Opinions and Editorials Section
By Audrey Elwood, Campus News Editor
Personal responsibility in the climate crisis is over and understated at the same time. Some people argue that there is no ethical consumption under climate change as a scapegoat and do utterly nothing. Others will try to fit all of their trash in a Mason jar. The newest lightning rod of personal responsibility is AI, and its environmental impacts are extremely overstated.
AI is supposed to consume one trillion gallons of fresh water a year by 2080. It is an elite eye-catching number. Yet according to green.org, corn production in the United States alone uses 20 trillion gallons, right now. Well, because humans need food, it’s more justified. However, shockingly only 1% of corn grown in the U.S. is consumed by humans, the rest goes to cattle.
TikTok, the place where the fearmongering headlines about AI water usage was probably most viewed, is a major consumer of water. According to greenspector.com, around one minute of scrolling on TikTok is equal to .27 gallons of water, and one AI search is .136 gallons of water. Let’s be honest though, nobody spends just one minute on TikTok.
When hyperfocusing on the nitty-gritty of a singular person’s AI usage, focus is lost on the bigger picture. Writing off AI as an inherent evil, specifically for climate purposes, for other purposes, it is very much an inherent evil – the benefits of it are lost. I am not saying to go crazy on AI searches. It is exhausting a fragile system. Nonetheless, the water system has been exhausted, especially in the American west.
Campus News Editor Audrey Elwood argues that the big consumers of water are not the suspected language learning models.
The argument must be made, however, that individuals have some culpability in the climate crisis. The biggest polluters are funded by the consumers. If there was no demand for plastic bottles, or Shein clothes, they would cease to exist.
When removing the consumer from the ecosystem of consumerism, it ceases to exist. If people stopped consuming as much beef, then corn production would go down, then we would use less water and the same goes for AI. Then again, one consumer will do very little to curb any mega corporation.
This is where community plays a part. If there is no collective action there are negligible results, but collective action has to be everyone doing their part. However, if individuals are making personal sacrifices and others are not, that is really discouraging. You cannot control others, and making them feel bad, literally does nothing good for anyone and just pushes them away.
It is a balance that is nearly impossible to hit. That is what makes the crisis so doomed right now. How do we get the most individualistic, self-serving society on the planet to band together? It cannot be done without a major societal shift.
Contributing in little ways makes the situation less scary. By not eating meat two days a week, walking instead of driving, reducing food waste and spending less time on screens, there is relief from the horrors. The main argument here is that, before judging others in a climate-puritanical way, evaluate yourself.
Yes, every little action adds up to more, but at the same time, give yourself and others grace. An individual cannot do all the change the world needs, but the world needs all the change they can do.
