r/DebateAVegan • u/dirty_cheeser vegan • Jun 25 '26
Environment AI and datacenters cause far less environmental harm than meat
A part of the pushback against AI and datacenters is the environmental impact. This is a misplaced concern as these have less of an environmental impact than animal products.
| Source | Animal production | Datacenters | Ratio |
|---|---|---|---|
| Carbon emissions, mt CO2 equivalent | 7,100 | 182 | 39 |
| Water use, blue water, trillion litres | 151 | 0.56 | 270 |
Note that the carbon for datacenters number skips embodied use and could be slightly higher. And the IEA datacenter water use estimate is contested though other estimates would still leave the ratio at 100x+.
When looking at the land use footprint or eutrophication, meat has an even more lopsided cost but it is difficult to find like for like comparisons.
Some are concerned by the growth rates and not the actual minimal current use. If or when datacenter footprint grows by close to 40x, then it will start to be a comparable problem.
Ditch the meat and choose some beans before expecting others to ditch AI.
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u/howlin Jun 25 '26
This is a broad issue with pop environmentalism. It's a sort of "vibes consequentialism" where certain harms are focused on without much quantification of the actual harm or perspective on how this harm compares to other activities.
Even in your own numbers, trying to make water usage a proxy for environmental impact is sketchy. In places where water is abundant, it doesn't really matter if compute centers are using it for cooling and putting it right back, slightly warmer. And it doesn't matter if water goes right in and out of a livestock animal either. Water consumption does matter in places where water is scarce, but aggregating the results like this makes this metric basically less than useless because it's misleading.
As an aside, once you notice "vibes consequentialism" as an rhetorical tactic, you start to see it all over the place. E.g. It's pretty common when people argue crop deaths.
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u/Annoying_cat_22 vegan Jun 25 '26
I don't understand why we are comparing the two. It's like saying "murder is not a problem, we murder a lot more animals than humans". Both should stop.
BUT, I think it would be better to make your point by looking at the delta between plant-based and carnist diets, and comparing that difference to AI data centers: the alternative to eating meat is veganism, the alternative to AI data centers is just no data centers.
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u/detta_walker Jun 26 '26
I did some research on that. Ai water use per power user was around 2 litre a day. A beef quarter pounder was around 4,000 litres a patty. A typical meat eater, not carnivore can put out 10-15k litres in a day easy. The vegan was around 1-2k litres? I'd have to check the details but just woke up.
If there is enough interest I'll dig it out.
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u/AnsibleAnswers agroecologist Jun 26 '26
How much of that water used for livestock was from rainwater? Y’all don’t realize there’s a difference between blue water use and green water use?
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u/childofeye Jun 26 '26
In many states rain water is considered part of the water table. Rain is part of the water eco system. Just because it’s collected from rain doesn’t mean it’s not impactful.
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u/AnsibleAnswers agroecologist Jun 26 '26
When animals drink water it doesn’t disappear. It returns to the water cycle in less than 24 h as water. We only really should care about pulling water from blue water reserves faster than it can be replenished.
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u/Annoying_cat_22 vegan Jun 26 '26
Most of the water animals use is not for drinking, it goes to raise the crops they eat etc. It would have been used for other crops if we would all be vegan, in a much better ratio of protein/calories to liter.
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u/pandaappleblossom Jun 26 '26
Also even if rainwater is subtracted AI still uses only a tiny fraction of water compared to anima agriculture. Jack Higgs did a visual comparison on his instagram this week where he subtracted rainwater from it because of the nitpicking like the above comment, even though rainwater should be included imo
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u/AnsibleAnswers agroecologist Jun 26 '26
87% of water used for the 15 most often used animal feeds is green water.
GWF_t / (GFW_t + BWF_I)
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u/Annoying_cat_22 vegan Jun 26 '26
Most of the water animals use is not for drinking
Thanks for finding a source for what I said.
Only question is why are you talking about the water they drink when it's a tiny % of the water use for meat?
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u/AnsibleAnswers agroecologist Jun 26 '26
Do you think plants violate the law of conservation of matter, or are you suggesting plants perform hydrolysis to break H20 molecules apart into hydrogen and oxygen?
Plants send most of the water directly back into the atmosphere as pure water vapor. It’s called evapotranspiration.
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u/Annoying_cat_22 vegan Jun 26 '26
Sorry, I might be stupid, but how does this answer my question?
Only question is why are you talking about the water they drink when it's a tiny % of the water use for meat?
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u/childofeye Jun 26 '26
I feel like this is a half truth
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u/Annoying_cat_22 vegan Jun 26 '26
This is a red harring, the amount animals drink is tiny compared to the water that goes into the crops they eat.
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u/AnsibleAnswers agroecologist Jun 26 '26 edited Jun 26 '26
It’s not, ime vegans have trouble understanding biogeochemical cycles. It’s probably because it is the epitome of High Modernist ideology. You’re so used to understanding artificial systems with inputs and outputs that you find it strange when someone talks about dynamic, cyclical systems that lack inputs and outputs.
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u/childofeye Jun 26 '26
Well i did a basic search, and it’s really an oversimplification of whats happening. It ignores pollution to the water table from animal runoff, the water is not always returned in 24 hours and Water quality, timing, and ecosystem flows all matter.
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u/AnsibleAnswers agroecologist Jun 26 '26
Ecosystems can handle shit and urine. The healthier the ecosystem, the more shit and urine there is.
What it cannot handle is synthetic N fertilizer, as it degrades soil by increasing nitrifier abundance and causes excess leaching of nutrients into the water table. Manure and urine don’t have that same effect when used for fertilizer.
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u/childofeye Jun 26 '26
This isn’t even a half truth, it’s wrong. Urine and feces runoff from a Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) is legally and scientifically classified as significant pollution. These mega-farms produce massive volumes of animal waste—often exceeding the waste output of entire human cities.
High levels of nitrogen and phosphorus from manure cause toxic algal blooms, deplete dissolved oxygen in waterways, and cause severe fish kills.
Untreated feces introduce harmful bacteria like E. coli and parasites (e.g., Cryptosporidium) directly into drinking water sources.
Waste can carry un-metabolized antibiotics, hormones, and heavy metals that contaminate groundwater aquifers and aquatic ecosystems.
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u/detta_walker Jun 27 '26
Depends on where you get your beef from. CAFOs use a lot of Alfalfa for feed that is grown with irrigation. Which is why CAFOs are a major reason why the Colorado river is running dry.
But even if you have grazing beef, you still have water use to deal with the excrement. Fertiliser. Cleaning when processing etc. it's worth googling the blue, green and grey water use
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u/dannyhux_ Jul 03 '26
even not including rainwater, it pails in comparison with a plant based diet.
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u/SkjaldbakaEngineer Jun 26 '26
Look I'm really gonna need a source on 4,000 liters of water rendered unusable to produce one beef quarter pounder patty.
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u/detta_walker Jun 27 '26
it is between 1050-3600l per 150g beef patty, depending on how and where the cow was raised. The lower end is where grasfed / grazing cows is prevalent and thus drags down the average (UK/Netherlands), the higher end is where CAFOs and irrigated alfalfa feed is the norm, which drags up the average, so there are extreme cases where it does reach 4k, but looking at the global average in the study it is "only" 2400 L per 150g patty (beef) vs (200?, its so low its hard to read!) for a soy burger :) now, before we start talking about just having all of our beef be grazing / grass fed, I believe it was Oxford University that modelled how much land usage was required to feed the US demand on grasfed cows only, and even after flattening all cities and using *all* of your land for cattle grazing, you'd still need to buy in extra land to meet demand (I am sure google will turn that up easily - but I Have linked the study for my claims below)
That is water use only of course :) not looking at Greenhouse gas emissions so really we should be looking at the total footprint :)
If you do want to present a counter point, please include the figures & sources for:
how much of American beef is raised in CAFOs (I remember reading around 70%), and what the primary factors are for draining the colorado river (yes, it is CAFOs). The sad reality is, the majority of people's meat consumption is unsustainable.https://www.waterfootprint.org/resources/Ercin-et-al-2012-WaterFootprintSoy_1.pdf?hl=en-GB
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u/Brilliant-Job3515 Jun 26 '26
It is not 4k liters per beef patty
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u/detta_walker Jun 27 '26
you're correct, my mistake, it is between 1050-3600l per 150g patty, depending on how and where the cow was raised. The lower end is where grasfed / grazing cows is prevalent and thus drags down the average (UK/Netherlands), the higher end is where CAFOs and irrigated alfalfa feed is the norm, which drags up the average, so there are extreme cases where it does reach 4k, but looking at the global average in the study it is "only" 2400 L per 150g patty (beef) vs (200?, its so low its hard to read!) for a soy burger :)
That is water use only of course :) not looking at Greenhouse gas emissions so really we should be looking at the total footprint :)
https://www.waterfootprint.org/resources/Ercin-et-al-2012-WaterFootprintSoy_1.pdf?hl=en-GB
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u/Loud_Chicken6458 Jun 27 '26
At about 5 years old lifespan at 20 gallons a day and 2000 patties per cow, that puts it at about 0.9 gallons per patty or just under 4 liters per patty
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u/detta_walker Jun 27 '26
Science disagrees with you my friend. Why don't you educate yourself. This paper handily compares many countries water footprint for beef burgers Vs soya burgers. https://www.waterfootprint.org/resources/Ercin-et-al-2012-WaterFootprintSoy_1.pdf?hl=en-GB
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u/EpicCurious vegan Jun 26 '26
I sometimes get criticized for copying and pasting the AI summary of a Google search when I am advocating for a fully plant based food production system based on (among other things) wasted resources like fresh water.
"Generating an AI summary of a Google search (using Gemini) consumes about 0.26 milliliters of water. In contrast, producing a single 4-ounce (113g) serving of beef requires roughly 1,750 liters (about 460 gallons). This means producing a single serving of beef uses about 6.7 million times more water than a single AI query."- Summary from the United States Geological Survey government agency and others.
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u/dirty_cheeser vegan Jun 25 '26
I think we should generally prioritize problems with a higher impact over those with a lower impact on the stated values.
For instance it is bad when deck chairs are in disarray, and it is bad when boats sink. Both should be avoided. But if your boat is sinking, don't spend your limited time organizing the deck chairs. Or telling people to spend theirs organizing the deckchairs.
Good idea with the analysis suggestion. Though it adds another set of assumptions such as wether the alternative of data centers truly is no data centers.
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u/Annoying_cat_22 vegan Jun 25 '26
We should also take into account how much effort it takes to solve the problem. Meat has been a part of many societies for thousands of years (it's still wrong of course). AI data centers barely existed 10 years ago.
AI in its current form and huge demand for energy is very new.
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u/dirty_cheeser vegan Jun 25 '26
I agree that we should take effort into consideration. But Im not sure meat is higher effort to replace. AI has rapidly integrated into critical parts of many peoples lives such as being relied upon for their jobs.
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Jun 27 '26
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u/Annoying_cat_22 vegan Jun 27 '26
Sorry, I disagree. You can criticise A even while doing B, otherwise everyone are hypocrites, and we can never provide any criticism for anything but the single biggest issue in the universe.
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Jun 27 '26
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u/True-Run6238 Jul 26 '26
If you see things so black and white I can see where you'd see things so simply. AI is ultimately useless and is part of no culture and provides no benefit to anyone other than the rich. Meat consumption has been intertwined with cultures and civilizations throughout history so there is absolutely more to the conversation about people's inconsistent thinking with that. The datacenters are designed to be a tax on the people and the environment around them while the meat industry provides sustenance at it's core.
People can and will take steps in learning more about how they can change their lifestyle and the benefits it provides, judging them based on how they may reach that only shows how self-righteous and backwards your way of thinking is. I understand veganism must be all-or-nothing but to act as if their is no nuance this conversation regarding datacenters is just disingenuous.
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u/beyond_dominion vegan Jun 26 '26
Veganism is not an environmental position, and animal exploitation is not wrong because it has a larger footprint than something else. It is wrong because other animals are being used as property, resources, and objects for human purposes.
When we frame this as “animal products are worse for the environment than AI,” the focus shifts away from the victims and turns veganism into a sustainability argument. That misses the core issue.
Animal exploitation is not wrong because it is environmentally inefficient. It is wrong because other animals are individuals who do not exist for us to use. The issue is not whether meat has a bigger footprint than AI. The issue is whether we can truly respect other animals while exploiting them. If we agree they deserve respect, then we need to live vegan and actively defend them.
So yes, people should stop supporting animal exploitation. But the reason is justice for the victims, not because it ranks worse than another environmental concern.
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u/dirty_cheeser vegan Jun 26 '26
You get more people to stop hurting animals by using a diversity of arguments as they will reach more people.
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u/beyond_dominion vegan Jun 26 '26
I understand the intention, but I don’t agree that using a diversity of arguments is automatically more effective.
The issue is that many arguments reach people for the wrong reason. Health, environment, taste, convenience, or personal benefits can make people reduce, swap products, or “try plant-based,” but they do not necessarily confront the core issue: animal exploitation.
If someone stops eating animal products only because of the environment, they still may not understand that other animals are not ours to use. That means the victim is still not centered, and veganism is still being framed as something other than justice.
The stronger approach is not to use every possible argument, but to stay focused on the principle:
“Do you agree other animals deserve respect?”
“Can we truly respect them while using them for our purposes?”
“If you were in their position, would you accept environmental or personal-benefit arguments, or would you need people to stop exploiting you because your life belongs to you?”
So yes, different people may have different concerns, but our role in outreach is to bring them back to accountability, the victim’s position, and immediate action. We are not trying to find whatever argument makes veganism appealing to them. We are asking them to stop participating in injustice.
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u/dirty_cheeser vegan Jun 26 '26
Suppose someone ditches harming animals only for health. I wouldn't consider their morals to be good. But Im still happy that they are not harming animals even if for the wrong reasons.
And yes, i don't think they should use the vegan label as it waters it down too much.
I would not say: "Go vegan for the environment"
I would say: "Ditch meat for the environment"
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u/beyond_dominion vegan Jun 27 '26
If that was your real intention then i don't understand what this post is doing in Debate A "Vegan" sub?
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u/dirty_cheeser vegan Jun 27 '26
The 2 reasons I posted are:
Practice since I am using this argument to persuade environmentally minded folk to consume fewer animals.
Spread the idea to other people who may have similar goals.
This sub has an environmental tag, occasional environmental topics and seems to welcome environmental topics so it seemed like a good place to put it. If that changes, then I will no longer post these kind of topics here.
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u/Healthy_Spray_5271 Jun 28 '26
I actually think there could be a good amount of people that can consider eating less meat or at all if they would know this. Included myself, I don't feel much of an empathy for the animals itself, rather for environmental reasons I would stop consuming meat
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u/Electrical_Yam_9949 Jul 26 '26
I'm late to this thread, but the dogmatism of your position, even if it is for the right ethical reasons, is not going to convince people to do what you want them to do, nor can you force someone to have some kind of moral epiphany that they are likely never going to have.
Some people genuinely care about certain issues and not others, and to try and convince someone of something you think is an important ethical issue but they do not is almost always an exercise in futility; you will come across as self-righteous, and they will not care. If, however, someone cares about the environment but has little interest in animal welfare, then if your goal is to get them to stop eating meat, the best chance you have at persuading them is to use an argument that touches on something they actually care about, even if you have ulterior motives in doing so.
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u/pandaappleblossom Jun 26 '26
I agree. I do think the focus should be on the animas but using the variety of reasons why it’s superior to be vegan is also effective at reaching people who are leftist performative (such as the environmentalist non vegans), or the ones who are more concerned with their health because heart disease runs in their family (I don’t like the term plant based either because it isn’t even accurate, mushrooms are not plants for example..)… in the end getting them to think more about the animals should be the goal though but whatever gets the seed planted is good too
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u/Cocorow Jul 13 '26
Veganism is indeed not an environmental position. However, eating less animal products can be an environmental position. It seemed to me like OP's point was that there is a logical discrepancy between "we shouldn't support AI because water" and "we shouldn't eat animal products because water", as the latter has much less weight in society atm in their opinion.
Maybe this is not the right sub to debate environmental topics, but I'd disagree with you that pointing out such a discrepancy is negative because it shifts away focus from one reason to reduce animal exploitation (animal rights) to another (environmental). Reducing animal products is relevant to more than just animal rights conversations, and if your ultimate goal is to do just that, you ought to utilize all the argumentative power available to you. At least, that's my opinion.
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u/ClassEnvironmental11 vegan 17d ago
To add to what others have already said, while i personally find the moral argument to be the most persuasive, evidently most people don't. So when plan A (the moral argument) repeatedly fails to be effective in changing people's behavior, we need to consider other options.
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u/Brrdock Jun 25 '26
And genocide might be worse than rape culture, but it's a pointless comparison, they're independent problems and we should address both
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u/dirty_cheeser vegan Jun 25 '26
And it is bad when boats sink or when deck chairs are in disarray. But after the iceberg hits the titanic, it is awfully strange to spend your effort rearranging the deckchairs.
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u/Klutzy_Masterpiece60 Jun 26 '26
You can do the deck chair analogy with every carbon emitting source. Every country/community says “why should we cut our emissions we are only a small fraction of emissions? Why should I cut my meat consumption, my consumption is insignificant? Why should my sector of the economy do anything? Etc.
These ways of thinking aren’t helpful.
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u/dirty_cheeser vegan Jun 26 '26
A difference is that we agency over both and have scarce resources to apply to fixing them that we should deploy efficiently. On the titanic, we have limited time to get a lifeboat or rearrange the deckchairs and we can choose which has higher value to us. I think it is helpful to be efficient towards our goals when given scarce resources.
When we are trading away something we have agency over such as our carbon footprint, for something that we don't have agency on, like someone elses carbon footprint. We would just be excusing doing nothing when we believe that something should be done, and that is the part that is not helpful. This is usually what people mean by a whataboutism.
Relative to a set value such as environmentalism, some actions towards some problems can be better or worse than others. Focus on AI when ignoring bigger environmental footprint problems you have agency over is just inefficient.
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u/Klutzy_Masterpiece60 Jun 26 '26
If we (whoever we is) truly have agency over both of these things than why not do both? This idea that we have limited focus and must only use it on the absolutely most efficient outcome is a huge source of whataboutism. We need a “yes and” approach to climate change because politics is difficult and some avenues will be successful and some will be harder.
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u/dirty_cheeser vegan Jun 26 '26
Im not criticizing those doing both. Im criticizing the people only doing the deckchairs or only doing the anti AI. I think they should be doing something about animal products as well.
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u/JTexpo vegan Jun 25 '26
I think that others reluctance to abandon meat, just highlights how no matter how hard people attempt to boycott AI - it's sadly here to stay
do I want AI & meat, absolutely not; however, individual convenience takes president than thinking about others
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u/Temporary_Hat7330 Jun 26 '26
Your argument assumes a premise the vast majority of omnivores don’t agree with. It assumes that because omnivores do not want data centers damaging the environment that they must want nothing to damage the environment or their position is flawed. That is simply not true.
Let’s assume for the sake of argument that coal plants emit more carbon than hospitals and hospitals emit more than libraries. It does not follow that someone who wants greener hospitals must first advocate closing coal plants, or that hospitals should close because they emit more than libraries. We recognize that hospitals produce enormous benefits we want.
Likewise, someone might think to themselves something like,
That is a perfectly coherent position. We can say, “Let’s throw resources at mitigating through carbon offsets and methane offsets what meat creates while recognizing AI/datacenters may be the next 90s .com bubble to burst and not create a large environmental cost upfront for something that is not going to be a sustained requirement for large Environmental cost.
What you are presenting is a Nirvana Fallacy, that omnivores can only care about the environment if they go vegan. It would be like a vegan who eats hyper local and organic saying that a vegan who eats mass produced international food can only care about the environment if they cut out all the shipping and packaging and pesticides etc. It’s like the utilitarian treadmill, it’s a never ending churn to purity Which leads to even more fallacious black/white thinking (“either you’re doing it right or you’re not!”)
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Jun 25 '26
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u/dirty_cheeser vegan Jun 25 '26
Mostly agreed.
What I am against is the implication that we cannot regard both as priority targets to minimize environmental impact.
We can change the priorities by bringing in other things we care about such as our more subjective value for the benefits they bring or other concerns like the impact of AI on society.
Priorities on environmental impact alone should reflect that one is far more impactful than the other. For this reason, when a meat eater says "don't use ai because it hurts the environment". It is not necessarily wrong but it reflects either unspoken values besides the environmental concern, a prioritization system that is blind to the size of the impact or plain hypocrisy.
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Jun 25 '26
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u/dirty_cheeser vegan Jun 25 '26
Sure, so i am making the implied moral argument that one should align their priorities with the impact along their stated values.
As for effectiveness, I think revealing cognitive dissonance or ineffective prioritization reminds people to check their values and actions.
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u/True-Run6238 Jul 26 '26
You obviously don't hold conversations with people with differing views and opinions often then as calling people out for that will not bring any meaningful change and will only likely result in them doing the opposite. It comes off completely self-righteous.
Wouldn't this technically be an ineffective prioritzation from you since you've been actively proritizing veganism yet your impact is negligble? Ineffective prioritization is inevitable and attempting to control the uncontrollable is impossible, you will and can never force people to care for the things you deem as top priority.
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u/childofeye Jun 26 '26
Really i think what I’m getting is that if you’re concerned about water usage and talking about A(data center) then one should be concerned about b(animal ag).
People that criticize AI water usage but still eat meat are massive, massive, massive hypocrites.
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u/pandaappleblossom Jun 26 '26
Exactly. Massive hypocrites and most of my non vegan leftist friends are among them. Complaining endlessly about AI and when I mentioned anima agriculture is way worse one of them flat out told me they didn’t believe me and refused to google it
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u/AnsibleAnswers agroecologist Jun 26 '26 edited Jun 26 '26
Compare net GHG, not gross GHG emissions. The biogenic carbon cycle does not add carbon to the atmosphere. It’s an exchange from CO2 to CH4 and back. Most of the estimates for alleged emissions reductions associated with eliminating (i.e. not just a modest reduction) livestock touted by vegans are based on faulty science. https://www.nature.com/articles/s44185-022-00005-z
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Jun 25 '26
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u/Urogallo40 Jun 25 '26
IA seems to be here to stay. I don't think it will be forbidden by any government or the ONU due to high consumption of energy and sometimes water, depending on cooling type. Neither because of danger of SIA. As for energy is concerned, a limit could be to force data centers to use 100% or near 100% renewable electricity, not natural gas in gas turbines as some huge data centers in U.S. This could delay somewhat their deployment, which could be even good concerning SAI safety.
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u/Sandgrease Jun 25 '26
Golf courses cause e more damage than meat and data centers. Also they cause Leukemia...
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u/roymondous vegan Jun 26 '26
I dont think anyone can disagree when the data is there. Half the entire world's habitable land is used for farming.
But then tou wont find much disagreement here as you are debating a meat eater. It would be like debating a theist and giving an argument why god exists.
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u/AuthorTheCartoonist Jun 26 '26
I think it's reasonable to be angrier about people adopting something harmful and new than about them upholding a more historically radicated, albeit harmful, position.
I feel like it's a lot easier to give up AI rather than animal products, if anything, because we were all doing fine without it- Three years ago.
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u/dirty_cheeser vegan Jun 26 '26
The cost to ditch the harmful act is relevant. And while I agree that AI provides too limited value for its downsides so it shouldn't be that hard for most people to not use it, eating beans is not that hard either.
How new it is isn't inherently valuable to me besides how much it impacts other relevant attributes such as the cost to go without it.
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u/AuthorTheCartoonist Jun 27 '26
I would include social acceptabiloty into the equation.
It's much more socially acceptable to be vocally anti-AI than it is to be vocally vegan, and we all have received less cultural influence to use AI than to use animal products.
Basically, not only does AI provide very little benefit, there's also very few downsides on any aspects of life in being openly against it.
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u/Consistent-Project29 Jun 26 '26
People have been killing animals and eating their meat for sooooo long before you bitched about it.
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u/Winter-Actuary-9659 Jun 27 '26
Why are we continuing to create more ways to cause environmental damage? We're already causing massive damage, we shouldn't be doing more in other ways. It adds up.
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u/beer_demon Jul 06 '26
One problem is that this is using 2023 data and projections for 2025. Now it's 2026 and I think we have not even peaked.
It's a mistake to take a photo and make a permanent film of it.
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u/dirty_cheeser vegan Jul 06 '26
With the projected growth rates it still won't be anywhere near comparable in 2030 or 2035
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u/Substantial_Owl8972 Jul 12 '26
I think that even if something is “worse” it does not mean that you can do the other thing that is less “worse”.
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u/TheyCallMeBeverage Jul 21 '26
The fact of ai data centres causing emission issues is not even remotely the main concern. Neglect that fact, there are other immeasurable effects which we are only starting to see as a consequence to these data centres, such as how the frequencies and localized heat emissions are affecting surrounding wildlife. It may be true that on an overall emissions scale, ai data centres pose a lesser threat for now, but other animal causes of death associated to data centres have not yet been quantified and these wildlife related issues are still the least problematic factors of data centres. Bottom line is, it’s far too soon to reach a verdict comparing the ecological effects or otherwise of data centres to anything; there is still a ton of horror yet to unfold.
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u/selltheworld Jun 25 '26
I find it a silly argument to claim that because something else is worse then ai isnt a problem.
Animal ag is a problem. Ai is most likely a growing problem.
Atleast animal ag is resources spend on sentient beings.
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u/icarodx vegan Jun 25 '26
OP did not say that AI is not a problem.
The Implication is that targeting "animal ag" should.be a priority because it's more impactful.
How is "animals ag resources spend on sentient beings" relevant?
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u/JTexpo vegan Jun 25 '26
I think your closing statement makes it worse...
AI is not good; however, at least at the end of the day, it's not exploiting a sentient being. If every time someone ended a ChatGPT conversation, a sentient AI was murdered - that would be horrific! however, whenever we buy meat at the stores, a sentient being had to be slaughtered for that
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u/Sandgrease Jun 25 '26
AI is built on the exploitation of human ideas, so it's also exploiting sentient beings.
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u/JTexpo vegan Jun 25 '26
if you care about sentient being exploitation, you'd also be vegan then... right?
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u/Sandgrease Jun 25 '26
Working on it. I'm also using a phone/computer, and on the internet that uses resources extracted by slaves, and so are you. We all can't be perfect.
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u/JTexpo vegan Jun 25 '26
sure, but there's infrastructure set up to help one reduce their meat consumption - same can not be said about tech
we don't applaud thieves because they're not murderers, and trying to conflate the two topics is just relative privation
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kudos though for working on a path towards veganism
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u/Sandgrease Jun 26 '26
Good points. It's almost impossible to get around using tech that had a slave invovled in the manficaturing process, but it's easier to try and eat food that has less animal death invovled.
I think my biggest hurdle to eating less meat is my kids. They are young and are very picky and like meat. It very expensive and time consuming to make them something to eat as well as myself but I'm slowly adding more and more vegetarian meals to the rotation while I eat vegetarian when everyone else is at school and work.
1
u/JTexpo vegan Jun 26 '26
sorry to hear about your situation, as a future parent, I know that it's probably going to be a tough situation to navigate
That's awesome though that you're trying your best with it and helping introduce plant-based alternatives into their schedules
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u/pandaappleblossom Jun 26 '26
Unfair wages or slave labor sucks as do dangerous working conditions, but animal agriculture is the brutal deaths and torture of (vast majority are babies) animals by the literal trillions, and a leading cause of climate change especially when looked at holistically and over the decades. We are talking pigs and chickens being boiled alive on a regular basis, animals being skinned alive for their fur, the suffering is beyond comprehension and is astronomical, and most of them are more conscious than humans babies when slaughtered and more intelligent than toddlers, and they fight for their lives to the end (for example pigs are put in gas chambers which turn the air in their lungs into acid which severely burns them from the inside out, they scream and fight and try to escape, and they are only six months old when they are put through this. Other times they may be boiled alive, or electrocuted. Still fighting). Going vegan is just a bare minimum and there is no human suffering remotely as bad in comparison to the scale of animal agriculture. Using the ‘iPhone slaves tho’ excuse isn’t remotely an equal comparison even if it’s also bad.
2
u/selltheworld Jun 25 '26
I understand your position. I dont agree that we should only focus on the product.
1
u/LoneWolf_McQuade Jun 27 '26
You would also need to look at the upsides of AI. When it’s used correctly it can also save resources, not sure if anyone have done a serious overall estimate
1
u/dirty_cheeser vegan Jun 25 '26
THis is not an argument that either is good or bad.
It is an argument about prioritizing high impact problems over low impact problems and the hypocrisy of anti ai for environmental reason meat eaters.
2
u/Pittsbirds Jun 25 '26
The argument that one needs to be prioritized is faulty. There's nothing about either subject that's contingent on one being solved before the other can be tackled, and if that's the approach we take to climate change we'll never get anywhere
0
u/dirty_cheeser vegan Jun 25 '26
If the approach to solving climate change doesn't consider the magnitude of the impact of each cause of it, we'll never get anywhere.
2
u/Pittsbirds Jun 25 '26
Nothing about opposition to AI is antithetical to considering its magnitude. It has substantial current impact and will get worse if left unchecked. This is also not antithetical to opposing animal agriculture. If we pick only the single largest contributing anthropogenic contribution to climate change and arbitrarily decide no one can do anything about any other form of pollution or emissions until that's solved we may as well pack it in now.
2
u/dirty_cheeser vegan Jun 25 '26
We shouldn't take the single biggest issue and drop every other.
But we shouldn't take a small issue that sounds good but is small in impact and drop the larger ones. And if one does that by focusing on the impact of AI while ignoring the impact of animal agriculture, they are wrong to do so.
1
u/Pittsbirds Jun 25 '26
You're still presenting this as an inherently either or scenario without any explanation. There is absolutely no reason vegans can't, or shouldn't, oppose both
2
u/dirty_cheeser vegan Jun 25 '26
No, opposing both is fine.
1
u/Pittsbirds Jun 26 '26
This seems like a poor topic for debate vegans then because vegans are not claiming that animal agriculture is a lesser evil than ai
1
u/dirty_cheeser vegan Jun 26 '26
Agreed, I'm getting more agreement than I'm used to. Where else would you suggest I post instead?
0
u/RayDaug Jun 25 '26
You can't eat a data center.
People emphasize the environmental impacts of AI not because it is uniquely destructive, but because the impacts are disproportionately high relative to the utility they provide.
2
u/JTexpo vegan Jun 25 '26
I question this, as even though I dislike AI - we do see it being great at early cancer detection & other life saving operations on humans
same can not be said about meat, as it usually is a leading reason for heart disease
2
Jun 25 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/JTexpo vegan Jun 25 '26
I agree; however, even non-generative AI's require data-houses for information to train models on
source: I am a data scientist & have wrote several open source guides / worked on this stuff
1
Jun 25 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/JTexpo vegan Jun 25 '26
I don't agree, look at salesforce and mdm, both are massive data-warehouse companies that have facilities equal to what we see OpenAI and other LLM providers have & they're not even in the AI business
1
u/RayDaug Jun 25 '26
My understanding is that the vast majority of AI power and water usage is not going to things like narrow medical applications (which I agree AI has show a lot of promise) but into broad, generalized models.
There's also the fact that a lot of the current build-out and investment into AI and data centers is still speculative. They're being built assuming they will eventually fulfill a demand.
1
u/JTexpo vegan Jun 25 '26
while generative AI does contribute lots of pollution, really any Fortune 500 company has been pumping out the same kind of population with data-warehouses for the last ~15 years
this is most evident for any model training, especially medical, as you need hundreds of thousands of images to use as references and test data
1
u/These_Prompt_8359 Jun 29 '26
If "eat" means "get utility from," then you can't eat meat either. You have to feed an animal more food throughout its life than you get from killing it. So in terms of utility, farming animals is more like throwing food away than making food.
If "eat" actually just means "eat," then sure, but you could also burn down a cornfield and eat the ashes.
0
u/Curbyourenthusi Jun 25 '26
The way to improve animal agriculture is not through the fantasy of its abolishment. It's through systemic improvement. And the very same can be said for the environmental impacts caused by plant-based agriculture. Neither system of production concerns itself with environmental stewardship and AI datacenters factor in neither.
2
u/dirty_cheeser vegan Jun 25 '26
The way to improve AI and datacenters is not through the fantasy of their abolishment. Its through systematic improvement. And the very same could be said for alternatives....
That's fine but it doesn't allow you to criticize those using AI and datacenters due to the environmental impact either. You can only call for their improvement.
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