Forum

Generative AI and Social Media May

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Exacerbate the Climate Crisis
•
Hamish van der Ven*, Diego Corry, Rawie Elnur,
Viola Jasmine Provost, and Muh Syukron

Abstract
The contributions of generative artificial intelligence (AI) and social media to the climate
crisis are often underestimated. To date, much of the focus has been on direct emissions
associated with the life cycle of tech products. In this forum article, we argue that this
narrow focus misses the adverse and indirect impacts of generative AI and social media
on the climate. We outline some of the indirect ways in which generative AI and social
media undermine the optimism, focus, creativity, and veracity required to address the
climate crisis. Our aim is twofold. First, we seek to balance the tide of optimism about
the role of digitalization in addressing the climate crisis by offering a skeptic’s perspec-
tive. Second, we outline a new research agenda that moves beyond counting directly
attributable carbon emissions and proposes a more comprehensive accounting of the
indirect ways in which social media and generative AI adversely impact the sociopolitical
conditions required to address the climate crisis.

Keywords: generative AI, social media, climate, digitalization, LLMs, internet

The year 2023 marked a significant year in the history of the internet. The num-
ber of social media users worldwide approached 5 billion, and generative arti-
ficial intelligence (AI)—in the form of large language models (LLMs) like
ChatGPT—exploded into mainstream usage. Both developments stand to
impact the climate, but the causal mechanisms through which they will do so
remain poorly understood.
Unlike other industrial sectors (e.g., energy, agriculture, aviation), there
has been comparatively little critical reflection on how the information and
communication technology (ICT) sector contributes to the climate crisis. To
the extent that ICT’s adverse impacts are considered, much of the focus has been
on counting direct emissions from purchased electricity. Powering data centers

* Corresponding author: [email protected]

Global Environmental Politics 24:2, May 2024, https://doi.org/10.1162/glep_a_00747

© 2024 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International (CC BY 4.0) license.

9
10 • AI and Social Media May Exacerbate the Climate Crisis

and extracting/processing the raw materials for devices are emissions-intensive

activities. Scholars estimate that the ICT sector accounts for between 1.8 and 3.9
percent of global carbon emissions (Freitag et al. 2021; Jones 2018). This puts
ICT in roughly the same category as aviation. Notwithstanding significant emis-
sions reductions from data center efficiency and increased sourcing from renew-

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able energy (Mytton and Ashtine 2022; Rostirolla et al. 2022), analysts largely
agree that emissions associated with the sector will rise unless policy interven-
tions are made (Santarius et al. 2023). Rising emissions will be driven by emer-
gent technology enabled by the internet, namely, generative AI, blockchain,
social media, and video-sharing platforms like TikTok and YouTube. Estimates
for the relative contributions of each of these technologies vary, and the carbon
footprint of AI is a particularly contentious topic. While some believe that the
carbon cost of machine learning will eventually plateau and decline (Patterson
et al. 2022), others believe that growing computational complexity will require
increased energy consumption (Strubell et al. 2019).
Yet, the direct impact of internet infrastructure on the climate crisis is only
part of the story. The social and political channels through which social media
and generative AI affect the climate are arguably far more insidious and conse-
quential for the future of humanity. To decarbonize the global economy and
avoid crossing irreversible thresholds for temperature increase, humanity
requires wholesale transformation of established economic, social, and political
institutions (van der Ven et al. 2017). The impact of social media and generative
AI must be weighed against whether they facilitate or hinder such transforma-
tions. To date, very little research has examined the indirect effects of these tech-
nologies on the climate crisis. In the absence of a full accounting of the adverse
impacts of social media and generative AI on the climate crisis, policymakers,
investors, and environmentalists risk taking a one-sided view that sees internet-
enabled tech as the solution instead of part of the problem.
Here we argue that both social media and generative AI (specifically LLMs)
do more to exacerbate the climate crisis than alleviate it. Our reasoning lies in
how these technologies indirectly and adversely impact the social and political
conditions needed to motivate a timely and ambitious governance response to
climate change. We offer this argument to fuel debate about the role of the ICT
sector in addressing the climate crisis and to propose a novel research agenda on
the indirect impacts of internet-enabled technology on the climate.

Social Media, LLMs, and the Erosion of Attention, Optimism,

Creativity, and Veracity
First, there is considerable evidence that social media is reducing humanity’s
ability to focus on the climate crisis. Social media is partially responsible for
destroying our collective ability to concentrate and do deep work (Carr 2010;
Hari 2022). The lure of algorithms purposefully designed to keep our attention
is simply too great for most people to avoid. The average TikTok video lasts a
Hamish van der Ven, Diego Corry, Rawie Elnur, Viola Jasmine Provost, and Muh Syukron • 11

scant thirty-four seconds and triggers a release of dopamine that makes users
want to continue swiping through more videos (Liu and Luo 2015). A potential
consequence of this normalization of fast and superficial content is a disengage-
ment with complex, slower-moving phenomena like climate change. Across all
ages and markets, fewer people are taking the time to read detailed news cover-

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age in print or digital newspapers (Newman 2023). In younger people, heavy
TikTok use has been associated with distraction and memory loss (Sha and
Dong 2021), and studies of US students have found that, on average, students
could focus for only six minutes before switching to a technological distractor
(Rosen et al. 2013; Siebers et al. 2022).
The loss of our collective capacity to sustain focus on the climate crisis is
one reason why the political urgency to confront this crisis has proven elusive
(Bromley-Trujillo and Poe 2020). Arguably, the costs of constant attention shifting
may outweigh the benefits to collaborative climate activism afforded through social
media (Koc-Michalska and Lilleker 2017). Absent the broad and sustained focus of
citizens in countries with the most leverage to take ambitious action on climate
change (i.e., the OECD countries), policymakers lack the public mandate to push
for transformative policies domestically and internationally.
Second, social media may be eroding the optimism needed to confront
the climate crisis. The algorithms that govern social media news feeds are pur-
posefully designed to present users with controversy because bad or contentious
news is more effective in gaining and keeping attention (Brady et al. 2023). The
collective impact of this deluge of bad news can be paralyzing. Between 2010
and 2020, feelings of persistent sadness and hopelessness increased by 40 per-
cent among young people (Abrams 2023). There is growing evidence that social
media use is associated with rising levels of anxiety and depression in adoles-
cents (Damodar et al. 2022; Haidt 2024; Roberts and David 2023). This evi-
dence prompted the US surgeon general to issue an advisory on social media
and youth mental health (US Surgeon General 2023). Depression and anxiety
have been linked to a range of maladaptive responses in young people, including
climate change denial and feelings that governance responses will come too late
(Hayward et al. 2020; Léger-Goodes et al. 2022). Given that youth have emerged
as one of the most important constituencies in pushing for transformative decar-
bonization (Thew et al. 2020), the youth mental health crisis should be consid-
ered a genuine threat to achieving transformative change and one that is at least
partially attributable to social media usage (Davidson and Kecinski 2022).
Third, for their part, LLMs may reduce our capacity for creativity and
forward-thinking solutions to climate change (Brandt 2023; Koivisto and
Grassini 2023; Shanmugasundaram and Tamilarasu 2023). One risk of our
growing dependence on generative AI is that we may gradually lose our capacity
to think for ourselves and may become overly dependent on machine-driven
networks for problem solving (Atske 2018). Asking LLMs for solutions to the
climate crisis is problematic because they use historical data to derive projec-
tions for future action. If recommendations about climate governance are made
12 • AI and Social Media May Exacerbate the Climate Crisis

based on previously attempted interventions, then AI-generated policy rec-

ommendations may be biased toward incrementalist approaches that are
incompatible with the narrowing time frame for action (Allan 2019). Hence an
underappreciated danger of our growing reliance on AI is that we are atrophying
the parts of our brains that are most necessary for confronting the climate crisis

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(Ahmad et al. 2023; Mansharamani 2020), namely, the parts that are capable of
creative, forward-thinking problem solving (Levin et al. 2012).
Finally, both social media and generative AI contribute to spreading false
or biased information that inhibits transformative action on climate change.
Social media platforms have proven to be effective vehicles for spreading mis-
information about climate change (Treen et al. 2020). The fossil fuel sector
(among others) has successfully used social media to downplay the risks of
climate change, sow doubts over scientific consensus, or reframe climate gover-
nance as an elitist conspiracy to reduce individual freedoms (Ding et al. 2011).
Concurrently, LLMs may reinforce existing biases and misinformation because
they are often trained on large, unfiltered texts; exclude the majority of non-
English languages; and do not distinguish between correct and incorrect infor-
mation (Choudhury 2023; Schramowski et al. 2022). While some progress has
been made in reducing LLM bias in climate information (Lacombe et al. 2023),
significant challenges remain. Both LLMs and social media contribute to a
broader phenomenon that some have labeled the “death of truth,” whereby
crowdsourced knowledge usurps scientific consensus and expertise (Kakutani
2019). In the absence of a single narrative of the truth, it becomes increasingly
difficult for policymakers to secure the broad consensus needed to take aggres-
sive action on climate change.

Toward a More Accurate Account of Generative AI and Social Media’s

Climate Impacts
Existing accounts of the relationship between the ICT sector and the climate crisis
tend to be either narrow or one-sided (Joppa 2017). There has been a tendency to
focus exclusively on direct emissions associated with the life cycle of tech products
(Mytton and Ashtine 2022) or the positive impacts of emergent technologies (Adha
et al. 2022; Hsu and Schletz 2023). While it is true that internet-enabled technol-
ogies like generative AI hold the potential to yield many positive impacts—such as
improved climate modeling (Kaack et al. 2022; Larosa et al. 2023; Vinuesa et al.
2020), aviation contrail detection and avoidance (Hoffman et al. 2023), and mon-
itoring climate technology innovation (Toetzke et al. 2023)—these gains must be
weighed against their countervailing social and political impacts (Andersen et al.
2021; Dauvergne 2020, 2022; Rillig et al. 2023).
For this reason, we propose a novel research agenda focused on uncover-
ing the indirect impacts of internet-enabled technologies on the climate. Three
research questions form the core of this agenda. First, how have
internet-enabled technologies, beyond social media and generative AI, impacted
Hamish van der Ven, Diego Corry, Rawie Elnur, Viola Jasmine Provost, and Muh Syukron • 13

the climate crisis? Second, which intervening variables—in addition to atten-

tion, optimism, creativity, and veracity—connect internet use with climate out-
comes? Third, where and how have decision makers successfully balanced the
twin imperatives of digitalization and decarbonization? These are questions that
are well suited to empirical analysis through qualitative methodologies like sys-

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tematic process tracing and comparative case studies. The primary contribution
of this research agenda would be to offer a more holistic picture of the internet’s
true impact on the climate. This holistic picture is vital to evaluating the benefits
and risks of digitalization for the transition toward a decarbonized world. It is
also vitally important to the global environmental politics community insofar
as it would help identify issues and areas that require governance interventions.
In short, an impartial, evidence-based, and skeptical treatment of emergent dig-
ital technologies is required to offset the tide of techno-solutionism that flows
from the ICT sector.

Hamish van der Ven is an assistant professor of sustainable business manage-

ment of natural resources in the Department of Wood Science, Faculty of Forestry,
University of British Columbia. He is the leader of the Business, Sustainability,
and Technology Lab. His research focuses on sustainable supply chain gover-
nance and the impacts of digital technologies on environmental outcomes.
Read more about his current and future research on his website at https://
hamishvanderven.com/.

Diego Corry is a graduate student pursuing his master of science degree at the
University of British Columbia’s (UBC’s) Faculty of Forestry. With a keen focus
on sustainability, business performance, and social movements, his research
delves into the intricate interplay between these domains. He is a member of
the Business, Sustainability, and Technology Lab at UBC, which conducts inter-
disciplinary research into the intersection between modern technologies, busi-
nesses, and social and environmental impacts. To read more about the lab and
relevant work, visit https://bst.forestry.ubc.ca/.

Rawie Elnur is a MSc student and a member of the Business, Sustainability, and
Technology Lab at the University of British Columbia’s Faculty of Forestry. He
examines the intersection of public opinion and scientific communication sur-
rounding cutting-edge technologies like bioenergy carbon capture and storage
and sustainable aviation fuels. His investigation spans multiple media, includ-
ing Twitter and academic literature, to analyze how these technologies are per-
ceived and communicated within both scholarly and public spheres. His latest
publication with CGIAR’s Climate Security Hub can be found online at https://
cgspace.cgiar.org/items/0e89c5ec-b958-4f90-90ae-71ac8b472def.

Viola Jasmine Provost is a PhD student in the Business, Sustainability, and

Technology Lab in the Faculty of Forestry at the University of British Columbia.
14 • AI and Social Media May Exacerbate the Climate Crisis

Her current research investigates the social, political, and cultural implications
of emerging technologies. Specifically, she explores environmental and science
communication on social media in the context of marine conservation. She
holds a bachelor of science degree in biology from Ludwig Maximilian Univer-
sity of Munich and a master of science degree in freshwater and marine biology

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from the University of Amsterdam, along with a major in science communica-
tion from Vrije University.

Muh Syukron (Syu) is a second-year doctoral student in the Faculty of Forestry

at the University of British Columbia (UBC). As part of the Business, Sustain-
ability, and Technology Lab at UBC, his scholarship is motivated by studying
sustainability through investigating the interconnections between human activ-
ities and the environment in the digital age. Currently his research is centered on
exploring digital activism on social media in palm oil sustainability in Indone-
sia and global contexts. His latest publication is “Seeing the Forest for the Trees
Sequel I: An Extension of the 1985–2017 Bibliometric Analysis of Environmen-
tal and Resource Sociology.”

Acknowledgments
We gratefully acknowledge funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities
Research Council of Canada and the Faculty of Forestry at UBC. We also thank
the GEP editors and anonymous reviewers for constructive feedback on earlier
drafts of this article.

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