Climate Impacts of AI — Alternatives to Techno-Utopianism and Doom
A Columbia roundtable asking whether AI will accelerate or obstruct the energy transition, with scholars tackling the justice dimensions head-on.
Why we picked this
The AI-climate conversation usually collapses into boosterism or panic. This panel has the right mix of technical knowledge and political analysis to avoid both.
Every new data center is a climate decision, but the conversation about AI’s environmental footprint tends to oscillate between two poles: utopian claims that AI will solve the energy crisis, and doom scenarios about runaway consumption. This roundtable tries to find the ground between them.
The panel brings together Holly Alpine, co-founder of the Enabled Emissions Campaign, who studies how tech companies facilitate fossil fuel production; Ashley Dawson, a CUNY professor specializing in climate justice; Lisa Sachs, director of the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment; and Marco Tedesco, a Lamont Research Professor and climate scientist. The mix of fossil fuel expertise, justice frameworks, sustainable finance, and glaciology makes for an unusually well-rounded conversation about a topic that often stays trapped in one silo.
Free and open to the public at the Heyman Center, Second Floor Common Room. Registration required.