There is an old European proverb: âWhere two fight, a third one wins.â
Anyone with eyes to see the misaligned interests of our major industrial factions can see that an existential clash is coming between the climate industry and artificial intelligence. The under-asked question is how the patriot, who cares little for the discrete interests of either party but greatly about his country, should proceed.
For the last 30 years, American businesses and investors have tripped over themselves to remake their portfolios with a focus on âsustainableâ energy. Governments have subsidized this industry to the tune of trillions and made men rich off of their collective participation in this cultish climate scheme.
Smart observers have noted there are many ways to combat the observed âclimate crisisâ besides a hyper-focus on carbon-emissions reduction. But none of these alternative strategies line the pockets of the forces that have set up financial, industrial, and political projects in support of the shift.
Innovations in solar, wind, and other non-coal/oil/gas energy production schemes are impressiveâif you start with the premise that it is urgently necessary to move away from fossil fuels. The entire global project is a house of cards, and the moment someone credible says, âWhat if we donât need to worry about that?â the foundational cards are removed and their wealth crumbles.
At this precariously set table now sits artificial intelligence, asking that uncomfortable question. Just in the last year, we have seen the dramatic emergence of AI. The initial cultural flashes are mostly sillyâGoogleâs Black Nazis, deep fakes, and the grand vision of Fully Automated Luxury Communism: Let robots do all the work, and AI will equitably distribute the benefits.
AI unquestionably has the power to remake the world for good or for ill. The unknowable question is: How? And who benefits?
Before attempting to answer, we should observe the obvious, but underreported, looming civil war. (It is fair to call it a civil war because the same elite finance and investor class has the most riding on each. Of course, they have little in common, and most of their interests are misaligned. Perhaps itâs a bias toward evocative brandingâcivil war is so much more visceral than mere warâŠ)
The International Energy Agency released a report last year which calculated that artificial intelligence will draw power âroughly equal to the amount of electricity used by the entire country of Japanâ by 2026. It already consumes 2% of the global energy grid and is still by all accounts in its infancy. Because of this, CNBC reported, âAfter a decade of flat power growth in the U.S., electricity demand is forecast to grow as much as 20% by 2030, according to a Wells Fargo analysis published in April.â
2030 is also, serendipitously, the year that the world promised to dramatically decrease its energy usage. According to the U.N., more than 140 countries, over 9,000 companies, over 1,000 cities, more than 1,000 educational institutions, and over 600 financial institutions have pledged to halve global emissions by 2030.
The promises of Fully Automated Luxury Communism and net-zero emissions are obviously in conflict, and itâs being quietly admitted.
âIn 2020, we unveiled what we called our carbon moonshot. That was before the explosion in artificial intelligence,â Microsoft President Brad Smith told Bloomberg Green.
In its 2024 Environmental Report, Google admitted, âAs we further integrate AI into our products, reducing emissions may be challenging due to increasing energy demands from the greater intensity of AI compute, and the emissions associated with the expected increases in our technical infrastructure investment.â
The seams are already busting on the big tent with an AI and Green revolution, and the only efforts to keep it glued together are laughable on their face. The New York Timesâs attempts to pass off artificial intelligence as a âgreen technologyâ rest on a study by the Boston Consulting Group commissioned by Google. They said that a broad use of AI across the economy could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 5-10% by 2030. This is laughably short of the ambitious 50% reductions that so much of our overinflated climate economy is predicated on.
âTheyâ cannot do both a left-wing AI revolution and a Green one, but the patriot struggles with which side he should root for.
The patriot cares deeply about the threat of displaced workers from artificial intelligence and is skeptical of consumption-based solutions like Universal Basic Income. At least the farcical solar panel industry employs people rather than replacing them.
Of course, he is also frustrated that the premise of the Green Economy rests on destroying our capacities in natural gas, oil, and other great technologies that built the West. So much of the sustainable revolution is intrinsically linked with the suicidal âdegrowthâ movement that siding with them even against the Automated Luxury Communists feels instinctively wrong.
But there is a third way, a right-wing AI and energy revolution: to use the potential of these technologies but not for the widely accepted social goals of either tribe. After the warring factions have thoroughly bloodied each other, the patriot should step in and offer each investor a rhetorical bailout: use your tech for the explicit advancement of your country and your countrymen, not vague social progress.
The flawed worldviews underlying the AI and Green revolutions rest on the idea that our last frontier has been essentially reached. The green cultist says we have grown too fast and will melt if we do not artificially limit our resources to solely their preferred energy stack. The automated communist says our ambitions are done because robot slaves make endless leisure possible. The patriot says we have not yet begun to discover our full potential, and both technology shifts can be used for this purpose.
Yes, use the power of the sun and wind to fuel our futureâbut not by tearing down other technologies. Yes, use AI instead of bricking brilliant systems in order to achieve arbitrary climate emissions pledgesâjust donât rest on your laurels when youâve solved the previous problems.
This present conflict is rooted in an old one. In the 1930s, Franklin Delano Roosevelt argued:
Our last frontier has long since been reachedâŠ. The mere building of more industrial plants, the organization of more corporations is as likely to be as much a danger as a helpâŠ. Our task now is not the discovery of natural resources or necessarily the production of more goods, it is the sober, less dramatic business of administering the resources and plants already in handâŠestablishing markets for surplus production, of meeting the problem of under-consumption, distributing the wealth and products more equitably and adopting the economic organization to the service of the people.
This is the depressingly familiar refrain of both our left-wing technology camps.
In response, the much-derided Herbert Hoover argued that FDRâs scheme
would break down the savings, the wages, the equality of opportunity among our people. These measures would transfer vast responsibilities to the Federal Government from the States, the local governments, and the individuals. But that is not all; they would break down our form of government. It will crack the timbers of our Constitution.
Hoover was right, then and now, when he offered this:
I do challenge the whole idea that we have ended the advance of America, that this country has reached the zenith of its power and the height of its development. That is the counsel of despair for the future of America. That is not the spirit by which we shall emerge from this depression. That is not the spirit which has made this country.
In our day, for the same reasons, we must seize the good and leave the evil of both these technological factions. They will, in the near future, be at each otherâs throats. Their premises will be shaken by the intense conflict. When that happens, we must be prepared to step in and profit for America.
These technologies cannot represent the culmination of Americaâour last frontier. They must spur her on to new heights.
Parker Briden
January 28, 2025
americanmind.org