AI's Water Problem Isn't Where You Think

Baratunde Thurston (0:00)

Hello again, I'm Baratunde. This is Life with Machines, where we figure out how to live well with tech and not just endure it. And I've been waiting for this moment for I would say 18 months. I would say it's been a long time coming. It is a reunion. Today, we are gonna look at the massive physical footprint of the AI boom, because although there is a lot of talk about the cloud, all these services also live on earth, and everything virtual and digital lands in a physical body. Sometimes that body is a building, sometimes it's a watershed, sometimes it's a human being. We don't acknowledge. And while Silicon Valley loves to sell us this beautiful fantasy, we know that this cloud also ends up in a very material, often power-hungry machine.

We're going to talk about datacenters. This is the moment we've all been waiting for, the Thrilla in Manila of podcasts. Because these datacenters are popping up all across the world. They're landing in rural towns, in sovereign indigenous lands, in my own community or not, which we'll get to later. And they demand an enormous amount of water and energy and land. So that's happening. And at the same time, we're seeing record numbers of human beings pushing back, not just against the structures, but against the systems that encourage a certain way of building these structures. That doesn't really feel in line with the world we want to live in. So I just want to acknowledge, I know people are angry. I know that we are facing a lot of crises. And in some communities, water levels are dropping, grid demand is spiking.

And a lot of alleged facts are flying.

So the reason I'm so excited and the reason I got this reunion hype man energy is because we have someone with us to help us separate these alleged facts from actual facts. The hype from the hard reality. A returning guest, the co-founder of WattTime and Climate TRACE, Gavin McCormick.

And just so I'm not yelling, Gavin McCormick. Gavin, welcome back to Life with Machines. Hello.

Gavin McCormick (2:21)

Thanks for having me here. This is so fun. I'm really looking forward to this conversation. There are surprises in the data we see, so this will be interesting.

Baratunde Thurston (2:30)

This is great surprise. I love that you're already doing the thing that you do. And you're smiling and you're like the opposite energy of me, because I'm like screaming, and you're just like as calm as I want our climate to actually be. Like I feel like I'm the hit map of hot climate summer, and you're just like a cool arctic breeze just coming through.

Gavin McCormick (2:49)

There we go. Because everything is going to be fine on climate, right?

Baratunde Thurston (2:53)

That's all. Thank you. The show is over. This is really all I wanted to hear. I've got a lot of data and URLs to throw at you, but ultimately, that's why I'm here, and that's why our people are here. Listen, some of you are newer to the Life with Machines world, and you may not have been here when we had Gavin on. We recorded with Gavin in January of 2025, and I think we dropped that episode just a few months later. Our whole team still buzzes from that conversation, Gavin.

And a lot of us can't stop thinking about what you said back in January 2025 during our first run at Life with Machines. And you left us feeling good.

You left us with this reality-jarring check that, one, we are going to beat climate change. You were just so confident, and you're not working for Exxon Mobil, so we believed you.

Gavin McCormick (3:59)

Working for Al Gore, who's not known for saying it's all be fine.

Baratunde Thurston (4:02)

You work with Al Gore. It's hard to get more credible than that. The only thing more credible than working with Al Gore is being an oak tree. So make sure they support you.

And then the other thing you left us with was that we would see peak emissions by August of 25 or 26

We've been through a lot with our climate as you and I record now. Europe's burning, Canada's burning, like North America's choking. Again, it's the summer ritual that we're in right now. And so I just want to know, are we still on the path that you laid out for us 18 months ago? The floor is yours. How do you feel?

Gavin McCormick (4:51)

You start with the big one.

So I think I should start by saying, so what we do at Climate TRACE is we are a big coalition of NGOs, 150 different NGOs and universities who all specialize in satellites and measuring emissions.