Saying it uses less power that a toaster is not much

Yeah but we're talking a fraction of 1%. A toaster uses 800-1500 watts for minutes, local LLM uses <300 watts for seconds. I toast something almost every day. I'd need to prompt a local LLM literally hundreds of times per day for AI to have a higher impact on the environment than my breakfast, only considering the toasting alone. I make probably around a dozen-ish prompts per week on average.

That’s still a LOT of electricity.

That's exactly my point, thanks. All kinds of appliances use loads more power than AI. We run them without thinking twice, and there's no anti-toaster movement on the internet claiming there is no ethical toast and you're an asshole for making toast without exception. If a toaster uses a ton of electricity and is acceptable, while a local LLM uses less than 1% of that, then there is no argument to be made against local LLMs on the basis of electricity use.

Your argument just doesn't hold up and could be applied to literally anything that isn't "required". Toast isn't required, you just want it. People could just stop playing video games to save more electricity, video games aren't required. People could stop using social media to save more electricity, TikTok and YouTube's servers aren't required.

People don’t need to burn down a rainforest to summarize a meeting.

Strawman