As usual, I'm planning to go to Climate Week NYC in September. The New York Climate Week event is the most interesting for me, because it's directly plugged into Wall Street and gives a real understanding of what's being funded.

​This year's overarching theme is "Power On." And that, in my opinion, is the problem. We're funding energy so we can increase our power consumption.

Even prior to the AI surge, we as a planet were already consuming double the energy that we were 40 years ago. People say oh, but we're rapidly adding renewables to the grid! And we are. But not enough. We're also increasing our consumption of fossil fuels.

We're producing more energy than ever before — from all sources, including fossil fuels — because we're consuming more energy than ever. "Global energy demand continues to grow faster than the ability of renewables to keep pace, much less displace fossil fuels," says Forbes. And that demand is increasing rapidly with the addition of AI everything.

So when a leading climate conference is talking about "power on," they're not kidding. If this year is like previous years, the discussions will be about how to power new tech, how to green the AI data center, how to implement fleet electrification. But nowhere in the conversation will anyone talk about powering off.

That conversation will be shifted to the consumer as a helpful money-saving tip from the local utility. Buy energy efficient appliances to save money in energy costs. Use less air conditioning or heating during extreme temperatures. Make sure you turn off your lights when you leave the room. You, the individual should use less to save the world.

Bullshit.

Ok, only partly bullshit. Those things do matter to your wallet, obviously, but we're not solving the world energy crisis by making you uncomfortably hot in summer or uncomfortably cold in winter. We don't do it by using portable methane turbines to power AI data centers. (*screams in environmental justice*)

We do it by using less energy at scale. And that level of scale can only happen at the organizational level — businesses, schools, cities. (Things like implementing sustainable content practices would fall under this umbrella, but so too would any large-scale sustainability initiative.)

So this September, as the financial and sustainability people gather to talk about ways to power on, let's do what we can to influence our organizations to power off.

Can we briefly talk about the whiplash in my inbox? Within the span of an hour I will get half a dozen emails, half of which talk about how we're doomed, and the other half talking about the opportunities that the current situation presents. Neither blind optimism nor surly pessimism is helpful. I'll share more middle-of-the-road information.

"Google's emissions have increased by over 50% since 2019, rising 6% in the last year alone. That’s decidedly the wrong direction for a company that’s set a goal to reach net-zero greenhouse-gas emissions by the end of the decade."

There's a lot of hype about direct air capture for decarbonization of the atmosphere. But again, as noted above, these efforts have to go hand-in-hand with reducing emissions outputs in order to make a measurable difference.

"We need to name the forces that are actually breaking us—so we can get real about what we can do about them." Sara Wachter-Boettcher talks about burnout and beyond.

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Alisa Bonsignore

Founder, Strategist, and Author