In 2025, AI and climate change, two of the biggest societal disruptors we’re facing, will collide.
The summer of 2024 broke the record for Earth’s hottest day since data collection began, sparking widespread media coverage and public debate. This also happens to be the year that both Microsoft and Google, two of the leading big tech companies investing heavily in AI research and development, missed their climate targets. While this also made headlines and spurred indignation, AI’s environmental impacts are still far from being common knowledge.
In reality, AI’s current “bigger is better” paradigm—epitomized by tech companies’ pursuit of ever bigger, more powerful large language models that are presented as the