Amy Goodman
@DemocracyNow·3.2M subscribers·19.4K videos
"New Form of Imperialism": Renowned U.N. Scientist on AI Boom's Huge Water, Carbon & Land Footprint
Posted
June 12, 2026
Views
42,682
Likes
1,863
Comments
265
Engagement
June 12, 2026
42,682
1,863
265
4.99%
Every word spoken in this episode is indexed. Type any phrase to jump straight to the moment it was said.
Type any word or phrase that may have been spoken. Click a result to seek the player to that exact moment.
Try a name, a topic, or a quoted line
11:37Now PlayingSupport our work
The environmental toll of the artificial intelligence boom continues to mount as tech companies use ever more power to run their data centers and use enormous amounts of water for cooling. A new investigation by U.N. scientists warns that AI's water use in 2030 will match the needs of 1.3 billion people, while its power use will be triple that of Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nigeria combined — countries with a total population of 650 million.
"Most people understand AI as a digital technology, as a virtual thing, as something that is in the clouds," says Iranian environmental scientist Kaveh Madani, director of the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health. "What we tried to do in this report was to remind people that there's some physics to all of this."
Democracy Now! is an independent global news hour that airs on over 1,500 TV and radio stations Monday through Friday. Watch our livestream at democracynow.org Mondays to Fridays 8-9 a.m. ET.
Subscribe to our Daily Email Digest
Sentinel Indexing in Progress
Metadata and chapters are available. Claim extraction for this episode is pending.
All video content is delivered via YouTube embedded players in accordance with the YouTube Terms of Service. Sentinel provides research tools that promote discovery and accountability across political media.
