Artificial Intelligence, Real Climate Impacts

Artificial intelligence can do some pretty amazing things, including for the climate. AI can help optimize the electric grid, make heating and cooling buildings more efficient, and pinpoint exactly where greenhouse gas emissions are coming from all around the world. 

On the other hand, the energy use of AI is massive and growing. A recent study estimates that in just a few years, the extra energy needed will equal whole countries the size of Sweden or Argentina. How do we make sure the benefits of AI outweigh its energy costs?

Karen Hao

Contributing Writer, The Atlantic 

Gavin McCormick

Cofounder and Executive Director, WattTime; Cofounder, Climate TRACE

Priya Donti

Assistant Professor, MIT; Co-founder and Chair of Climate Change AI 

Amy McGovern

Professor of Computer Science, University of Oklahoma 

Monday April 22 - Friday April 26

Climate One will be celebrating SF Climate Week with a series of programs featuring California and the San Francisco Bay Area’s leading voices in policy, climate justice and business. The week will showcase interviews with California Attorney General Rob Bonta, State Senators Nancy Skinner and Scott Wiener, California Air Resources Board Chair Liane Randolph, and California Environmental Justice Association’s Energy Justice Director Mari Rose Taruc, among others, about the challenges and opportunities facing the nation’s innovation capital when it comes to addressing climate change.

We’re pleased to share that California Natural Resources Agency Secretary Wade Crowfoot, SF Environment Director Tyrone Jue and Stanford Law School Lecturer Alicia Seiger will join us as well!

On Tuesday, Climate One will also be hosting an Action Lounge, where attendees will be able to join local climate and environmental organizations, apply for green jobs, and receive guidance from climate career coaches. Participating organizations include Climate Changemakers, Dream.org, Cleantech Open, Green Jobs Network, and more.

The week will wrap up on Friday with a sustainable fashion show featuring local emerging designers, along with music performances and cocktails on our rooftop garden with breathtaking views of the Bay Bridge. 

In a rare unanimous decision, the Supreme Court determined that publicly traded companies that fail to disclose future emissions risks are not committing securities fraud. Writing for the 9-0 majority in the case Macquarie Infrastructure Corp. v. Moab Partners, L.P., Justice Sonia Sotamayor wrote that because future risks are inherently unknowable, a company’s omission of these risks is not a violation of the Securities Act unless the failure to disclose was intentionally misleading.

The Macquarie decision overturned a Circuit Court ruling in favor of Moab Partners, which had sued Macquarie Infrastructure for failing to inform investors that its revenue was likely to be impacted by regulations requiring the phase-out of certain fuels. The decision comes just over a month after the Supreme Court temporarily halted new Securities and Exchange Commission regulations that aim to require publicly traded companies to report on their Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions. 

Frustrated by recent losses at the U.S. Supreme Court in cases like West Virginia v. EPA and Sackett v. EPA, many environmental activists have turned instead to state courts for legal climate activism. In January, Montana’s Supreme Court rejected efforts by Gov. Greg Gianforte to block an earlier ruling that requires state regulators to consider emissions before issuing new permits for fossil fuel development. Other states with similar cases ongoing include Massachusetts, California, New York and Hawaiʻi.

PLUS:

Using technology to deflect the sun’s rays has long been thought of as exclusive to science fiction. But with global temperatures already approaching the 2.0° C threshold set at the 2015 Paris Agreement, some researchers are considering extreme methods to reduce the rate of warming — such as a test in early April of a novel technique aiming to brighten clouds, thereby reducing the amount of sunlight that reach Earth. 

Geoengineering, as the field of large-scale environmental manipulation is known, has enormous potential for both risk and reward. To better understand these tradeoffs, Climate One spoke with experts from the Carnegie Climate Governance Initiative, the University of California, Davis and the Harvard Kennedy School. Their full conversation is available wherever you get your podcasts.

Source: Our World in Data/Global Carbon Budget

While we love it when Climate One fans can join us in-person for our events, we know we have listeners in all 50 states and around the world who can’t always make it to our live shows in San Francisco. But did you know that we maintain a YouTube archive of the streams of all our live shows?

With more than 100 archival shows available, whether you’re in Berkeley or Bermuda, you have the opportunity to experience a full Climate One conversation. You can check out the full playlist on our YouTube channel — and make sure to subscribe to receive notifications of future livestreams as they happen!