> So the US's data centers are currently using 1% of the US's energy and adding ½% per year, so that in 02027 that number increases to 2%.

1% of an entire nation's energy production for a single, non-essential use-case is a lot. For comparison, circa 2016, US farming, which we generally need to live, takes up 1.9% of energy production (https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/charts-of-note/87964). Hopefully this makes it more obvious that consuming 2% of all energy production, even though the raw magnitude is small, is a lot for a single, non-essential service currently controlled by a handful of companies.

> Energy use, by the way, doesn't damage the environment. Burning fossil fuels does.

I'm aware. The current reality we occupy in the US involves mostly burning fossil fuels to power these tools, and some plants deliberately skirt rulings around environmental safety. Management of resources and the economy is about trade-offs. Yes, in principle a certain activity may not depend on a bad trade, but if your only option right now is a bad tradeoff, it's "in theory" independence from this doesn't mean you should go ahead and do it.

> However, this is not because of massive data center buildouts.

It's because of a number of factors, obviously, but the data center buildouts do not help stem the bleeding, they (currently) exacerbate it. This idea of "well, it contributes to <bad thing> but less than <other bad things> therefore we should do it" is myopic and hopefully it's obvious to you why such a line of reasoning is not going to lead to any mitigation of any kind of crisis.

It's about trade-offs. If the overall ROI is worth the absurd costs, then, yes, it's all worth it. But "hey I (N=1) personally like this tool and get value out of it" does not justify global costs that contribute further to, as you said yourself, irreparable damage.

This isn't even touching on a host of other problems involved in the buildouts, namely making districts decidedly less attractive places to live and displacing current residents by allowing a handful of companies with massive amounts of power to directly disrupt the lives of citizens, for no direct recompense. (https://www.texastribune.org/2026/07/09/texas-data-centers-a...) (https://www.tpr.org/2026-09-17/residents-file-lawsuit-challe...)

> AI might turn out to be a wonderful thing or a terrible thing, but at least for the next decade or two, that won't be because of datacenter buildouts, which are an utterly insignificant fraction of its effect.

If the 2% energy consumption ends up being the final tipping point for total climate collapse, you might feel differently about this statement.

Sure, it's possible a certain 2% could be a tipping point, but seriously, look at US energy use as a whole, and it sounds unlikely.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_States#Fi...

As far as sources go, reading further shows wind and solar still expanding. I don't think we can generalize anything from energy consumption of data centers.