From https://www.reddit.com/r/vegan/comments/1vh6391/environmental_impact_of_ai_datacenters_vs_animal/
Sources:
Water use:
https://www.foodfacts.org/articles/how-much-water-does-ai-use-vs-livestock
Land use:
https://ourworldindata.org/global-land-for-agriculture
Greenhouse gas emissions:
https://www.iea.org/reports/electricity-2024 https://news.un.org/en/story/2026/06/1167658 https://www.fao.org/statistics/highlights-archive/highlights-detail/greenhouse-gas-emissions-from-agrifood-systems.-global--regional-and-country-trends--2000-2022/en
- To the many comments along the lines of: „But we need food“ – This is actually another great point against Animal Agriculture, as every calory of food produced by Animal Agriculture wastes several calories of feed. https://awellfedworld.org/feed-ratios/
- For people pointing out energy consumption, AI uses
500 TWH per year, Animal Agriculture uses13000 TWH per year, so it is 25x worse on energy need.
(This is a quick estimate based on:
https://www.iea.org/reports/energy-and-ai/energy-supply-for-ai https://www.fao.org/energy/resources/facts-and-figures/en#%3A%7E%3Atext=%28+World+Bank%2C+2025%29+*+30+percent%2Cor+wasted+due+to+lack+of+refrigeration. )
28 Comments
pulsewidth@lemmy.world · 28 pts · 10d
I don't disagree entirely.. But this feels silly omitting the land use and pollution of AI accounting for all the rare earth metals and resources used to create the hardware and the datacenters that AI runs on and in - which would be far more substantial than their real-estate footprint.
jumping_redditor@sh.itjust.works · 6 pts · 10d
not a vegan, but cows need a lot of corn, and datacenters don't (unless they are solar powered)
JelleWho@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 10d
Solar power data centers need corn? The more I know
jumping_redditor@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 10d
how else do you get the ethanol?
echedeylr@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 1 pts · 10d
SugarcaneWaterpumpee@lemmus.org · 13 pts · 10d
Ah, ok then lets continue burning the fucking planet with datacenters
inari@piefed.zip · 13 pts · 10d
That's... not the point of the post
GreenKnight23@lemmy.world · -3 pts · 10d
that's the point you're making.
inari@piefed.zip · 6 pts · 10d
The point is: if you're (rightfully) concerned about the impact of AI datacenters, you probably shouldn't turn a blind eye to the several-orders-of-magnitude-worse impact of animal agriculture.
umbra@slrpnk.net · 1 pts · 10d
As a vegan this was what i got from the post without additional commentary. Ive felt this way for a long time and while I'm glad people are vaguely aware of the environmental impact of data centers, i do wish they would be concerned enough to learn about other things negatively impacting the environment.
GreenKnight23@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 10d
then you should have said that in your post.
your post is showing a stark difference between AI DCs and industrial farming that makes it believable that AI isn't harming the environment.
instead of putting out the effort of understanding the implications and the data at hand, you regurgitated Reddit slop along with all the sources having never read them.
if you would have looked closer you would have identified the glaring flaws in your data that it doesn't take into account.
not only that but the user on reddit that is promoting this garbage is clearly only interested in setting a narrative and not the truth. their argument was in such bad faith that the charts subreddit removed the post.
just look at the blatant lies they're shilling.
and their response
so yeah....you want to make the argument that industrial farming is bad, understand the data and form your own opinions.
when you can only quote fools, everyone will think you're a clown.
hendrik@palaver.p3x.de · 6 pts · 10d
I feel that's pretty much the point where a conversation ends. We don't specifically need to put a slice of a cow ontop of the sandwich.
Also a bit of a nonsensical argument. While we maybe don't really need AI... We're doing it anyway, don't we? So why argue hypotheticals, when it's reality that has an effect on the environment?
dressedandconfused@mtgzone.com · 5 pts · 10d
I wonder how much of the difference between the two industries comes from how many people participate in them. I guess there are many more people eating meat than there are using AI, the per-person impact might be different
vivalapivo@lemmy.today · 4 pts · 10d
Is it gross or net? Because the real issue of living organisms is methane and not CO2. CO2 doesn't break the balance
umbra@slrpnk.net · 3 pts · 10d
Cattle contribute to methane gasses through their burps and farts, as well as their shit fermentation ponds and maybe other things im forgetting.
Source (links the EPA report these numbers come from)
There have been other studies on this topic I've read in the past but that was just first one that i came across
OwOarchist@pawb.social · 3 pts · 10d
I can't eat ChatGPT, though.
davepleasebehave@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 10d
and yet you can not eat animals.
umbra@slrpnk.net · 3 pts · 10d
You are in a vegan community here though so maybe try engaging with the content and following the community rules instead of making jokes
GreenKnight23@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 10d
why not laugh when post is joke shaped?
fyzzlefry@retrolemmy.com · 2 pts · 9d
Jokes are relative. You don't get to choose what people laugh at, just ask my racist Uncle.
umbra@slrpnk.net · 0 pts · 10d
Because i don't find the implication of eating sentient animals funny, least of all in a vegan space.
GreenKnight23@lemmy.world · -1 pts · 9d
if you thought this post was remotely about veganism you might want to eat more lentils.
veganpizza69@lemmy.vg · 2 pts · 9d
Both suck and should be abolished
Mikina@programming.dev · 1 pts · 10d
I would like to see this graph with non-animal agriculture added, especially if scaled to meet the demands of missing animal agriculture.
I'm not defending animal agriculture, I'm honestly curious. Especially about water usage and land use, I can imagine pollution will be a lot lower.
umbra@slrpnk.net · 4 pts · 9d
Here you go, I'm interested in your thoughts. The charts can also be adjusted to be per 100g of protein or 1 kcal
Greenhouse gas emissions per kilogram of food product
Land use per kilogram of food product
Freshwater withdrawals per kilogram of food product
Eutrophying emissions per kilogram of food product : Eutrophying emissions represent runoff of excess nutrients into the surrounding environment and waterways, which affect andpollute ecosystems. They are measured in grams of phosphate equivalents (PO₄eq).
Mikina@programming.dev · 3 pts · 9d
Oh, that's cool! To be honest, I've kind of expected some of the values to be a lot higher. I'd expect that with the inhumane conditions the animals are being stacked, at least the land use per kg would be more efficient than i.e carrots.
I learned a new (not so cool) fact, thanks for the data!
I'm not sure I understand what "meters squared (m²) for one year to produce one kilogram of a given food product." means, though. I'm not doubting the data, World in Data is my favorite newsletter/source, but I'm having a hard time imagining why do you need almost 400m3 per kg of beef. Or rather, I understand that for actually free-range animals, but as far as I know they are not kept in those conditions. It kind of intuitively feels like larger animals should be more space-efficient than vegetables. Again, not trying to argue or doubt it, just trying to understand why.
umbra@slrpnk.net · 3 pts · 9d
I think what you're missing here is the concept of the trophic pyramid or ecological pyramid which explains how energy is transferred from one level to the next. In general only about 10% of energy is transferred from one level of the pyramid to the next.
Right now you're just thinking of the cattle themselves, but to support the cattle there is the additional land space of all the food they eat (and also the lagoons for their shit). If we were to plot them in the food chain, then plants/grains would be the primary pruducer on the bottom tier of the pyramid, with cattle at the next tier. To gain 1 lbs the cattle would need to eat 10lbs of grains. Obviously cattle weigh much more than just 1 lbs so the land to support their 1100 lbs weight ends up being massive and not something a lot of people think about when they end up eating a burger. And above the cattle in this trophic pyramid we could place humans as a secondary consumer where there is another loss of energy as you go from one trophic level to the next. Not to mention 1 lbs of cattle is not 1 lbs of take home beef. A quick search on this number is ~35-45% of live animal weight ends up as take-home beef.
You had asked about what the plots would look like with replacement foods grown instead of animal agriculture. The trophic pyramid answers that and we could forecast if we were to remove an animal based product then we would require only 10% (on average) to replace it with primary source non-animal food
This is why I believe that if anyone seriously cares about the environment then the single, biggest thing they can do at an individual level is to reduce or eliminate their animal consumption. This doesn't mean I think we shouldn't care about AI data centers and other major elements of environmental impact, it just means that for me personally my diet I have direct control over. I can and should still care about other environmental impacts but I don't need to ask a city board to stop feeding me animal products--I can make that choice on my own.
Mikina@programming.dev · 2 pts · 8d
Ooh, I totally forgot about thw fact that you also have to count the space for the food for the animals, that's what I was missing. It makes a lot more sense now, thanks!
Cyanova@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 9d