Incredibly bizarre take. You can build more capacity without frying the planet. Many ai companies are directly investing in nuclear plants for this reason, for example.
Several companies investing in AI Have made commitments to renewable and clean energy. However at most half of this increased energy demand is expected to come from renewables through 2030 and fossil fuels will continue to be heavily utilized for the massive data center build outs occurring beyond that, according to the International Energy Agency’s April 2025 report. Nuclear energy has long build outs of 10+ years. For the forseeable future the AI industry will continue to contribute to climate change, at a point in history where immediate drastic action is needed to mitigate the impending climate catastrophe.
Rapidly increased energy use from fossil fuels (despite up to half coming from renewables), is simply not good enough. We are likely in the process of exceeding the 1.5 degree threshold targeted by the Paris Climate Accords. Making gestures toward renewable energy while drastically increasing fossil fuel usage is dangerously irresponsible.
As for degrowthers - that’s really not the reason nuclear plants have been shuttered, historically - rather it’s aging infrastructure as plants reached the end of their operational timelines, and economic competition (historically) from fossil fuels. “Degrowth”, on the other hand, is a recent ideology.
Nor is the expected energy use from shuttered nuclear expected to address the extreme energy usage from AI data centers. The IEA already forecasts with unshuttering in mind. Sadly your notion that unshuttering will be enough to make AI energy clean just isn’t true once we take sober stock of our current situation. And, as truly dire as our circumstances are, we are better off acknowledging them with an honest appraisal so we can make the optimal decisions around our predicament - rather than digging our hole even deeper in the comfort of our rose colored glasses and Pollyanna ideologies.
