Notices by Gerry McGovern (gerrymcgovern@mastodon.green)

The greatest damage 'Renewable' Energy has done to our environment is that it has sold the Big Lie that to save our environment we need to simply change technology, when what we have to do is change our lifestyles.

'Renewable' Energy is this magical get-out-of-jail-free card. We can keep on consuming once it's 'renewable'.

Bitcoin: ok once it's 'renewable'
Data centers: ok once they're 'renewable'
AI: ok once it's 'renewable'

None of this is remotely renewable or OK.

We are devourers.

Bitcoin is pure evil

“From mid-2022 to mid-2023, the 34 mines consumed 32.3 terawatt-hours of electricity—33% more than Los Angeles—85% of which came from fossil fuels. We estimated that 1.9 million Americans were exposed to ≥0.1 μg/m3 of additional PM2.5 pollution from Bitcoin mines, often hundreds of miles away from the communities they affected.”

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-58287-3

"Many well-meaning customers know not to throw their vapes in the regular trash, so they use the other option – recycling bins, which is no better. No matter which facility these devices land in, they can ignite in many ways. Crushing pressure, puncturing, short-circuiting, and vibration from facility operations are common causes. However, battery defects, internal cell failure, and overheating are indirect means of ignition that refuse centers cannot control."

https://www.techspot.com/news/107379-waste-fires-rise-largely-thanks-lithium-ion-batteries.html

A medium-sized data center uses the same amount of energy as around 300,000 households.

"There are two stages to the cooling system. First, server-level cooling moves the heat from the server to a heat exchanger, which involves no water loss or water consumption. However, the second stage moves the heat from the heat exchanger to the outside environment using water to cool. Water evaporation is usually the most efficient way to do this job."

https://ktar.com/arizona-technology-news/data-centers-environment/5686066/

"After several months of requesting data from various authorities, Jiménez found that government officials are unable to monitor—and therefore hold accountable—this growing private sector. To understand water usage by these data centers, Jiménez requested records from three municipalities, but only one provided figures. several public officials said AWS required them to sign strict confidentiality agreements, a common practice among Big Tech."

https://pulitzercenter.org/blog/measuring-ais-environmental-impact-isnt-easy

So, we hear all these stories about 'renewable' energy reaching record highs.

Then, we hear all these stories about coal reaching records highs.

About oil and gas reaching records highs.

About nuclear roaring back.

How could this be?

Wasn't 'renewable' energy supposed to replace all these other energy forms?

There is no Energy Transition. That was always a Big Lie. In the Growth Death Cult, there is only an Energy Addition, a Greed Transition.

It's not an energy production problem

Deep sea mining is a horror of horrors. It will:

• “Destroy deep-sea habitats and drive biodiversity loss

• “Disrupt fisheries, harming food security and coastal economies

• “Undermine the ocean’s role as the largest carbon sink, worsening climate change

• “Exacerbate social and economic inequalities by benefiting corporations while leaving coastal communities at risk

• “Threaten indigenous peoples’ rights and inclusive sustainable development

https://www.climateaction.org/news/wwf-calls-for-a-global-moratorium-on-deep-seabed-mining

Work is the problem

Hard workers are destroying our environment

We celebrate the metrics of death.

GDP is a force of destruction.

One of the greatest forms of resistance is slowing down and slowing the system down.

“Nuclear energy seems less harmful because its damage is often invisible or long-term. However, uranium mining leaves behind 99.99% of the extracted material as radioactive waste, contaminating land and water for centuries. The mining sites are primarily in Indigenous territories—such as those of the Navajo in the U.S., First Nations in Canada, Aboriginal Australians, and communities in Niger and Kazakhstan.”

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43361652

“The leftover slurry was piped into two unlined earthen pits, the largest the size of 50 football fields and filled with over 21 million tons of uranium mill tailings. Over time, the uranium tailings decayed into radon gas; meanwhile, radioactive contaminants seeped into four of the region’s aquifers. Residents compiled a list of neighbors who died of cancer — they called it the Death Map.”

https://www.hcn.org/articles/contamination-threatens-the-last-source-of-clean-groundwater-in-west-new-mexico/

Microsoft shrugs off company climate goals to support burning methane gas for AI data centers

https://urbanmilwaukee.com/pressrelease/microsoft-shrugs-off-company-climate-goals-to-support-burning-methane-gas-for-ai-data-centers/

AI will burn everything to the ground.

"A tidal wave of pollution coming from discarded computers, cell phones and other electronic waste. This rubbish, which is laden with toxic chemicals like lead and mercury, can pollute land, sea and air, causing everything from developmental delays to stillbirths, says the World Health Organization. The toll is especially heavy in the developing world, which for decades has been a dumping ground for electronics from developed countries."

https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/electronic-waste-surges-countries-look-answers

Only one Amazon can survive.

Which one do we choose?

“During the last few years, interest in repair has exploded.”
Peter Mui founder of Fixit Clinic

He attributes this cultural shift to a growing awareness about the environmental impact of e-waste, as well as a raft of “right-to-repair” laws passing across the U.S.

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/innovation/right-repair-movement-growing-wins-stack-rcna195230

Big Tech is destroying our environment and it is doing everything it can to make sure the public don't know the level of damage it is doing.

"Researchers trying to calculate AI’s electricity use are left “grasping at straws,” says Alex de Vries, who has spent years analysing the digital economy’s environmental impact. Even tech giants like Google and Microsoft, which claim to be working toward sustainability, are staying tight-lipped about their energy use."

https://www.energylivenews.com/2025/03/07/ai-how-much-energy-will-it-really-devour/

US lost a fifth of its butterflies within two decades
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwyjkn729gpo

One of Northern Ireland's butterflies appears to be on the edge of extinction, while others are struggling
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-64504224

Since the 1950s in the United Kingdom, there has been a 97% loss of flower-rich meadows
https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2002551117

"Unregulated and widely used flame retardants found in many electronic devices and touted by industry as non-toxic break down into harmful molecules that can pose a health risk to fish and potentially other creatures, including humans. These polymers have largely escaped regulation as industry has argued that the materials are unlikely to degrade or make their way into living creatures. Many are even marketed as non-hazardous or environmentally friendly."

https://www.thenewlede.org/2025/03/unregulated-flame-retardants-break-down-toxic-byproducts/

"With the purchasing power of middle and working-class citizens shrinking as billionaires hoard ever more wealth, many people are searching for a new economic reality in line with their ecological values and planetary boundaries. “People are really hungry for solutions [and] really hungry to find alternatives,” says Alvaro Alvarez, a journalist and filmmaker of the recent BBC documentary Less Is More: Can Degrowth Save the World?"

https://news.mongabay.com/podcast/degrowth-gains-a-foothold-in-barcelona-and-support-internationally/

Data center growth in the US is skyrocketing, driven by advancements in AI, leading to a massive increase in energy demand.

Natural gas is currently a key source for meeting the immediate power needs of data centers, though there's a strong push from hyperscalers for clean-firm energy sources like nuclear and geothermal.

Renewable energy faces challenges due to grid interconnection limitations, despite significant growth in solar and battery storage capacity.

https://oilprice.com/Energy/Natural-Gas/Natural-Gas-Surges-to-Meet-Data-Center-Power-Needs.html

"For some countries, data centers are already putting a strain on resources. In Ireland, they already consume 21 percent of electricity – more than all of the country’s urban homes combined.
Ireland’s electricity consumption grew by nearly a quarter between 2012 and 2022, the second-fastest rate in the EU. This was almost entirely driven by the expansion of data centers, according to a recent report by Friends of the Earth."

https://thinklandscape.globallandscapesforum.org/72106/can-we-afford-the-environmental-cost-of-ai/