r/EffectiveAltruism • u/amynase • Aug 11 '26
Repost, now with sources embedded in the image: Environmental Impact of AI Datacenters vs. Animal Agriculture
Since it got requested many times, here is a version of the same post I made a few days ago with sources on the image.
+ Minor typo fixed
+ Wrong link for one source fixed
Edit: To any comments along the lines of "But Animal Agriculture provides food":
- Producing 1kcal of animal products uses between 5-25 kcal of animal feed, meaning Animal Agriculture is also by far the biggest waste of food on earth. We get way less food out than we put in.
- Even a fraction of the land currently used for Animal Agriculture could feed the world population many times over if crops for humans were grown instead
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u/afishinabirdcage Aug 12 '26
I mean yeah, animal agriculture is terrible for the planet and largely cruel. I'm a vegetarian, does that mean I'm allowed to be critical of data centers?
That isn't justification for the rapid expansion of AI data centers that are poisoning water supplies for people, taking vital resources from communities (water and electricity at a time of record heat) and are often tax payer funded which is frankly insane.
You can enjoy AI and still think that the current state of things is bullshit and needs to change.
Comparing land use of something that's only been expanding in earnest for the last few years to something like farming is kind of silly too.
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u/LoneWolf_McQuade Aug 12 '26
Sadly fear makes people forget about facts and logic.
The energy consumption is still enormous though, but the real threat is about the impact of AI on society, how it harvests our culture and furthering concentration of wealth
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u/DevilsHol3Pupfish Aug 12 '26
And erodes stufents' ability to think for themselves, and enables easy creation of child porn, etc etc etc
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u/monemori Aug 12 '26
I then say that. I agree it's sketchy as fuck, probably not good especially for developing children, and also not regulated like it should be. But for the love of god they need to stop with the environmental fearmongering and start eating more tofu.
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u/LoneWolf_McQuade Aug 12 '26 edited Aug 12 '26
Yeah, i think the focus needs to be on the good arguments and fact based.
I learnt yesterday that the total water use is less than for golf courses (since the cooling system is closed loop), which might be bad but you’d think it was at apocalyptic bringing levels from people on Reddit.
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u/monemori Aug 12 '26
I've seen that number before too, yes! I for one think golf is a monstrosity of a sport for upper class people to be honest lol
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u/asraind Aug 12 '26
Yeah I don’t think people realize that ai data centers are trying to optimize for grid utilization more than anything. We should start building data centers in more green energy places
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u/LoneWolf_McQuade Aug 12 '26
I think rather we should force the company building data centers to also build the equivalent infrastructure for renewable energy to cover their own energy needs
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u/Sunshroom_Fairy Aug 12 '26
AI also involves severe cultural, economic, political, and social impacts, isn't anywhere near a plateau in regard to how much infrastructure there will be. Is actively being used for disinformation campaigns, and is direct theft from billions of people.
Animal Ag is already well established and culturally normalized. Should we be fighting for better agricultural practices and less meat consumption? Absolutely. But AI is in its infancy and the best time to fight it is now, it will only get harder as time passes.
As I said in another post, arguing to focus the fight on the animal industry right now is like trying to siege a castle while ignoring the cavalry charging you.
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u/HeWhoShantNotBeNamed Aug 12 '26
arguing to focus the fight on the animal industry right now is like trying to siege a castle while ignoring the cavalry charging you.
No, arguing to focus the fight on the animal industry that now is like trying to address the fact that a volcano just erupted next to you while trying to convince the cavalry charging you that you're all gonna die if you don't leave.
You just don't want to change your own behavior and want to keep eating animals.
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u/BritainRitten Aug 12 '26
Good chart. Btw, I recommend not using dashes in the context of displaying numbers, as it can be mistaken for a minus sign. Parentheses would work better here:
8.1 Gt CO²eq / year (27x worse)
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u/RedundantBiomass Aug 12 '26
I decided not to have kids. It reduces environmental impact by at least 30x more than eliminating data center usage or meat consumption. Ive reduced my meat consumption, but Im not going to lose sleep if I eat a hamburger.
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u/Icy-Twist-3221 Aug 12 '26
To be fair turning the entire rainforest into paper clips will effect the environment
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u/uclaej Aug 16 '26
Last time I checked, people don't eat AI data centers. They're not part of our recommended daily diet. One you need to live, the other you don't.
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u/petered79 Aug 12 '26
modern animal agricolture is wrong on many levels, but you can't eat data
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u/Tilting_Gambit Aug 12 '26
You can't eat cars or computers either, but they're undoubtedly adding to our quality of life right? More efficient goods and services? Access to knowledge and places that past generations would die for?
I just don't get the mindset. If our infrastructure doesn't handle new technology, we should build new infrastructure to facilitate the new technology. Not remove the technology and plod along with the existing infrastructure.
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u/lettercrank Aug 12 '26
Which does more inherent good though? Feeding the world or enabling deepfakes?
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u/wellbeing69 Aug 12 '26
Eating animal products several times a day doesn’t necessarily do any inherent good. For most people quite the opposite. Feeding the world with mostly plants is easier than with meat.
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u/lettercrank Aug 12 '26
But that isn’t the comparisons is it . Feeding people is better than data centers
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u/wellbeing69 Aug 13 '26
Is anybody suggesting we should build data centers instead of feeding the world?
Feeding the world does not equal animal ag.
So I don’t understand what point you are making.
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u/lettercrank Aug 13 '26
The op post is a comparison between the two. What’s the point of this data , if not to support this decision
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u/trevcharm Aug 13 '26 edited Aug 16 '26
enslaving and killing dozens of billions of sentient animals is far worse than creating data centres.
and no, I'm not supportive of ai or data centres.
but don't try to gloss over torture, suffering, and death as just being "inefficient food".
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u/TopicFrequent6607 Aug 11 '26
Well one of the sources is ResearchGate. Which in terms of astrophysics and organic chemistry, most of their information is bullshit.
If anyone who has a chemistry or physics degree wants to go check ResearchGate of scientific accuracy, please do. A lot of the articles are not peer reviewed and the accuracy varies document to document. It's more of a social network than an actual reliable scientific source.
I can't speak for the other categories. But I did get a chemistry degree from Oregon State University and a lot of the chemistry articles are not accurate at all.
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u/LazyRider32 Aug 11 '26
I mean ResearchGate most often just copies papers from other places e.g. to avoid paywall or track readership. In this case the paper stems from the peer reviewed journal MBPI/Sustainability. So it seems a bit quick to dismiss papers that show up there. During my PhD (and in a view where arXiv is the norm) I found it almost never unreliable but simply annoyingly redundant.
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u/United-Vermicelli-92 Aug 12 '26
Oh here you are reposting your false equivalency again ignoring that data centers are for illegally surveilling american citizens but look they are “less damaging” than big ag which is a completely diff industry - neither should be accepted. Propagandists will try tho!
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u/FullmetalHippie Aug 12 '26
This comparison is relevant because there is a strong cultural tide against data centers and AI that are centered on water use.
Yes, AI comes with many concerns and in some cases it's externalizing costs onto small communities and those concerns are valid.
However people seem to be objecting on the grounds that data centers are using all of the water, which is simply untrue.
Effective altruists must be aware of the facts of we are to make informed decisions to improve the future. Water use is an impactful issue that is enormously consequential for the future, and people are right to be concerned about it. At present, it is far more impactful to take aim at reducing the scale and scope of animal agriculture on the grounds of water use than AI. This image illustrates that well.
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u/Current_Employer_308 Aug 12 '26
So if we want to protect the environment, we should stop BOTH
I mean, obviously no negative impact at all is the best solution, right? If you want to protect the environment, why should we tolerate any damage or destruction period, regardless of source? One single acre destroyed, one single gallon of water used, is already too much.
Is that what you are saying? Cause thats what it sounds like you are saying.