I dream of a future that uses renewable energy and focuses on the needs of human beings. For a long time now, I’ve been searching for a way to state this dream in a simple, straightforward sentence. Finally, at long last, I think I’ve found it in this phrase: A renewable human future.
My heart pounds with excitement to realise that loads of other people are coming to the same dream, at the same time. For decades, so many of us have been disheartened and then outright enraged by the technofascist push toward generative AI with no regard for the cost to humanity through lost jobs and the deliberate destruction of the environment.
It’s easy to be pissed and hard to know where to start to fight back with something like this. Climate change is the key existential threat of our lifetime, as our planet is heating up and the oceans are boiling, but the elected leaders in charge of these regulations have caved to billionaire pressure and rolled back so many environmental protections.
So we despair and recycle and do what we can in our small corners of influence, while the only planet we have to live on falls apart around us due to greed and stupid decisions. But then came the data centre construction, and now it seems we’ve got a physical enemy to focus on. I can feel the uniting hatred for the billions of dollars being spent on these abhorrent and destructive buildings around the world, and I think it’s finally bringing us together.
In Canada, where I live, our Prime Minister Mark Carney made a big announcement on June 4th called AI for All. The outcry on Bluesky was swift and immediate. Canadians like me who loathe AI and want zero investment in it. CBC followed up with a story about how public trust in Canada is among the lowest in the world for AI and the companies who provide it.
Trust should be low when the product fucking sucks. Canadians are smart in this area. It’s enraging that our elected leaders are so out of touch when it comes to announcing this strategy for AI as though Canadian citizens will embrace this awful tech with open arms. Data centres use a shitload of water and electricity. They are loud and damaging to the earth. No one wants a data centre built near them. I don’t want them built at all.
My response to Mark Carney’s excited announcement on Bluesky read “I dream of elected leaders who actually listen to what the people who elected them want. NO AI. Please, don’t think about money for just a moment. How about human jobs for human beings. Renewable energy. A future where we can breathe and drink water and grow food in our soil. Please. NO AI.“
I followed that post up with a longer letter to the Prime Minister, the AI Minister, my local MP, and the Premier of my province. I was going to write twice, once to express my disdain for the AI for All policy, and once to express my opposition to the way the Liberal Government is quietly dismantling our environmental laws and protections, but then I realised these two issues are really one issue.
The fight to stop any more data centres from being built is the fight to save our environment, and do away with this chokehold the tech oligarchs have placed on society with forced use of AI. This fight is one of the biggest issues of our time, and it’s happening right now. We cannot wait. Our planet is in peril, and it’s the only place we have to live. Please, join us in this fight.
Get loud. Write to the officials in charge to say NO AI DATA CENTRES. Sign every petition you can find, like this one to halt the proposed Vancouver data centres, and this one to pause AI in BC schools. Wherever you live, search for petitions on data centres and sign them to send a message to elected officials. In Vancouver, people are taking to the streets to protest loudly, and I plan to join them.
It’s healthy not to trust those who lie to us. The technofascists have lied, again and again and again, so I will not trust them when they promise that these new data centres will be different. We don’t need AI. What we need is renewable energy to heal our ravaged planet, and a future that centres human beings and not company profits or chatbots. We need to prioritise our human lives over money and computers.
To me, the environment matters more than anything else. If my kids and their future kids cannot breathe clean air or drink clean water or grow food to eat in the soil, and if they have no access to inspiring work that celebrates humanity instead of robots, then they have no liveable future. It’s up to us, right now, to imagine and then build a future that we can be excited about.
One that is renewable and human. The time is now, and this work is urgent.