UnEarth Magazine.

_{Writing by Clarissa Bell – Art by Camille Crozat}

Dear reader, I am back where I started a year ago.  

This time last year, when I didn’t yet know I’d be returning for a fifth year, I wrote what I thought was going to be my final ever article for UnEarth. In what was then the heyday of ChatGPT and OpenAI debates, I premised that article on digital literacy and discourse on AI development and the environment. By doing so, I also gave the poor editors palpitations by changing my entire article outline 1 hour before the draft deadline. Apologies again! 

To preserve the cardiological health of some of the most hardworking editors this university has to offer, not to mention for nostalgia’s sake, I’m going to write my last ever Unearth article on something I’m familiar with. I’ve always been pessimistic about the effects of technology and the environment and how these AI companies see technology’s role in society. It’s been a year. As an insultingly severe understatement, a lot has happened since then. In the same amount of time, we’ve seen the ever-clearer relationship between technology companies and how politics interact with anything remotely connected to environmentalism. 

So, editors, for a final time, hold your howls of anguish! I’m going to try and talk about technological innovation and environmentalism, with a twist. If you put up with me being a tad sappy and reflective, I’ll try my best to put a hopeful spin on this. It would be a disservice to every single hardworking writer, artist, editor and reader of the Unearth team, both the previous ones I’ve worked with and the future ones to come, if I were to do anything less. Anyway, I’m dragging this on. Let’s hop, skip and jump over the glitching rainbow into the digital oasis together, shall we? 

Let’s start with the good stuff – or, more accurately, the inevitability – of the potential green impacts of technology. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change published a document on technology and the foundation for sustainable development that began: “We cannot address climate change without technology.” Which would make sense as of recent events, right? Heyday of AI, ChatGPT etc. Wait. No, sorry – that document was from 2016. Technological development has been a looming presence in sustainability long before I started writing about it on here – and it shows.  

There’s been talk about the potential saving graces of technological development for environmentalism. One of the most obvious events that springs to mind is the COP29 Declaration on Green Digital Action, where digital technologies are discussed in terms of their potential to reduce emissions and help us with mitigation. The UN Environment Programme has also initiated support for the Digital Transformation Programme by ‘co-championing’ the Coalition for Digital Environmental Sustainability to address the lack of data in environmental monitoring. Despite some critique about the effects of AI in monitoring systems considering transparency and prioritising actionable instructions – a critique that is timelier and more necessary than ever – we need the data before us to critique. We need to know the gaps, wider patterns, inequalities, and have the data shared for multiple areas of expertise and decision-making to deliberate and decide. Having it and knowing the limitations to effectively work with it is better than not. Monitoring systems could lend itself to sorely needed predictive observation capabilities to solve a wide range of immediate environmental, and wider societal and political, issues. Nations are also recognising this too: back at the 2010 Conference of the Parties (COP) no less, a Technology Mechanism was established, to support countries to use climate technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Even then, I’m unsure about the specific focus of this mechanism for ‘developing’ countries. Countries considered to be in the ‘Global North’, especially the USA and those in the EU, are responsible for 92% of global excess carbon emissions after all. Either way, the mechanism is there, it’s now time for nations and global deliberations to make use of it. 

I’ve talked previously in this publication about the potential for sustainable and net-zero innovations, but I’m going to swallow my pride and talk about green- and climate-tech companies. There are websites such as Climate Founder that claim to aid so-called ‘climate entrepreneurs’ with building sustainable companies to mitigate climate change. There’s more publicized stories of businesspeople incorporating their environmentalist concerns in their work, ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) objectives, and lists of ‘Climate Cohorts’ or startups being recognised for ‘revolutionising sustainability’. And, as sceptical as I am… it’s nice to see. This doesn’t get splashed across many news headlines that I’ve seen so far, but I’d not be being honest with you if I didn’t at least share that these things do exist, regardless of how concerned I’m going to be of them. Yes, I’m cautious – greenwashing, carbon credits, accountability, systemic change, I could go on. However, I’m also cautiously happy that we’re not the only ones concerned.  

If you’ve been anticipating a ‘but’, you’re right. There’s always a ‘but’ with me on these things.  

Here is your long awaited ‘but’ – I’m unsure that technological development projects, including but not limited to AI, can save the world. If anything, I’m more concerned that they’d make it worse. Go figure, I’ve talked about this before, and in the year that’s passed, more people have joined me in shouting from the rooftops about having a more critical perspective. Investment is going into the vast amounts of cooling machines that this technology needs to run. Facebook generates 12 grams of carbon dioxide per year just by us using the platform, and as more people continue their use of social media, it’s not a stretch to imagine this stacking up. Meanwhile, Meta, alongside Google, Microsoft and Amazon, all appear to hope their ‘replenishment’ programs can offset their consumption. When Sam Altman was still CEO of OpenAI (my how time flies), there were many rebuttals to his claims of AI fixing the climate. This was just last year, with one of the responses pointing out the huge development obstacles for ‘clean’ technology, and regulatory failure that keeps technological development stuck spewing emissions. It feels like yesterday and a forever ago that we’ve been discussing this, a veritable Groundhog Day of imagining what a peaceful, climate-friendly Terminator could look like. Companies could posture as well-meaning whilst they continue as per without any real change, techno-cynicism or not. An actual technological resource oasis is not a stretch of the imagination anymore, and the same technologies are supposed to be ‘inevitable’ to climate and environmental solutions? 

I ended that article from last year characteristically cautious: digital literacy, actual policy change, before embarking onto a journey along what I sarcastically called a melodramatic glitching rainbow. However, I’ll keep my promise to myself, and you, to end on as hopeful a note as I can. We’re past the point of writing off technology as part of the solution – as much as it pains me and my nostalgic ego, we need to work with it. Technology, and all its messy political, legal and societal politics around it and the environment, are now going to play a key role in our solution to the climate crisis. By ‘our’, I mean founders, climate technologists, businesspeople, investors, and particularly, politicians and lawmakers who actualise a lot of these possibilities.  

To show how viable this is, in the UK, the Green Sector is growing three times the rate of the UK economy. This would add £41bn to the economy, expand and diversify employment in green energy roles across 14 sectors, and has already provided the UK with almost half its energy needs. Half! Beyond this, there’s world examples of coordinated efforts to mitigate climate change aiding with population health standards. Great, right? What’s the way forward? Actually having the infrastructure, government policy and sustainability-focused companies and networks necessary to facilitate it. We need coordinated support. We needed it decades ago, and we need it more than ever before with the effects of accelerating innovation and technological use against the backdrop of the world seeing, and suffering, the real-time disproportionate impact of unmitigated climate change. 

It’s with this that the individuals and consumers become necessary voices, too – we can’t control everything, but we’re inclined to actively enter professions or writing online about green jobs and large-scale sustainability practices. We’ve still got lots to say; write to councillors, MPs, politicians, online, talk to others, join groups, build communities. Write for this magazine. However, I am not saying the responsibility is on the individual – far from it. The ultimate responsibility is on those who can materialise and coordinate what we need to happen, but small-scale action and community building is still equally, if not more, important than ever now.  

It’s been four years writing for this magazine – I’ve practically got a degree in UnEearth opinion articles. I stand by my call for actual change, and for the record, I don’t think this is anywhere near enough, and I hope that a shift in the political paradigm occurs soon, especially with the UK’s recent interests in accelerating AI. However, it’s comforting knowing that I’m not the only person to hope and call for action. There’s all of you, too! Writing for UnEearth has been a joy. Future writers, anyone thinking of doing this, jump for it. You’ll have a blast. 

It seems I’ve reached the end of this glitching rainbow; peacefully, this time. My last big shout from this hill in St Andrews is finally done. Thanks for dragging me down nostalgia lane for one final time. Here’s hoping we all have hope…whatever may come.