Climate Activists Want to Derail the AI Revolution | The American Spectator

Artificial intelligence is set to contribute around $20 trillion to the global economy by 2030, thanks in large part to productivity gains. If America falls behind on AI innovation and integration, companies will stop investing here, those that remain will struggle to keep up with more AI-savvy competitors, and economic growth will suffer. Meanwhile, other countries such as China will be lining up to reap the gains from AI. The question is not whether AI development will happen; it’s where it will be developed.

“Winning the AI race is non-negotiable,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently said when the White House released its AI Action Plan. “America must continue to be the dominant force in artificial intelligence to promote prosperity and protect our economic and national security.” (RELATED: Trump Announces Artificial Intelligence Investments in Pennsylvania)

Secretary Rubio is spot-on. But for this development to happen in the United States, we will need lots of data centers, and to power those data centers — after all, generating an image with an AI model takes as much energy as driving a car six feet — we’ll need abundant, affordable energy, which includes fossil fuels. Unfortunately, climate activists are trying to kill the whole industry before it takes off. (RELATED: Trump’s Energy Policies Are Transforming the Economy)

Recently, one climate group even vandalized Meta’s headquarters to protest the company’s AI program. In a press release justifying their actions, Extinction Rebellion cited a study predicting that climate change will kill four billion people this century and blamed Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg for “accelerating the collapse of a livable planet.” (RELATED: Is This the Stupidest Sentence of 2025?)

These claims are absurd. Climate change is not going to kill half the global population.

If these data centers are not built in the United States, they will be built in a foreign country instead. China, for example, is spending billions with the intent of becoming the global AI superpower by 2030.

China is responsible for over 32 percent of the world’s global emissions compared to the U.S.’s 12.6 percent. So ironically, efforts to block energy development in America in the name of environmental protection may actually worsen global emissions if AI infrastructure shifts abroad.

In other words, allowing China to gain the upper hand on AI would not be very environmentally responsible.

Yet this is exactly the path some blue states are pushing. Cities, counties, and states have sued energy producers, claiming liability for their alleged role in climate change, even for incidents like wildfires started by arsonists.

AI data centers require massive amounts of reliable, affordable power, but this added legal pressure on energy companies will force them to reduce investment, raise costs, and thus delay AI projects.

And if domestic energy becomes constrained, companies may locate data centers abroad, ceding the AI race to countries like China while simultaneously undermining U.S. economic and strategic interests. (RELATED: Is China Pulling Ahead on AI?)

This aggressive legal strategy, often called “climate lawfare,” risks slowing AI development, raising energy costs, and weakening America’s global competitiveness. (RELATED: New Climate Report Deserves to Be Debated, Not Silenced)

Fortunately, most of these lawsuits haven’t gotten far. Even Democrat-appointed judges tend to agree that state courts can’t impose penalties for emissions that came from other states. However, to end this wasteful and destructive legal strategy, Congress should pass federal liability protections to shield U.S. energy producers against climate lawfare.

Whether America’s stability, security, and prosperity will endure into the next century depends on the AI advancements made over the next few decades. But without the energy to power these data centers, America will miss out on the economic growth and income that AI will generate.

And that’s in no one’s interest.

Christopher C. Douglas, PhD, is professor of economics at the University of Michigan-Flint. His research interests include energy economics.