AI Slurps Water While Nations Beg
From Hurricane Melissa to AI’s Thirst: The Real Climate Emergency
On October 25, 2025, days before the 30th Conference of the Parties (COP30) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Belém, Brazil, Bill Gates, Founder of Microsoft and Chairperson of the Bill Gates Foundation shot off a memo to his team, which began thus: “There’s a doomsday view of climate change that goes like this: ‘In a few decades, cataclysmic climate change will decimate civilization.’”
The memo continues: “The evidence is all around us – just look at all the heat waves and storms caused by rising global temperatures. Nothing matters more than limiting the rise in temperature. Fortunately for all of us, this view is wrong. Although climate change will have serious consequences – particularly for people in the poorest countries – it will not lead to humanity’s demise. People will be able to live and thrive in most places on Earth for the foreseeable future.”
Ironically, the memo was issued on the very day that Jamaica was devastated by a powerful Category 5 hurricane, Melissa, the likes of which were unprecedented, and which led to experts suggesting the need of having a Category 6 hurricane, given the increasing severity of hurricanes. Jamaica is responsible for a mere 0.05 per cent of global CO2 pollution and is facing the consequences of the worst hurricane in its history. As global emissions continue to rise, as do profits of fuel companies, activists are demanding that such extreme climate-related events be named after the CEOs of companies.
Quick to seize the opportunity, President Donald Trump of the United States posted on his Truth Social platform: “I (WE!) just won the War on the Climate Change Hoax. Bill Gates has finally admitted that he was completely WRONG on the issue. It took courage to do so, and for that we are all grateful.” Gates was quick to point out that Trump’s take was a ‘giant misreading of the memo.’
The memo went on to suggest that the climate community is too focused on temperatures and emissions and is taking resources away from ways to improve human suffering, like poverty and hunger. “To be clear, climate change is a very important problem. It needs to be solved … Every tenth of a degree of heating that we prevent is hugely beneficial because a stable climate makes it easier to improve people’s lives.” Gates has already invested his own money through Breakthrough Energy, a network of funds and initiatives that back startups working on decarbonising of steel, cement and aviation sectors; a venture capital fund that backs startups of clean energy technologies; TerraPower, a company owned by him that is building nuclear reactors for carbon-free power; and other related sectors. The mind questions: Is this a move to support startups, technologies and companies where he is vested?
The contradictions – and hypocrisy – are multilevel. The Foundation focuses on poverty, healthcare, livelihood and education. In July 2025 alone, Microsoft announced a 9,000-job cut, the largest since its single largest layoff in 2023. The Company blamed the uncertain market, necessitating a leaner and meaner organisation. Yet in November 2025, reports indicate that Microsoft’s CEO package jumped to an unimaginable USD 96.5 million, his highest jump yet, made possible by the rising stock price. In 2025, Microsoft’s stock price rose by a whopping 23 per cent, and shares have doubled in value over the past three years, largely driven by investment in Artificial Intelligence (AI). Microsoft’s market cap is almost three trillion, and yet, there is a need to ruthlessly cut jobs.
The human and environmental cost of AI
The increasing integration of AI into Microsoft’s operations plays a pivotal role in these workforce adjustments. While the company has not directly attributed layoffs solely to AI replacing human workers, the timing and focus suggest a strategic shift towards a leaner, more automated organisation, with AI being the ‘force multiplier,’ streamlining operations and improving overall efficiency. But AI also deepens exclusion and inequality between countries, gender, and age. The use of AI also comes with a huge environmental impact and a rising concern of affecting cognitive ability, like critical thinking and reasoning.
AI has a huge environmental footprint due to the data centres needed. As data centres power the digital economy and drive technological innovation, they exert pressure on communities, ecosystems, and critical resources. While data centres generate jobs (leading to the loss of others, so this could be a zero-sum game or negative even), and accelerate progress, they also carry costs borne by the environment and society. For all the benefits that data centres bring to the digital world, there is a disproportionate negative environmental and social impact. The exponential demand and growth of data and data centres are challenging global climate progress and undermining decarbonisation efforts worldwide by driving electricity consumption and emissions to extreme levels.
In FY 2025, Microsoft is investing approximately $80 billion to build out AI-enabled datacentres to ‘train AI models and deploy AI and cloud-based applications around the world.’ As AI models evolve from simple text generation to more complex image, video, and music generation, data requirements rapidly expand, further amplifying energy demand. Since 2022, global investment in data centres has nearly doubled, reaching half a trillion dollars in 2024. This explosion has also triggered mounting concerns around the sector’s growing energy footprint. In 2025, data centres and data transmission networks are responsible for about 1 per cent of global energy-related greenhouse gas emissions. Each ChatGPT search uses ten times more electricity than a Google search, and each conversation consumes the equivalent of 500 ml of water.
An analysis of data from the US of 2,132 data centres, operating between September 2023 and August 2024, revealed that these accounted for 4 per cent of the US electricity consumption, 56 per cent of which was from fossil fuels, and generated more than 105 CO2 equivalent (2.18 per cent) of US emissions in 2023. The carbon intensity, which is the amount of CO2 emitted per unit of electricity consumed, exceeded the US average by 48 per cent.
Data centres consume water primarily to cool servers from overheating. A Cornell University study estimates that AI demand alone could require between 4.20-6.60 billion cubic meters of fresh water annually by 2027, equivalent to roughly half of the UK’s yearly usage. In dry states like Arizona, where data centres are coming up, this is a huge water scarcity challenge, exacerbated by climate change.
Data centres generate a huge amount of electronic waste. A 2020 survey revealed that 42 per cent of IT managers reported replacing servers every 2-4 years. Server longevity is shaped by a combination of factors like engineering design, workload intensity, maintenance protocols, and ambient operating conditions. Beyond wear and tear, many operators choose to upgrade equipment to capitalise on the superior performance, energy efficiency, and scalability of newer technologies.
The constant hum of servers, network switches, routers, air conditioning systems, and industrial cooling fans creates significant and persistent noise levels capable of generating sound levels exceeding 80 dBA, comparable to a leaf blower.
Communities living near large data centres frequently report health concerns linked to the unceasing background noise. Chronic exposure causes sleep disturbance, headache, hearing loss, elevated stress hormone levels, hypertension, anxiety, and even cardiovascular risks. Persistent noise pollution also affects other species. Noise from data centres disrupts animal communication, alters natural behaviour, and forces wildlife to change migration patterns.
Data centres require substantial real estate, often competing with agriculture, housing, or other commercial sectors. In some regions, their expansion fuels gentrification, increases land costs, and stresses local infrastructure.
Technology fanatics continue to advocate for ‘better, faster and higher’ technologies, and are happy to outsource thinking (Weren’t humans considered the most intelligent of species?), when we really need to slow down and need all our neurons fired up to acknowledge and address real-world challenges.
There is so much happening in the world right now, as geopolitics shift rapidly. Nations are becoming increasingly self-centred and more interested in aligning with the interests of the uber-rich. Today, the richest one per cent of people own 42 per cent of the world’s wealth and appropriate 54 per cent of the benefits of global economic growth. At the same time, billions of people cannot meet their basic needs. The poorer half of humanity – over four billion people – own less than one per cent of the world’s wealth.
Such extreme inequalities are neither natural nor inevitable, and according to Nobel Laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz, have reached levels of ‘Inequality Emergency’ and call for an International Panel on Inequality. Stieglitz was invited by the South African G20 Presidency to write a report on the same.
The rich are also getting increasingly tight-fisted. As their philanthropic contributions and commitments are reducing and becoming focused on innovation, that will benefit them. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)’s 2025 Adaptation Gap Report informed that while the estimated adaptation finance gaps of developing countries range from USD 310-365 billion per year by 2035, this flow from developed to developing countries fell from USD 28 billion in 2022 to USD 26 billion in 2023.
The main themes of COP 30 include: Reducing greenhouse gas emissions; climate change adaptation, climate finance for developing countries, renewable energy technologies and low-carbon solutions, preserving forests and biodiversity and climate justice and the social impacts of climate change. Flickers of hope continue while those who care for climate, the planet, and its people continue in their relentless struggle.
To achieve success, after 30 long years of negotiation, hypocrisy needs to take a back seat. Industry and uber-wealthy individuals need to realise that beyond a point, ‘intense’ wealth is just a number. The blinkers need to be off for climate action that is just, for the planet and the people.
