People often object to AI's energy use simply because it represents a *new* source of emissions. This psychological bias distracts from the fact that these new emissions are minuscule compared to massive, existing sources like personal transportation.

A widely circulated media claim that a single chatbot prompt consumes an entire bottle of water is a gross exaggeration based on a flawed study. The actual figure is closer to 2 milliliters, or 1/200th of a typical bottle.

The energy consumed by a chatbot is so minimal that it almost certainly reduces your net emissions by displacing more carbon-intensive activities, such as driving a car or even watching TV.

People focus their environmental efforts on highly visible but low-impact items like plastic bags and recycling. The climate and environmental impact of the food products they purchase—particularly meat—is orders of magnitude greater. This reveals a massive misallocation of public concern and effort.

Although 90% of an AI server's financial cost is the upfront hardware purchase, the vast majority (~95%) of its lifetime carbon footprint comes from the electricity used to run it, not from its manufacturing.

To contextualize the energy cost of AI inference, a single query to a large language model uses roughly the same amount of electricity as running a standard microwave for just one second.

A single 20-mile car trip emits as much CO2 as roughly 10,000 chatbot queries. This means that if AI helps you avoid just one such trip, you have more than offset a year's worth of heavy personal AI usage.

Over the past 50 years, Americans have reduced per capita beef consumption by a third by substituting it with chicken. This seemingly simple dietary shift has inadvertently cut more emissions than any other climate action before the rise of solar power, highlighting the massive climate leverage in reducing beef production and its associated land use.

The way we grow food is a primary driver of climate change, independent of the energy sector. Even if we completely decarbonize energy, our agricultural practices, particularly land use and deforestation, are sufficient to push the planet past critical warming thresholds. This makes fixing the food system an urgent, non-negotiable climate priority.