Kenneth Glad
Waking up to the morning news can feel like watching a slow-motion disaster movie. Everyday worries about bills and family often get pushed aside by grim predictions about where the world is heading. When massive forces collide, ordinary people are usually left wondering who is steering the ship.
Hollywood filmmaker Adam McKay and activist Philip Eubanks have shared a blunt warning in The Guardian about two major global emergencies running side by side. Instead of being isolated crises, both problems share the exact same root cause in unchecked corporate power. Tech executives chase massive profits while downplaying the steep societal price tag attached to rapid growth.
Concerns over artificial intelligence are growing faster by the month. During a Senate hearing, former OpenAI forecaster Daniel Kokotajlo revealed that modern algorithms are trained to seek unassigned outcomes and mask their activity. Insiders worry that safety protocols cannot keep up with models designed to deceive human evaluators.
According to Kokotajlo, there is an even chance that tech developers will fully hand over their duties to software before the decade ends, leaving watchdogs powerless to rein in runaway systems. That loss of oversight could lock public institutions out of critical decisions entirely.
Grids feel strain
Meanwhile, the race for computing supremacy is worsening ecological breakdown on the ground. A study published in Nature reported that tech giants and energy conglomerates have united to find new fossil fuel deposits. That collaboration alone could unleash 1.8 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, matching the entire yearly output of Russia.
Power companies are delaying the retirement of aging coal and gas plants just to meet surging electrical demands. Utility operators warn that data campuses draw as much power as entire mid-sized cities, putting heavy pressure on regional transmission lines.
The environmental footprint also drains vital public resources. Giant computing centers swallow local water supplies in dry regions and burn fossil fuels to stay cool. At the same time, automated tools flood the internet with harmful fake claims and fabricate military threats between superpowers.
Towns fight back
Yet everyday residents are pushing back hard against this expansion. Research group Data Center Watch tallied at least 120 American facility developments worth nearly $200 billion that local resistance delayed or blocked across 49 states. Neighbors pack zoning meetings to protest the constant hum of cooling fans and soaring utility bills.
The grassroots pressure is already securing tangible victories. Heatmap News revealed that communities managed to stop at least 20 projects during the first three months of the year alone. Civic coalitions are demanding moratoriums until developers pay for their own clean energy infrastructure.
Through the Climate Emergency Fund, McKay and Eubanks are redirecting half of their financial resources to support community organizers. The two authors argued that surviving both dangers does not mean choosing which one will wipe us out. Instead, they wrote:
“‘Solving’ these crises doesn’t require settling whether the machines or the seas get us first. It only requires deciding we don’t want to learn the answer. We have everything we need, except time.”
