Environmental Impact of AI Datacenters vs. Animal Agriculture

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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7 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.