The Intersection of the Climate Emergency and the AI Crisis

The climate emergency and the AI crisis are separate issues but share many similarities.

On our current trajectory, both of these crises threaten to upend society. Thus, they’re equal urgent priorities which require equal urgent attention. Yet, you’d never know that from the lack of political action on both issues.

Below are seven parallels between these simultaneously occurring and civilisation-threatening crises.

The Intersection of the Climate and AI Crises

1. Some of the Wealthiest Corporations Profit by Accelerating These Crises

Tech companies and fossil fuel companies (like oil and gas giants), are some of the wealthiest on the planet. They continue investing in their dangerous products because of sheer greed. Their profits signal our collective demise.

2. Politicians Ignore These Crises Due to Effective Lobbying by Both Industries

Data from opensecrets.org shows that the oil and gas industry spent over $3 billion on lobbying in the US alone, between 1998 and 2025. Meanwhile, a report from CNBC shows that the tech industry spent $957 million on lobbying in the US, over the course of a single year – 2023.

These industries have bought political power to prevent regulation, thus hobbling humanity’s chances of survival. And they’ve been allowed to get away with it so far.

3. Experts Are Sounding the Alarm on Both Crises and Being Loudly Ignored

The world’s leading climate and AI experts including Dr James Hansen (the “Godfather of Global Warming”), and Nobel prize-winner Geoffrey Hinton (one of three “Godfathers of AI”), are warning that unless urgent action is taken, the climate emergency and the AI crisis will upend society.

4. The Media Has Failed Us Abysmally on Both Crises

The climate emergency and the AI crisis are complex issues. Nonetheless, there has been wilful and misleading information presented to the public by the media, which has failed to accurately emphasise the scale and urgency of the threats we face. Thus, society has been kept in the dark and we now face ruin.

5. The Fallacy of “Peak Oil” and the “AI Bubble”

Peak oil, AI bubble = separate issues, same concept. Peak oil predictions date back around 70 years. Yet, we’re still using enormous quantities of oil in 2025 (see graph below).

Energy Institute – Statistical Review of World Energy (2025) – with major processing by Our World in Data. “Oil consumption” [dataset]. Energy Institute, “Statistical Review of World Energy” [original data].

Now we’re told that the AI bubble might be about to burst. We’ve heard this before… Peaks and bubbles have historically proven to be untrustworthy, and shouldn’t be used as a basis for refusing to regulate a product or an industry.

In short: dangerous products must be stringently regulated, regardless of potential bubbles or peaks.

6. AI Usage Is Increasing Energy Demand, Thus Worsening the Climate Emergency

The International Energy Agency (IEA) predicts that electricity demand from AI datacentres will quadruple by 2030. This means that AI will be using as much electricity as the entire country of Japan does today. One civilisation-threatening problem, exacerbating the other civilisation-threatening problem.

Water usage is another major environmental harm. It’s estimated that asking AI to write a 100 word e-mail, or having a short conversation with AI uses enough water to fill a 500ml water bottle. This is because water is needed in data centres to cool servers.

7. On Our Current Trajectory We’re Heading For:

– Worst Case Scenario: Human Annihilation

– Best Case Scenario: Upending Society and Precipitating Civilisational Decline

Nobel prize-winner and “Godfather of AI,” Geoffrey Hinton, says there’s up to a 20% chance that AI will cause our extinction in the next 30 years.

Having surpassed the Paris climate target of limiting temperatures to 1.5C this century, we’re heading for climate chaos.

Thus, radical and transformative change is imminent unless our politicians change course, or we change our leadership.

Conclusion

Politicians have held back progress on the climate emergency and the AI crisis. It’s up to all of us to decide how we wish to change that political inertia, whether that be through replacing compromised politicians with new more capable and willing leaders, or through a transformation to citizen-led democracies (e.g. citizens’ assemblies and participatory democracy).

With democracy waning around the world, I fear that change will soon become nearly impossible. Yet I also believe that nothing short of this change will shift us onto a path that gives us a shot at a liveable future.

There are no easy options left given how late we’ve left the climate emergency, and how fast the AI crisis is accelerating.

We’ve shown that we can overcome much when we work together. The question is can we still unify when online AI-generated disinformation and AI slop are affecting our ability to discern facts from fiction, and reality from illusion?

As creatures of story, we’re extremely susceptible to this influence – people are less concerned with facts than with what makes a good story. Thus, we now live in an age when algorithms owned by some of the wealthiest people on the planet (people who don’t have our best interests at heart), are shaping people’s views on some of the most contentious issues of the day and polarisation feels like it’s reaching fever pitch.

Somehow, we have to find a way to navigate through this smog and find the path that leads us towards a viable future.

Time is short. Options are few. The power we’re up against is gargantuan. But, we can’t let society fall during our watch. We have to collectively fight for our future whilst we still can.

General E-mail Template for Contacting Political Representatives About AI

Dear

I’m writing in regards to the rapid advances in AI and related technologies, which pose massive threats to society, jobs, arts and culture, democracy, privacy, and our collective civilisation.

Many AI systems are trained on copyrighted data and this has been done without consent or compensation. The way that machine learning works is flawed and this means that control hasn’t been designed into AI, which could create unimaginable problems further down the line. But AI isn’t just a future threat. The large language models (LLMs) already in the public domain threaten the livelihoods of writers and authors. AI image, video and audio generators pose risks to the jobs of artists, actors, and musicians. When combined together, these types of AI can have a devastating impact on democracy, and ‘deepfakes’ could be used by malicious actors for cybercrime purposes.

Both AI and the introduction of robots into the workforce jeopardises jobs on a scale like never before. By one estimate, up to a billion jobs could be lost, with only around ten million new jobs created. Mass unemployment could result, leading to social unrest, extreme poverty, and skyrocketing homelessness.

Through neurotechnology, it’s already possible to create an image of what people are thinking about – the ultimate invasion of thought privacy. Killer robots have been deployed around the world over the last few years, and can be easily made and sold on the black market, threatening our collective safety. Meanwhile AGI poses an existential risk to our civilisation.

We have a limited period of time to act before AI becomes so embedded in modern life, that it can’t be extricated. I therefore urge you to act swiftly in outright banning the technology or holding a global citizens’ assembly on AI and using the guidelines that emerge to implement stringent regulations that forever protect and safeguard humanity.

With concern and expectation,

Selected Resources

Books

Human Compatible: AI and the Problem of Control by Stuart Russell
Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI by Yuval Noah Harari
If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies by Eliezer Yudkowsky & Nate Soares
Supremacy: AI, ChatGPT and the Race That Will Change the World by Parmy Olson
The Alignment Problem: How Can Machines Learn Human Values? by Brian Christian
The Coming Wave by Mustafa Suleyman
Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era by James Barrat
Code Dependent: Living in the Shadow of AI by Madhumita Murgia
Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? By Bill McKibben
For the Good of the World by A.C. Grayling
Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future by Martin Ford
Permanent Record by Edward Snowden
The People Vs Tech: How the Internet is Killing Democracy (and how we save it) by Jamie Bartlett
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power by Shoshana Zuboff
Life 3.0 by Max Tegmark
1984 by George Orwell
Superintelligence by Nick Bostrom

AI Activism and Other Resources

I’ve been writing about the climate emergency since 2016, and the AI crisis since 2023. I write all my own stuff, without the use of AI (something I’m firmly against as a writer). I don’t publish on any other paid platforms, and my blog remains completely free to read. If you’ve found my writing informative and if you’d like to support my work, you can do so here.

My cli-fi children’s picture book, Nanook and the Melting Arctic is available from Amazon, including Amazon UK and Amazon US. My eco-fiction children’s picture book, Hedgey-A and the Honey Bees about how pesticides affect bees, is available on Amazon’s global stores including Amazon UK and Amazon US.