Rethinking AI in the age of climate collapse: Ethics, power, and responsibility

TL;DR

This paper critically examines AI's dual role in climate change, highlighting its potential benefits for environmental management and the ethical, social, and ecological risks it poses, emphasizing the importance of responsible development.

Contribution

It offers an interdisciplinary analysis of AI's ambivalent impact on climate action, emphasizing the influence of values, institutions, and power structures on its sustainability.

Findings

AI improves climate forecasting and renewable energy management.

AI's energy consumption and resource use pose sustainability challenges.

Governance and ethical considerations are crucial for responsible AI deployment.

Abstract

The climate crisis requires responses that integrate scientific, ethical, social, and technological perspectives. Artificial intelligence (AI) has emerged as a powerful tool in climate modelling, environmental monitoring, and energy optimisation, yet its growing use also raises critical environmental, ethical, legal, and social questions. This contribution examines the ambivalent role of AI in the ecological crisis, addressing both its promises and its risks. On the one hand, AI supports improvements in climate forecasting, renewable energy management, and real-time detection of environmental degradation. On the other hand, the energy demands of data centres, resource-intensive hardware production, algorithmic bias, corporate concentration of power, and technocratic decision-making reveal contradictions that challenge its sustainability. The discussion explores these issues through interdisciplinary lenses, including environmental ethics, philosophy of technology, and legal governance, and concludes with recommendations for socially just, ecologically responsible, and democratically accountable uses of AI. Rather than assuming AI as an inherently sustainable solution, this analysis argues that its contribution to climate action depends fundamentally on the values, institutions, and power structures that shape its development.