This kind of logic only works if the percentages for each industry are all equally that small, so you can treat them as all equally bad, but they are absolutely not.

>Guess what happens when you add them up...

I'll guess, they add up to 100%?

I don't see what's the insight here.

It's not really about which one matters. They all matter. But here is a rough breakdown of global fossil fuel energy usage:

* Electricity: 27%

* Industry: 24%

* Transportation: 15%

* Agriculture & land use: 11%

* Buildings: 7%

Then within electricity, data centers use about 1.5% of global electricity. Within data centers, AI accounts for somewhere between 15-20% of energy use.

So if you take 27% × 1.5% × ~17%, you find that AI is currently responsible for something like 0.07% of global fossil fuel emissions.

It definitely matters in the "every bit matters" sense, but also the numbers paint a really different picture than you'd get from statement like the one we started with.

Not even close. Crypto has always been able to cut their own emissions before needing lots of compute.

AI on the other hand cannot, and still needs thousands of wasteful data centers.

I think it's much less cynical than that. People both fear and dislike AI, recognize that the "it may destroy my livelihood and commodify human creativity" complaint falls on deaf ears, and are latching onto anything resembling a credible ethical complaint that people may actually listen to.

Most people pushing back against data centers simply don't want invite something into their city that will use up resources (likely raising prices), while the big selling point is that it will put them out of work. You can say that won't actually happen and everyone will keep their jobs, but that has not been the messaging. CEOs want to know how many people they can get rid of once they start using AI. Why would anyone sign up to have that in their backyard?

Animal agriculture is around 15% of global emissions, and AI is probably .1% to .5%, but sure, stop using LLMs. That will solve the problem.

The heating of your house is worth the energy of many thousands of llm queries. So only turning down the thermostat by the smallest of steps would compensate your llm use.

So, no you don't have to freeze to death to easily compensate your llm use.

What about putting trees down for soya fields?

This is definitely not always the case[0], let's not pretend these companies give a fuck about the communities in which their data centers operate[1].

0: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jan/15/elon-musk...

1: https://www.texastribune.org/2025/10/09/texas-hood-county-cr...

Yeah that assumes that AI is an absolute negative. What if it impacts positively? I mean you gotta spend money to make money.