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“Generally, if people were more informed about the average
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(environmental) cost of generating a response, people would maybe start thinking, ‘Is it really necessary to turn myself into an action figure just because I’m bored?’ Or ‘do I have to tell ChatGPT jokes because I have nothing to do?’” Dauner said.
Additionally, as more companies push to add generative AI tools to their systems, people may not have much choice how or when they use the technology, Luccioni said.
“We don’t need generative AI in web search. Nobody asked for AI chatbots in (messaging apps) or on social media,” Luccioni said. “This race to stuff them into every single existing technology is truly infuriating, since it comes with real consequences to our planet.”
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With less available information about AI’s resource usage, consumers have less choice, Ren said, adding that regulatory pressures for more transparency are unlikely to the United States anytime soon. Instead, the best hope for more energy-efficient AI may lie in the cost efficacy of using less energy.
“Overall, I’m still positive about (the future). There are many software engineers working hard to improve resource efficiency,” Ren said. “Other industries consume a lot of energy too, but it’s not a reason to suggest AI’s environmental impact is not a problem. We should definitely pay attention.”
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‘Like wildfires underwater’: Worst summer on record for Great Barrier Reef as coral die-off sweeps planet
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Great Barrier Reef, Australia
CNN
—
As the early-morning sun rises over the Great Barrier Reef, its light pierces the turquoise waters of a shallow lagoon, bringing more than a dozen turtles to life.
These waters that surround Lady Elliot Island, off the eastern coast of Australia, provide some of the most spectacular snorkeling in the world — but they are also on the front line of the climate crisis, as one of the first places to suffer a mass coral bleaching event that has now spread across the world.
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The Great Barrier Reef just experienced its worst summer on record, and the US-based National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced last month that the world is undergoing a rare global mass coral bleaching event — the fourth since the late 1990s — impacting at least 53 countries.
The corals are casualties of surging global temperatures which have smashed historical records in the past year — caused mainly by fossil fuels driving up carbon emissions and accelerated by the El Nino weather pattern, which heats ocean temperatures in this part of the world.
CNN witnessed bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef in mid-February, on five different reefs spanning the northern and southern parts of the 2,300-kilometer (1,400-mile) ecosystem.
“What is happening now in our oceans is like wildfires underwater,” said Kate Quigley, principal research scientist at Australia’s Minderoo Foundation. “We’re going to have so much warming that we’re going to get to a tipping point, and we won’t be able to come back from that.”
Coral bleached white from high water temperatures on the Great Barrier Reef, Australia. CNN
Bleaching occurs when marine heatwaves put corals under stress, causing them to expel algae from their tissue, draining their color. Corals can recover from bleaching if the temperatures return to normal, but they will perish if the water stays warmer than usual.
“It’s a die-off,” said Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, a climate scientist at the University of Queensland in Australia and chief scientist at The Great Barrier Reef Foundation. “The temperatures got so warm, they’re off the charts … they never occurred before at this sort of level.”
The destruction of marine ecosystems would deliver an effective death sentence for around a quarter of all species that depend on reefs for survival — and threaten an estimated billion people who rely on reef fish for their food and livelihoods. Reefs also provide vital protection for coastlines, reducing the impact of floods, cyclones and sea level rise.
“Humanity is being threatened at a rate by which I’m not sure we really understand,” Hoegh-Guldberg said.
“It’s true that both plants are not yet operating at the capacity we originally targeted,” said the Climeworks spokesperson.
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“Like all transformative innovations, progress is iterative, and some steps may take longer than anticipated,” they said.
The company’s prospective third plant in Louisiana aims to remove 1 million tons of carbon a year by 2030, but it’s uncertain whether construction will proceed under the Trump administration.
A Department of Energy spokesperson said a department-wide review was underway “to ensure all activities follow the law, comply with applicable court orders and align with the Trump administration’s priorities.” The government has a mandate “to unleash ‘American Energy Dominance’,” they added.
Direct air capture’s success will also depend on companies’ willingness to buy carbon credits.
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Currently companies are pretty free to “use the atmosphere as a waste dump,” said Holly Buck, assistant professor of environment and sustainability at the University at Buffalo. “This lack of regulation means there is not yet a strong business case for cleaning this waste up,” she told CNN.
Another criticism leveled at Climeworks is its failure to offset its own climate pollution. The carbon produced by its corporate activities, such as office space and travel, outweighs the carbon removed by its plants.
The company says its plants already remove more carbon than they produce and corporate emissions “will become irrelevant as the size of our plants scales up.”
Some, however, believe the challenges Climeworks face tell a broader story about direct air capture.
This should be a “wake-up call,” said Lili Fuhr, director of the fossil economy program at the Center for International Environmental Law. Climeworks’ problems are not “outliers,” she told CNN, “but reflect persistent technical and economic hurdles faced by the direct air capture industry worldwide.”
“The climate crisis demands real action, not speculative tech that overpromises and underdelivers.” she added.
Some of the Climeworks’ problems are “related to normal first-of-a-kind scaling challenges with emerging complex engineering projects,” Buck said.
But the technology has a steep path to becoming cheaper and more efficient, especially with US slashing funding for climate policies, she added. “This kind of policy instability and backtracking on contracts will be terrible for a range of technologies and innovations, not just direct air capture.”
Direct air capture is definitely feasible but its hard, said MIT’s Buck. Whether it succeeds will depend on a slew of factors including technological improvements and creating markets for carbon removals, he said.
“At this point in time, no one really knows how large a role direct air capture will play in the future.”
This company says its technology can help save the world. It’s now cutting 20% of its staff as Trump slashes climate funding
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Two huge plants in Iceland operate like giant vacuum cleaners, sucking in air and stripping out planet-heating carbon pollution. This much-hyped climate technology is called direct air capture, and the company behind these plants, Switzerland-based Climeworks, is perhaps its most high-profile proponent.
But a year after opening a huge new facility, Climeworks is straining against strong headwinds. The company announced this month it would lay off around 20% of its workforce, blaming economic uncertainties and shifting climate policy priorities.
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“We’ve always known this journey would be demanding. Today, we find ourselves navigating a challenging time,” Climeworks’ CEOs Christoph Gebald and Jan Wurzbacher said in a statement.
This is particularly true of its US ambitions. A new direct air capture plant planned for Louisiana, which received $50 million in funding from the Biden administration, hangs in the balance as President Donald Trump slashes climate funding.
Climeworks also faces mounting criticism for operating at only a fraction of its maximum capacity, and for failing to remove more climate pollution than it emits.
The company says these are teething pains inherent in setting up a new industry from scratch and that it has entered a new phase of global scale up. “The overall trajectory will be positive as we continue to define the technology,” said a Climeworks spokesperson.
For critics, however, these headwinds are evidence direct air capture is an expensive, shiny distraction from effective climate action.
Many left-wing preppers also have guns.
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Killjoy is open about the fact she owns firearms but calls it one of the least important aspects of her prepping. She lives in rural Appalachia and, as a transgender woman, says the way she’s treated has changed dramatically since Trump’s first election. For those on the left, guns are “for community and self-defense,” she said.
Left-wing preppers consistently say the biggest difference between them and their right-wing peers is the rejection of “bunker mentality” — the idea of filling a bunker with beans, rice, guns and ammo and expecting to be able to survive the apocalypse alone.
Shonkwiler gives an example of a right-wing guy with a rifle on his back, who falls down the stairs and breaks a leg. If he doesn’t have medical training and a community to help, “he’s going to die before he gets to enjoy all his freeze-dried food.”
“People are our greatest asset,” Killjoy said. When Hurricane Helene carved a path of destruction through Asheville, North Carolina in 2024, Killjoy, who used to live in the city, loaded her truck with food and generators and drove there to help.
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Inshirah Overton also subscribes to the idea of community. The attorney, who came to prepping after enduring Hurricane Irene in 2011, owns a half-acre plot of land in New Jersey where she grows food and has beehives.
She stores fruit, vegetables and honey but also gives them to friends and neighbors. “My plan is to create a community of people who have a vested interest in this garden,” she said.
At one point, Overton toyed with the idea of buying a “bug-out” property in Vermont, somewhere to escape to, but desire for community for her and her two daughters stopped her. In Vermont, “no one knows me and I’m just a random Black lady, and they’ll be like: ‘Oh, OK, right, sure. You live here? Sure. Here’s the barrel of my shotgun. Turn around.’”
This focus on community may stem in part from left-wing preppers’ growing fears around the climate crisis, predicted to usher in far-reaching ecological, social and economic breakdown. It cannot be escaped by retreating to a bunker for a few weeks.
As Trump guts weather agencies, pledges to unwind the Federal Emergency Management Administration and slashes climate funding — all while promising to unleash the fossil fuel industry — climate concerns are only coming into sharper focus.
They’re top of mind for Brekke Wagoner, the creator and host of the Sustainable Prepping YouTube channel, who lives in North Carolina with her four children. She fears increasingly deadly summer heat and the “once-in-a-lifetime” storms that keep coming. Climate change “is just undeniable,” she said.
Her prepping journey started during Trump’s first term. She was living in California and filled with fear that in the event of a big natural disaster, the federal government would simply not be there.
Her house now contains a week’s worth of water, long-term food supplies, flashlights, backup batteries and a solar generator. “My goal is for our family to have all of our needs cared for,” she said, so in an emergency, whatever help is available can go to others.
“You can have a preparedness plan that doesn’t involve a bunker and giving up on civilization,” she said.
Despite prepping’s reputation as a form of doomerism, many left-wing preppers say they are not devoid of hope.
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Shonkwiler believes there will be an opportunity to create something new in the aftermath of a crisis. “It begins with preparedness and it ends with a better world,” he said.
Some also say there’s less tension between left- and right-wing preppers than people might expect. Bounds, the sociology professor, said very conservative preppers she met during her research contacted her during the Covid-19 pandemic to offer help.
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There is a natural human solidarity that emerges amid disaster, Killjoy said. She recalls a cashier giving her a deep discount on supplies she was buying to take to Asheville post-Helene. “I have every reason to believe that that man is right-wing, and I do think that there is a transcending of political differences that happens in times of crisis,” she said.
As terrifying events pile up, from the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East to deadly extreme weather, it’s hard to escape the sense we live in a time of rolling existential crises — often a hair’s breadth from global disaster.
People are increasingly beginning to wonder whether their views on preppers have been misconceived, Mills said. “There is a bigger question floating in the air, which is: Are preppers crazy, or is everyone else?”
Killjoy has seen a huge change over the last five years in people’s openness to prepping. Those who used to make fun of her for her “go bag” are now asking for advice.
It’s not necessarily the start of a prepping boom, she said. “I think it is about more and more people adopting preparedness and prepper things into a normal life.”
Evidence already points this way. Americans stockpiled goods in advance of Trump’s tariffs and online sales of contraceptives skyrocketed in the wake of his election, amid concerns he would reduce access. Shows like “The Walking Dead,” meanwhile, have thrust the idea of prepping into popular culture and big box stores now sell prepping equipment and meal kits.
People are hungry to learn about preparedness, said Shonkwiler. “They have the understanding that the world as we knew it, and counted on it, is beginning to cease to be. … What we need to be doing now is figuring out how we can survive in the world that we’ve created.”