🎧 Technology’s role in the climate crisis

Hello all — just a quick podcast update from us.

We’ve recently wrapped up a miniseries called Net0++. We interviewed activists, researchers, a journalist, and even an expert in concrete (yep) — to help us explore how the tech industry’s business model is worsening the climate crisis.

In Big Dirty Data Centres, we heard from Jenna Ruddock and Boxi Wu, who shared their work on data centre expansion — which has ramped up with the AI hype — and how local communities are pushing back against these projects.

Listen to learn more about how data centres impact the local environment. They use huge amounts of water, strain energy grids, and cause incessant noise pollution. Community pushback is often met with narratives from local governments and national media that mischaracterise protestors as individualistic NIMBYs (Not In My Backyard) who are standing against progress, rather than environmental degradation.

Calling networks of data centres ‘the cloud’ is a powerful narrative device that helps tech companies hide massive physical infrastructure projects behind an image of something weightless and infinite. In the episode, Jenna highlights that new infrastructure locks us into a very specific vision of the future.

📅 We’re hosting an event on data centre resistance this Friday, December 6th. Go here to learn more and RSVP if this feels relevant to your work. Guests we interviewed for this series will also be in attendance, so it’s an opportunity to learn more about what they’re doing.

In Microsoft’s Greenwashing, we interviewed Holly Alpine, who led an internal sustainability programme at Microsoft for the better part of a decade. In the episode, Holly describes working within a large corporation that set clear sustainability goals, while also building a client base of fossil fuel companies, helping them source oil and gas using new technology.

In Reporting on AI’s Climate Injustices, we spoke with journalist Karen Hao, who recently reported on Holly’s inside advocacy, and the fact that work with fossil fuel companies makes a mockery of Microsoft's sustainability pledges. In this episode, Karen shows just how hard it is to report on the environmental impacts of tech businesses. All reporting on the tech industry is investigative by default, meaning it’s expensive and slow.

We didn’t want the series to be all doom and gloom. Despite the annoying hype about the role AI can play in tackling climate issues, there are actual ways technology can help. We interviewed Sherif Elsayed-Ali, who spoke to us about how AI can reduce the carbon emissions of concrete in Concrete Arguments for AI (if you’ll forgive the pun). If you think learning about concrete is boring, you’re wrong: it's a material that is unique, integral to our built environment, and responsible for 8% of human-made carbon emissions globally. And reducing the emissions created during it’s production — even a little bit — can make a huge difference.

Thanks for listening to these episodes, and all others in our podcast feed. As ever, if there are topics you want us to cover, or if you want us to interview YOU, just reach out.

Alix & the podcast team (Sarah, Georgia, and Prathm)

If this was forwarded to you, sign up here.