 grams of CO2, comparable to half a kilometre of driving. An average AI request sits well below that. The complete digital life of an average person, phone, laptop, cloud, series, occupies a few percent of their footprint; meat, flying, housing and driving determine the rest. Anyone wanting to unburden their digital conscience should, moreover, look not at usage but at devices: manufacturing one new laptop costs more CO2 than years of streaming on it. The worried frown about data centres sits awkwardly next to a phone replaced every two years.

So what to do? Use devices for a long time and buy refurbished, by far the biggest digital gain; the trend lists at Risegoods show that message is landing. Deploy digital where it replaces physical emissions: the video call that scraps a car journey, the one good answer that prevents an afternoon of searching across twenty tabs. And keep the pressure on providers, because that pressure demonstrably works: tech companies have become the world's largest buyers of green electricity, not out of idealism but because users and advertisers demand it.

Every generation of technology has faced this interrogation, the train, the car, the internet, now AI. The question is legitimate every time and should keep being asked. But the answer has never once been "back to before". The answer is, every time: make it cleaner, use it deliberately, weigh it the way we weigh meat and flying.

One observation remains for the next conversation in which the reproach lands. Sometimes "but AI pollutes too" is genuine concern. Sometimes it is a reason not to have to change anything oneself. The difference can usually be heard in what the speaker says next.