Boycott AI and You Hand It To Planet Wreckers
Now is the time for green, compassionate people to steer AI in a better direction
AI is killing the planet. And using it means you’re supporting billionaire tech bros who don’t care who or what gets harmed.
That’s the story being shared by environmental and ethical groups right now. And while there’s some truth in it, the call to boycott AI is not just unhelpful — it may be one of the most consequential mistakes that people with good values could make.
Because the world desperately needs earth-friendly, compassionate people to embrace AI, not boycott it.
You can only shape something from the inside. And right now, AI is already spiralling — fast.
Please watch the video (I’d be very grateful for a like and subscribe), then we’ll explore the subject in more detail…
This Is Already Happening, Whether You Participate or Not
Artificial Intelligence is transforming every aspect of human civilisation. Not might. Not could. Already is.
And the pace is accelerating in ways that most people haven’t fully absorbed. Within the next few years, AI will fundamentally reshape healthcare, education, agriculture, energy systems, transportation, politics and law - not to mention the impact it will have on people’s jobs and careers on a scale we haven’t seen since the Industrial Revolution.
The question isn’t whether AI will transform our world. That’s settled.
The question is: Whose values will it amplify?
AI Is Being Weaponised
Right now, while thoughtful people debate the ethics of engaging with AI, politically-charged elites are spending hundreds of millions of dollars weaponising it.
They are using AI to generate thousands of pieces of targeted political content every single day. They’re creating deepfake videos and fabricated news articles that spread lies about everything from climate change and renewable energy, to immigration and human rights.
Around half a million deepfakes were shared on social media in 2023 - a figure that had grown to approximately 8 million by 2025, according to cybersecurity firm DeepStrike, representing annual growth of nearly 900%.
Research tracking a Russia-linked propaganda site found that when it adopted AI tools, it was able to generate significantly larger quantities of disinformation, with measurable shifts in both volume and breadth of content.
If current trends continue, the majority of political content online will soon be AI-generated. And right now, overwhelmingly, it’s being generated by people who do not share progressive values.
In the Wrong Hands, AI Becomes a Machine for Control
In the hands of authoritarians, AI becomes mass surveillance - systems that track and suppress dissent. Facial recognition that targets protesters and marginalised communities. Propaganda machines engineered to trigger fear and hatred.
This isn’t speculative. A recent report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute found that China is using AI to automate censorship, enhance surveillance, and pre-emptively suppress dissent - with the technology predicting public demonstrations before they happen and monitoring prisoners’ facial expressions for signs of anger.
Research from MIT found that in China, the government has increasingly deployed AI-driven facial recognition to suppress dissent, has been successful at limiting protest, and in doing so has spurred the development of still better AI-based tools - a feedback loop that MIT researchers have called an “AI-tocracy.”
And this technology is being exported. In Afghanistan, some 90,000 Chinese-manufactured cameras equipped with facial recognition have been installed in Kabul, helping the Taliban enforce gender apartheid policies and suppress any attempt at public protest.
Iran followed suit in 2022 during the women’s rights protests, announcing plans to deploy facial recognition linked to its extensive biometric database to police every aspect of women’s public behaviour.
Environmental harms get amplified too: more optimised illegal logging, more sophisticated wildlife trafficking, more efficient overfishing, more ruthless fossil fuel extraction.
AI doesn’t have values. It amplifies whatever values its users bring to it.
In the Right Hands, It’s A Force For Good
AI has the potential to level the playing field in ways that have never before been possible. It can coordinate grassroots movements across thousands of communities simultaneously. It can translate campaign materials into dozens of languages instantly - making local movements truly global.
It can fact-check misinformation in real time. It can identify patterns of voter suppression and corruption that humans would simply miss in the noise.
Put AI in the hands of people who actually care about outcomes beyond profit, and you get smarter power grids that waste less energy and integrate more renewables.
Better forecasting for floods, wildfires, and heatwaves. Sharper deforestation monitoring and faster detection of illegal activity. Better climate modelling. Better battery research. Better ways to track pollution, optimise logistics, reduce waste, and protect habitats.
Research from the Grantham Institute at the London School of Economics estimates that if AI is effectively applied in key areas, it could reduce global emissions by 3.2 to 5.4 billion tonnes of CO₂- equivalent per year by 2035 - outweighing the emissions from data centres by a significant margin.
The difference between these two futures comes down to this: who builds it, who controls it, and who uses it.
Let’s Address the Environmental Concern Head-On
Because it’s real, and it matters, and it deserves an honest answer.
Training large AI models does use serious energy. Data centres currently account for around 0.5% of global combustion emissions, though the IEA projects this could rise to 1–1.4% by 2030 - making it one of the few sectors where emissions are set to grow. That’s a legitimate concern, and anyone who dismisses it isn’t being straight with you.
But context matters enormously here.
Livestock production alone accounts for around 14.5% of global human-made emissions - comparable to all direct emissions from global transport, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation.
The fashion industry causes around 10% of global carbon emissions, and is on track to grow its footprint by around 60% by 2030.
And bitcoin alone burns through more electricity each year than entire countries, like Norway and Argentina.
The Department of Defense in the US - to take one striking example - is the world’s largest institutional user of petroleum and the single largest institutional producer of greenhouse gases among public institutions.
War creates horrendous emissions, among all other evils of conflict.
But nobody is boycotting their wardrobes or their banking apps on environmental grounds with the same intensity being directed at AI.
Critically, you can refuse to use AI on environmental grounds, but the result won’t be less AI usage. It will just mean that 100% of political AI is in the hands of people who don’t care about the environment.
Meanwhile, progressive pressure is pushing for change. Google has matched 100% of its electricity consumption with renewable energy every year since 2017, and Microsoft announced in early 2026 that it had matched 100% of its 2025 global electricity with renewables - with both companies targeting 24/7 carbon-free energy by 2030.
Those milestones happened because environmentally conscious people engaged with the technology and demanded better practices. Boycotts don’t create that pressure. Engagement does.
The Clock Is Ticking
We are racing against time to influence the direction of artificial intelligence. And one side is already miles ahead.
While thoughtful people have been debating ethics, others have been building weapons. While some have been concerned about doing things the right way, others have been doing whatever it takes to win.
While some have been worried about compromising their values, others have been using AI to attack those very values at scale.
They’re not going to stop. They’re going to get faster, better, more sophisticated.
AI systems are enabling states and non-state actors to propagate disinformation and malicious narratives at a scale that was previously impossible. This is not a slow-moving threat. It is already reshaping political discourse in every country with a functioning internet.
If people who care about the planet, human rights and animal rights continue to sit this out, the future is already being decided. And it’s being decided without them.
This Is About Defending Your Values, Not Abandoning Them
The world needs more compassionate voices shaping AI. More voices that demand accountability. More voices that won’t accept the Silicon Valley doctrine of “move fast and break things” when the things being broken are vital ecosystems and people’s lives.
But you can’t shape it from outside. You can’t effectively influence what you don’t fully understand.
This isn’t about abandoning your values. It’s about defending them - in the arena where the fight is actually happening.
If you care about all forms of life on Earth, your voice is needed. Now. Your participation is needed.
Please, get more involved in the world of artificial intelligence. And help to make it a force for good.
Now, for Ethical Disruption supporters, we dive deeper into the mechanics of how AI is being weaponised right now, the documented evidence of what’s already happening, the specific ways progressive movements could use AI more effectively, and the uncomfortable truths that complicate both sides of this debate…
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