We ran out of drinking water because we needed to cool down the machines generating 4K AI fruit videos
(lemmy.today)
Around half of the entire Colorado river goes to animal feed alone and it's barely a part of the conversation. Meat consumption has been rising for decades and only leading to more of it
Agriculture also pollutes ground water, and at a far higher rate and frequency. The toxic algae blooms are from the runoff which means high nitrate levels in the local water level. Cancer rates are elevated nearby animal farms. It's not "just a blight"
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0013935126006286
The pollution from animal farming is not just a US problem either
The large footprint for milk in Canterbury indicates just how far the capacity of the environment has been overshot. To maintain that level of production and have healthy water would require either 12 times more rainfall in the region or a 12-fold reduction in cows.
My point is that it's weird to focus on if we're going to just ignore the way larger contributors of animal agriculture to all of those problems with water. I see at least 5x the amounts of posts around water than electricity which is helping datacenters get away with increasing their emissions with less attention