My Online Habits Generate as Much CO2 as a Ford Focus

One evening in the spring of 2015, I filmed a 15-second video out the window of an Amtrak train as it rattled across the barren flatlands of southern New Jersey. There’s nothing artful or interesting about the clip. All you see is a slanted rush of white and yellow lights. I can’t remember why I made it. Until a few days ago, I had never even watched it. And yet for the past nine years, that video has been sitting on a server in a data center somewhere, silently and invisibly taking a very small toll on our planet.

At some point since I made the video, the emissions of information and communications technology began to match those of the entire aviation sector. Data centers and data-transmission networks now account for as much as 1.5 percent of global electricity consumption, according to the International Energy Agency. In the years ahead, the advent of ubiquitous artificial intelligence could, as Matteo Wong wrote for The Atlantic last year, “push the web’s emissions to a tipping point”: Earlier this week, Google released a report showing that its emissions have grown substantially as a result of the AI boom, a major leap backwards from the net-zero goal it set just a few years ago.

With other forms of consumption that are bad for the planet, we all understand that the main burden of responsibility falls on the big players—industry, government, the rich and powerful. But we also acknowledge that everyone else has a part to play too. I stop running the water while I’m brushing my teeth. I carry groceries in a burlap tote. I turn off the lights whenever I step out of my apartment, regardless of whether I’m leaving for five minutes or a week.