I tried to post this to Reddit but for some reason it keeps getting removed by filters. I normally just lurk on Lemmy but I decided to make an account because I’m so over that stupid platform.
ANYWAY
Last night on my flight home I noticed that the person in front of me was using ChatGPT. I got nosy so I looked closer and found out that they were actually using ChatGPT to write the content for a program of a sustainability and climate conference. They specifically included a section about “dirty” energy sources and the harm that results from energy producers supplying data centers. I was floored.
I am not sure if this was the final product or just a draft, but I find it pretty gross and ironic that the AI that is fueling the climate crisis and responsible for the rapid development of data centers that are doing irreparable damage to local communities and ecosystems is being employed to create the materials for a sustainability conference. Maybe start with looking in the mirror first?
I looked up the company, and turns out this program might be part of a Keynote Livestream that is featuring the Mayor of San Fransisco lol.
The only way to control people’s behavior is to change the real world cost. Want to decrease consumption of high resource and CO2 foods? Stop externalizing their cost. Want to decrease people’s AI usage? Stop externalizing costs. Want to encourage people to switch to lower CO2 transport? Stop externalizing costs. Want to encourage upcycling and decrease waste? Stop externalizing costs. Want companies in any business to decrease their ecological impact? Stop externalizing costs. If we actually charged what things cost then any market would naturally correct itself. If we just globally charged what things actually cost then that would about solve the situation almost overnight.
If we can change what things cost then it demonstrates the market isn’t natural. The problem we’re running into here is that the market and politics are intertwined, so the market can set the prices by lobbying the government to change what things cost.
So you have to defeat the market first before we can actually set prices to include the real costs of carbon emissions.
The cost would ideally just be the actual or true cost including the environmental impact as best as that can be calculated. You are right though that wealth and power are not indistinct and corporations use their wealth to increase the externalization of costs of their services or products to maximize their immediate profits. The intention of a government is to police the market, not the other way around. Our problem with humanity committing a slow suicide is that it’s reversed.
Cost isn’t always measured in dollars. The problem with how we externalize the costs is by looking at it from a money perspective.
We’re racking up an absolutely enormous environmental debt on margin, and we are not preparing at all to repay that debt.