Environment | The Verge

Jensen Huang talks about AI and climate change like a supervillain

2026-09-24T14:04:44-04:00

As Jensen Huang puts it, AI can help fight climate change - but only if it inflicts "an enormous amount of pain and suffering" first.

The Nvidia CEO discussed the future of energy and AI's impact on our planet in the latest episode of The Ezra Klein Show. But his comments boil down to the same accelerationist spin we've seen from a variety of tech leaders as well as President Donald Trump. They promise that AI will be such a gift to humanity that it's worth the damage caused by data centers currently running on dirty energy.

Huang's extreme level of privilege is glaring

Huang's extreme level of privilege is glaring in the interview. He …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Data centers are black boxes, but California wants to change that

2026-09-23T14:22:57-04:00

California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a slate of bills on Monday that could finally give communities better data - and more say - on how data centers impact their electricity bills and water supply.

As data centers invade a growing number of communities across the US, they've triggered protests over how the infrastructure underpinning AI might stress power grids and local water systems. That's fueled partly by concerns about how difficult it is to see just how much electricity or water they're actually gobbling up. California's new disclosure rules won't offer a full picture, but starting next year, data center operators will have to start s …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Amazon wants to help the Colorado River, but we still don’t know how much water the company uses

2026-09-22T10:27:44-04:00

Amazon plans to spend $20 million on water conservation projects along the Colorado River, a crucial but dwindling water supply for 40 million people in the Western US.

The initiative comes as Amazon and other tech companies face mounting scrutiny over how much water their data centers use. Amazon has a goal of becoming water positive - replenishing more water than it uses - by the end of the decade. It recently disclosed some information about its water use, but we still have an incomplete picture of the company's impact as a whole.

Amazon announced the launch of a Colorado River Basin Collaborative today, with a mission to "create one o …

Read the full story at The Verge.

The AI data center e-waste problem is huge — and getting bigger

2026-09-16T16:40:46-04:00

E-waste from the AI boom has been vastly underestimated, a new report warns. By 2050, it could become enough trash to fill 23 million shipping containers - roughly enough 40-foot containers to circle the world six times if lined up in a row.

It's a significantly higher estimate of AI's e-waste than previous studies have found because the authors of the new report factor in all the infrastructure needed to support servers in data centers. The broader scope provides a clearer picture of junk AI leaves behind, according to the nonprofit Basel Action Network (BAN), which published the paper today.

"AI may feel weightless, but every model dep …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Trump throws out power plant climate pollution rules

2026-09-14T16:29:48-04:00

The Environmental Protection Agency announced its plans today to kill any remaining standards on how much greenhouse gas pollution power plants are allowed to emit in the US. The move will only make electricity dirtier as AI, electric vehicles, and a revival of domestic manufacturing drive up power demand.

The EPA's proposal today is a major escalation of President Donald Trump's efforts to promote fossil fuels while making it easier to build out energy-hungry data centers. Environmental and consumer advocates, meanwhile, are fighting back - arguing that Trump's deregulation spree comes with higher costs for the environment, public health, …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Trump is giving data centers a pass to pollute

2026-09-12T10:41:27-04:00

President Donald Trump is weakening environmental regulations in the name of speeding up the construction of AI data centers, raising health risks for Americans, a cadre of former EPA officials said this week in a briefing and new report. They are urging - perhaps futilely - the president to adopt a "Data Center Health Protection Pledge" to signal that the administration is taking the environmental threat seriously.

At the start of his term, Trump's EPA administrator, Lee Zeldin, proclaimed his goal of making America "the AI capital of the world" through deregulation. Since then, Zeldin and the White House have rolled back dozens of rules …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Arizona’s lifeline for chip manufacturing is drying up

2026-09-11T05:29:11-04:00

Water intake towers at the Hoover Dam stand next to a bleached "bathtub ring" on the banks of Lake Mead on September 1st in Lake Mead National Recreation Area, Arizona. The reservoir has hit historic lows as the Colorado River experiences unprecedented drought. | Photo: Getty Images

Arizona, an epicenter for the bipartisan push to revive American chip manufacturing, is about to lose more than a quarter of the water it typically pulls each year from the Colorado River.

The 1,400-mile waterway is a crucial lifeline for the region and other western states. A recent federal decision on how to manage its dwindling flow hits Arizona, and its already drought-prone desert communities, particularly hard. The river provides more than a third of the Grand Canyon State's water. Arizona has been a manufacturing hub since the start of the semiconductor industry, and now it's where TSMC and Intel are expanding massive factories to m …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Google says its AI weather model is getting better

2026-09-03T10:41:03-04:00

Google is rolling out an updated AI weather model that's supposed to be more accurate, especially when it comes to predicting rain and snowfall.

In the announcement today, the company says it's now able to make forecasts with "unprecedented resolution" using its new WeatherNext 3 AI model. It can produce a global picture that's five times sharper than Google's previous model by learning from real-time weather observations, according to the company.

"One of the main developments is for [WeatherNext 3] to go beyond what data most global AI models train on," says Samier Merchant, a research engineer at Google Research. "We're able to leverage …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Tim Cook did alright by the environment — but AI could upend his climate legacy

2026-09-01T19:09:19-04:00

As he steps down from his post as Apple CEO today, Tim Cook leaves behind a mostly positive environmental record. As far as billionaire tech moguls and the environment go, Cook will likely be remembered as one of the better ones - certainly far from the worst. But it will become harder for the company to meet the climate goals Cook set in place as Apple tries to catch up in the AI race.

Under his watch, Apple set industry-leading goals for reducing the amount of pollution created by its products and suppliers. It has managed to keep its carbon footprint from growing while other tech giants see their emissions rise with the energy needs of …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Trump’s EPA wants to let data centers hide their air pollution

2026-08-28T12:28:40-04:00

Just as new data centers face growing backlash from neighboring communities, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is about to make it harder for people to weigh in on any pollution those centers create.

The EPA plans to toss out a federal rule requiring public notice and an opportunity to comment when certain industrial sites apply for an air permit. Advocates warn that the move would allow data center developers and other industries to break ground without giving nearby residents a say, or even a warning that construction is planned.

"You can see why that would be so interesting to an administration that wants to rush through the …

Read the full story at The Verge.