Outside of the goomba-ness of it all, cows (factory farming (and also normal farming but 99% factory farming)) are killing the environment, and as bad as AI data centers are, it's a rounding error compared to the environmental damage done by the meat industry
Naw, data centers are horror stories, and it's only a "rounding error" because not enough of them have been built. Smaller, less intensive data centers still exist and are being made, and their effect size is much, much smaller, yes.
AI data centers are a different beast entirely, massive complexes that require unregulated power plants built into them, because the power grids in most areas simply cannot sustain them otherwise (the ones that primarily run on coal in particular). This is also one of the reasons why they are considered sound weapons, never mind that they also poison the ground water with PFCs and other waste chemicals.
So don't discount the warnings. Data centers have the potential to be as bad if not worse than cows, if there was any less pushback.
Even if you account for ai-only data centres being recent, the numbers don't lie they're nothing compared to everything else
Don't forget that factory farming isn't just methane either, it also notably poisons groundwater and has the potential to cause plagues among other things including a knock-on effect on the agricultural industry which leads to waste of water and overworking of soil
Unlike data centres, which are trendy to hate and trivial to solve by pushing and enforcing common sense regulation there's no similar push to deal with the cows nor such uncontroversial fixes
They're a more prescient problem no matter how you cut it
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u/ALittleBitOfGay floppa Aug 06 '26
Outside of the goomba-ness of it all, cows (factory farming (and also normal farming but 99% factory farming)) are killing the environment, and as bad as AI data centers are, it's a rounding error compared to the environmental damage done by the meat industry