[realreality]

I’m old enough to remember when companies were eager to claim that their data centers (or some aspect) were finally “carbon neutral”.

Now, with the enormous data center growth for AI purposes, companies don’t even bother pretending that any of this is sustainable.

At best, they might delude themselves into believing that a glorified text autocomplete program will magically solve the world’s problems, including the unsustainability of the machines running the program.

[123yawaworht456]

we could exist without any of the modern conveniences. let's tear down the electric grid and return to monke.

[AYBABTME]

We're way past that. Global warming requires (or will, soon enough) heat pumps for survival in many regions of the world. Plenty of regions require large amount of electricity for life critical functions. Degrowth isn't the answer.

[elcomet]

Or alternatively, people will need to move to colder regions.

[FuckButtons]

Yes, they will, which will drive conflict, xenophobia and economic destabilization in the countries those people move to, which will exacerbate global political tensions and probably wind up with us all getting wiped out in a nuclear configuration sometime before the century is over, so we might as well have really nice autocomplete before we get there.

[KoolKat23]

Driving up concrete production, a significant carbon contributor as it stands (low carbon concrete is still in its infancy).

[killingtime74]

Or there are just less people (as we see in developed countries birthrates)

[dorkwood]

Could you really survive without trucks delivering food to stores on your city? I couldn't.

[realreality]

That’s right (even though you’re probably being facetious).

[bloodyplonker22]

It's just that investors are now completely over the whole "DEI and ESG" alphabet investing type of phase after seeing that it has not helped companies produce returns at all.

[Spivak]

ESGs are still going strong, the whole point is potentially accepting lower returns in exchange for voting with your wallet on what companies you support. Investors, the people who collect money for a living, have never been the target for ESGs.