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29
Environmental Impact of AI Datacenters vs. Animal Agriculture (media.piefed.zip)
submitted 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) by inari@piefed.zip to c/vegan@lemmy.world
28 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

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

https://unu.edu/inweh/collection/environmental-cost-of-AIs-Enrgy-Use-Carbon-water-and-land-footprints

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 uses~ 13000 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. )

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[–] pulsewidth@lemmy.world 24 points 5 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

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 5 points 5 days ago (1 children)

not a vegan, but cows need a lot of corn, and datacenters don't (unless they are solar powered)

[–] JelleWho@lemmy.world 7 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Solar power data centers need corn? The more I know

[–] jumping_redditor@sh.itjust.works 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

how else do you get the ethanol?

[–] echedeylr@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 4 days ago

~~Sugarcane~~

[–] Waterpumpee@lemmus.org 13 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Ah, ok then lets continue burning the fucking planet with datacenters

[–] inari@piefed.zip 13 points 5 days ago (1 children)

That's... not the point of the post

[–] GreenKnight23@lemmy.world -3 points 5 days ago (1 children)

that's the point you're making.

[–] inari@piefed.zip 6 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (2 children)

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 points 4 days ago

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 -1 points 4 days ago

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.

1000004421

and their response

1000004422

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 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

[...] along the lines of: „But we need food“

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 points 5 days ago

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

[–] OwOarchist@pawb.social 3 points 5 days ago (2 children)

I can't eat ChatGPT, though.

[–] davepleasebehave@lemmy.world 8 points 5 days ago

and yet you can not eat animals.

[–] umbra@slrpnk.net 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

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 points 4 days ago (2 children)

why not laugh when post is joke shaped?

[–] fyzzlefry@retrolemmy.com 2 points 4 days ago

Jokes are relative. You don't get to choose what people laugh at, just ask my racist Uncle.

[–] umbra@slrpnk.net 0 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Because i don't find the implication of eating sentient animals funny, least of all in a vegan space.

[–] GreenKnight23@lemmy.world -1 points 4 days ago

if you thought this post was remotely about veganism you might want to eat more lentils.

[–] veganpizza69@lemmy.vg 1 points 4 days ago

Both suck and should be abolished

[–] vivalapivo@lemmy.today 3 points 5 days ago (1 children)

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 2 points 4 days ago

Cattle contribute to methane gasses through their burps and farts, as well as their shit fermentation ponds and maybe other things im forgetting.

Cattle, like cows, deer, sheep, and buffalo, belong to a specific group of animals known as ruminants. Characterized by their four-chambered organs, ruminants are able to rapidly have a large meal of grass and hay and later digest it by re-chewing it in their mouth. In the cattle’s stomach, a rumen microbe called methanogen converts the excess hydrogen and CO2 produced during the digestion of this high-fiber food to methane. This methane, called enteric methane, is expelled from the cattle’s body as belching or burping.

In 2022, methane from enteric fermentation accounted for 27.4% of total anthropogenic [caused by humans] methane emissions in the US and 3% of total gross emissions.

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

[–] Mikina@programming.dev 0 points 4 days ago (1 children)

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 3 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

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 2 points 4 days ago (2 children)

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 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

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 the general only about 10% of energy is transferred from one level of the pyramid to the next.

Only 1 to 2 percent of the energy from the sun is absorbed by photosynthetic processes and converted into food.[2] When energy is transferred to higher trophic levels, on average only about 10% is used at each level to build biomass, becoming stored energy. The rest goes to metabolic processes such as growth, respiration, and reproduction.[3]

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 make (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 1 points 3 days ago

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!