This was not a polite policy discussion. It was apocalypse marketing and mostly to impressionable young children…for 20 years! The polar bears, the melting ice caps, and Al Gore’s doom and gloom predictions—“We have just 10 years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet into a tailspin.” That was in 2006!
Children were told their planet was dying. They were warned the clock was running out. They were told their future was being stolen. Anxiety became activism, and activism became identity, because nothing mobilizes like fear, especially when it is fed to young minds still forming their understanding of reality.
Figures like Greta Thunberg, who famously skipped school one day and somehow became the global poster child for climate virtue, were elevated into symbols of moral urgency, while entire classrooms were loudly and constantly primed to believe that modern civilization itself was the original sin. The world is going to burn up, and it's all our fault! I mean, seriously, these children who are now adults aren’t—ARE NOT having children because they are so emotionally debilitated because of the global warming farce they were steadily fed during their entire public school indoctrination process!
And now, those very same climate zealots have developed a ravenous appetite for all things digital. More ai! More computing power, and we need it NOW! And ironically, they don’t even realize this dichotomy. And it’s not the modest kind of hunger either.
It’s the industrial, grid-devouring, civilization-scale kind that does not particularly care where the power comes from, so long as it keeps flowing in enormous amounts and quickly.
This is what angers me the most; for decades now, we were told the planet was on the brink of destruction, that humanity needed to fundamentally rethink energy consumption, that we all had to learn to live with less, drive less, build less, cook less, heat less, and generally accept that modern life itself was the problem, all while being told that gas engines were evil, gas stoves were killing us, fireplaces were immoral, and anything involving combustion should be regulated, taxed, banned, or shamed out of existence. In the mid 2000s our electric company sent us a letter shaming us for using a bazillion times more electricity than our neighbors who lived in small, modest homes and there we were in our 4000 sq foot home, floating in our heated pool. Heck, I thought they should take us out for dinner for being such good customers! But no, we received a shaming letter with advice on how to live within our neighborhood’s electrical means.
And then artificial intelligence crashes into the narrative like a wrecking ball, because the moment a technology shows up that promises gobs of money, influence, and geopolitical dominance, the moral urgency about cutting energy consumption suddenly develops amnesia, and the entire sermon quickly morphs into something very different...something completely different...something acceptable and needed.
Now, this is not because the climate magically stabilized, not because decades of predictions suddenly evaporated, but because a new technological gold rush showed up that happens to require more electricity than most people can even conceptualize, which is a fascinating development considering we were just informed that flipping a light switch was basically attempted manslaughter. There was so much money to be made in the Green Ideology, but oh, ever so much more in AI!
Now this is where it really gets good…
Take Bill Gates, who spent years self-aggrandizing himself into the role of planetary caretaker, climate prophet, and moral authority on what the rest of humanity must sacrifice, only to now sound remarkably relaxed about the idea that the world isn’t actually ending tomorrow and that what we really need is a massive expansion of firm, reliable energy. Back in 2015, Gates hysterically warned: “Energy is the key problem of our time. It’s the largest source of greenhouse gases, and if we don’t solve it, climate change will become catastrophic.” And notably, in his 2021 book, “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster,” Gates was warning, “Climate change is a terrible problem, and it absolutely needs to be solved. It deserves to be a huge priority,” framing the issue as an urgent global emergency!
And then, all of a sudden, and not in a slow, methodical way, in 2025 his tone shifted dramatically, writing that “climate change is a serious problem, but it will not lead to humanity’s demise and people will be able to live and thrive in most places on Earth,” while emphasizing the need for nuclear power and large-scale energy production to support the future. Hmmm, I wonder what changed his mind…
You do not spend decades writing doomer books, headlining global forums, and lecturing humanity about impending climate catastrophe, building an entire global brand on moral urgency, and then suddenly discover in 2025 that what we really need now is more power plants without exposing a very inconvenient truth; real power comes in more forms than electricity.
What changed is that the future Gates is heavily, financially invested in happens to be powered by machines that never sleep, never rest, and never stop drawing electricity. Welcome, Chat Gpt/Open AI.
Contrary to popular belief, artificial intelligence does not live in a mystical cloud floating above the earth, despite how it is marketed. It lives in physical buildings bolted to concrete, stuffed with processors that generate extraordinary heat and consume staggering amounts of power every second, of every day. These data centers do not politely throttle down when the wind is not blowing or the sun is not shining, and they do not care about anyone’s feelings regarding carbon narratives; they just need the juice.
They care about electricity. Lots of it. Constantly!
Which means the entire low-energy, degrowth fantasy collapses on contact with reality, and that reality conveniently translates into gobs of money, power, and influence, which just happens to be the oxygen supply for Gates and his marauding band of god-like rich people who spent years telling everyone else to consume less, travel less, and build less, and are now constructing the most power-hungry technological empire in human history.
You cannot simultaneously claim that humanity must drastically reduce energy consumption to survive while also building the most energy-hungry digital infrastructure in human history, and no amount of corporate public relations yoga is going to make that contradiction disappear. It is going to be so fun to watch how this plays out.
So when Gates and others suddenly start talking about energy realism, nuclear expansion, and firm power as essential to the future, what you are witnessing is not a philosophical awakening. You are watching a hierarchy of priorities reveal itself.
Climate rhetoric was never the top priority.
Technological dominance is.
And that brings us to the moment where the shrapnel starts flying, because this is where regular people take the hit. Because the demand for juice to run these Ai platforms, massive infrastructures need to be built. Utilities do not absorb humungous infrastructure costs out of kindness. When new power plants are built, when transmission lines are expanded, when substations are upgraded, and when grid capacity is reinforced to handle hyper-scale data centers, those costs get baked directly into rate structures. Not into billionaire balance sheets who are signing their names to big electric contracts. But into your electric bill!
Most people have not suddenly doubled their household electricity usage, yet bills continue creeping upward because demand on the system is exploding from sources that consume more power in a single facility than entire towns.
Hyper-scale data centers sign long-term contracts at premium rates, which utilities love, and grid planning begins to revolve around feeding those important customers first because that is where predictable revenue lives. Residential customers become the flexible variable in the equation, which is a polite way of saying you get whatever pricing reality is left over.
This functions like a regressive tax that nobody voted on and nobody debated.
We are effectively being told to subsidize a digital infrastructure empire that we do not own, do not control, and will never materially benefit from, all while being assured that it is for our own good.
Meanwhile, the same political class that spent years insisting that energy scarcity was a moral necessity now quietly accepts that energy abundance is required, so long as that abundance serves their preferred technological future.
And before the usual rabid dogs start foaming at the mouth and trying to staple this to Donald Trump, let’s be very clear about something: this mess did not originate with him. The AI power surge hit faster than almost anyone publicly predicted, and it is colliding with decades of bad energy policy that long predate Trump. What Trump did understand, and has always understood, is that cheap, abundant, domestic energy is the backbone of a functioning civilization, which is why he ran on slashing energy costs, cutting electric bills, and unapologetically pushing an “energy abundance” agenda.
You can argue about Trump’s personality all day long, but you cannot pretend he built the AI power economy, and you cannot pretend he authored the climate hoax that boxed the grid into a corner long before ChatGPT ever existed.
If climate catastrophe had been a genuine moral absolute, there would be no pivot, because real moral convictions do not dissolve the moment they become inconvenient.
Influential people can and will abandon unpopular agendas, but they generally do not abandon core beliefs. Which strongly suggests that climate doom was always a political instrument rather than a personal, moral operating principle.
Artificial intelligence represents a once-in-a-generation leverage multiplier, and whoever dominates it gains enormous economic, political, and military advantages. That reality sits far higher on the priority stack than carbon sermons, which is why those sermons are now being quietly softened, reworded, and repackaged.
The future being constructed is not minimalist, restrained, low-energy or morally superior. It is centralized, industrial, and ravenous. And we, you and me, are being handed the electric bill.
