This isn't a 2020 vs. 2026 thing. It's a corporate thing. What corporations do is pour money into anything that makes pollution primarily the fault of the average person's choices.

"The reason the environment is bad is that you don't choose to recycle properly."

It works best for corporations when the thing requires permanent vigilance from the average person. That way, when John down the street accidentally puts a soda can in the trash, an environmentally focused person who has bought the corporate propaganda can have their bile focused on John, and will forget all about the company down the street that pollutes every day the amount that John pollutes in a decade.

The truth is that, while individual responsibility makes a difference, what really makes a difference is legislation regulating corporations. That packaging that you have to figure out how to recycle? That's not really your fault. It's the fault of the company that packaged it that way. If they had legislation to force them to do environmentally friendly packaging, they would do that. But it's so much more convenient for them if they can do the irresponsible thing and still make you feel like it's your fault.

Plastic straws can be cast as the consumer's fault. Data centers are corporate. That's the difference.

Yeah, my state government is like "pwease limit showers to 5 minutes (0.3 kiloseconds) and keep your thermostat at 75° (24°C) 🥺" while they take kickbacks for approving more of the damned things

Corporations are blasting bombs, burning cities, drying rivers, fracking forests and then they tell you how you eating 3 times a day is what's bad for the environment

They are not AI data centers, that is just the marketing. They will be Surveillance Data Centers.

OK, derailing slightly. There is nothing I hate more than going to a restaurant and getting a cardboard straw for a plastic cup with a plastic lid.

It's almost as infuriating as seeing people who still somehow wear masks incorrectly.

2027: "Your wasteful token over-use is destroying the planet, smh"

It was just performative corporate "wokism". They'd do anything to appear attractive to their customers as long as it doesn't hurt their bottom line. Plastic straws, sure! Actually reduce the amount of waste generated? Absolutely not. How much of the great Pacific garbage patch is made up of straws?

Paper straws are scientifically terrible for carbonated drinks. All of those fibers make a ton of nucleation sites for the CO2 and just make darn sure that your carbonated drink isn't carbonated by the time it gets to your mouth. Seriously, if you wanted to design something to intentionally make a carbonated soda flat by the time it gets to your lips, I don't know how you'd do it better than with a paper straw. Maybe a long hose that shakes the liquid as it goes through?

And sure, ok, plastic straws aren't great environmentally. But surely there was a third option before we went back to literally the worst choice? Something decently cheap, biodegradable, and non-porous? Can we not invent something like that? There's tons of industrially-compostable polymers, right? Wouldn't those break down in the ocean over time?

Consumer climate guilt is the biggest grift of the 21st century.

Except the AI data center comes from the same side as the plastic straws.

Plastic straws never had much to do with climate change though? That was mostly about plastic pollution.

Note that it's not the same voices saying these two things.

I always liked how the best argument against wind farms they could come up with was they're an eyesore, even though they're not really that different from windmills, which nobody objects to. But yeah a massive grey cube that drains all the fresh water out of everything in a 10-mile radius is just fine.

After learning that most of our plastic waste is sold to other countries for disposal, instead of being recycled, I stopped separating my trash and it all goes in one bag now. I spent so much of my life washing and separating that waste to do my part for the planet only to find out it meant nothing. If the trash man is going to ship my waste overseas, then he can fucking separate it and wash it.

Side note, the paper straws may be better for the environment, but they are likely just as bad for us as plastic straws. Glues are used to keep the paper straws stiff, and they will break down and leach out while you drink. Not all glues are safe for human consumption. Now I just take the lid off the beverage and drink straight from the cup like a savage.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0045653521007074#abs0020

Side side note, fuck AI and data centers.

Let me fix that:

2020 corporation: BUY MY STRAWS! REALLY GOOD STRAWS! CHEAP TOO! environment: better stop using those, people will not properly dispose them and animals will think it's food and die of starvation because their bellies are filled with undigestable garbage. Also they can easily get stuck in a turtle's nose,

2026 corporation: BUY MY AI! REALLY GOOD AI! CHEAP TOO! environment: better not use it too much, nature and humans included need that water too. Also they use a lot of electricity and you need either dinosaur bones or rare earth to produce that electricity, both is bad for the climate you depend on to survive.

They always get us to pay for anything they don't want to., which is most things.

The Oil industry fist began with putting the blame for climate-destroying stuff on the consumer. Wr need to acknowledge that companies are at fault

trump

I went to an ice cream place the other night and got a milkshake and it came with a paper straw. Instantly ruined the experience. People are out of their fucking minds with these paper straws.

2020...the electrical grid cannot handle EVs, what happens when they all plugin at the same time? Stupid libtards!

2026...plug in all the datacentres sucking megawatts 24/7

European online communities in 2020: ecology is the future, we need to remove coal, anyone who disagrees is a russian bot

European online communities in 2026: we must start building datacenters or we will be left in the dust, ecology is just russian bot propaganda

And yeah get the compensation money from the people

Both scenarios can be true. They are mutually exclusive.

Yep. We changed our home lightbulbs to LED, we got more efficient heating/cooling systems and appliances installed in our homes. (My gov provided incentives for these things). I thought it was to reduce our energy consumption and save us some cash on bills. But nup, turns out it just freed up energy to burn on LLM data centres.

I don't think the same people are saying those two things...

The "let's get rid of plastic straws" thing took off specifically because it's insignificant. They can all just order a crate of paper straws and pat themselves on the back and it's business as usual. Doing something meaningful about climate change and/or plastic pollution would actually require some effort, and might even make line go down for a minute, and we can't have that!

slurps mushy paper straw