Letters to the Editor: Don't let the AI revolution in California be powered by fossil fuels

To the editor: As your editorial notes, the dramatic rise in electricity demand from California’s growing number of data centers can cripple our clean energy transition.

Data centers power everything from cloud computing to images and text created by artificial intelligence (AI). Putting the debate aside about how essential some AI functions are, it’s clear that we should avoid backsliding on our transition to clean energy by powering these facilities with dirty fossil fuels that pollute our air and destabilize our climate.

State legislators should oppose Senate Bill 1298, which would allow anachronistic fossil fuel power plants to serve as backup generators for data centers. We have better, forward-looking alternatives: improved energy efficiency measures, more rooftop solar panels and batteries to store extra energy available for use 24/7.

It makes no sense to power the future’s AI revolution with outdated dirty energy sources.

Steven King, Los Angeles

The writer is a clean energy advocate for Environment California.

..

To the editor: I used to think that corporations such as Exxon Mobil, Shell and BP just needed to be paid off in order to save the planet, a staggeringly naive sentiment.

Their greed has no bounds. There isn’t enough market share to sate the thirst of a monopoly that pays like the oil industry.

AI is only the newest market innovation to bolster their entrenchment in the most profitable and powerful sector on the planet: energy. A monopoly on a monopoly.

Have markets already accounted for the inevitable crash, or is it like 2008 all over again? Is that why Warren Buffett is so cash heavy right now?

You can ask ChatGPT, but it feels like eating your own tail.

Pam Brennan, Newport Beach