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environment
The AI Industry Must Take Responsibility for the Communities It’s Destroying
If AI is to fulfill its transformative potential, its benefits must be more equitably distributed, and its environmental costs more transparently accounted for.
Apr 04, 2026
Critics are buzzing about Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez’s estimated $5 million Met Gala sponsorship, noting that while framed as philanthropy, it also serves as elite branding and may deliver limited benefit to the broader arts. A similar pattern appears in tech, where highly publicized giving, grants, and initiatives build brand visibility while directing relatively little to wider communities.
As an anthropologist who studies US corporations, I have seen firsthand how technology firms including Amazon, Google, and Microsoft frequently present their companies as a catalyst for economic development and employment opportunity. Large-scale initiatives are framed as serving the public interest, yet evidence reveals a persistent gap between these narratives and their material outcomes. Promised benefits such as job creation, regional development, and infrastructure investment tend to be unevenly distributed or shorter in duration than initially suggested.
Research on data centers underscores these concerns. Although construction phases generate temporary employment, long-term job creation is modest—often fewer than 200 permanent positions per facility. At the same time, AI infrastructure development places significant demands on land, energy, and water resources, and depends on extractive supply chains for minerals such as cobalt and lithium. The result is an extractive industry in which financial gains accrue primarily to tech investors, while the environmental and economic burdens are borne by local communities.
Recent projects across the United States make these dynamics visible. In Indiana, Bezos’s Amazon company cleared 1,200 acres of farmland to build an $11 billion data farm for training artificial intelligence models. In Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, Amazon bought land near a nuclear power plant by the Susquehanna River that used to be zoned for agriculture. Across the country, Gates’ Microsoft has advanced controversial data center projects despite local opposition over environmental strain, including in Michigan and Wisconsin.
Designating data centers as critical infrastructure should not exempt companies from regulatory oversight or fair contributions to the communities in which they operate.
Taken together, these cases point to the broader policy challenge of how to evaluate and govern technology infrastructure projects that are framed as public goods but function within extractive economic models.
Philanthropic initiatives often accompany these developments, shaping public perception of investors’ generosity, but leaving underlying dynamics unchanged. Bezos’ Earth Fund, for example, has directed billions toward climate-related efforts, but much of that funding supports technology that benefits his companies. Similarly, Bill Gates’ climate philanthropy has prioritized large-scale technological interventions, including proposals such as spraying sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere to dim sunlight and lower global temperatures—but scientists warn that such approaches carry significant risks for both public health and ecological systems.
Federal policy is accelerating the problem. President Donald Trump has declared a national emergency related to energy production and encouraged private investments in energy industries. Within this framework, data centers are now designated as critical to national security, given the role of AI in military and defense systems.
However, while federal policy actively courts investment, the communities hosting this infrastructure are often excluded from meaningful participation in its benefits.
At the state level, data center developers aggressively pursue and often secure substantial tax incentives as jurisdictions compete to attract investment. Indiana alone could forego up to $1 billion in tax revenue. Pennsylvania has yet to fully assess the fiscal impact of similar agreements. In Virginia and other states, data center operators are exempt from sales taxes on equipment and electricity, further reducing public returns.
The concentration of wealth and environmental burden extends beyond US borders. KoBold Metals, an AI-driven mineral exploration company backed by both Bill Gates and jeff Bezos, is expanding operations in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Using laser technology, the company seeks deposits of cobalt, copper, nickel, and lithium—materials essential to batteries and AI infrastructure. The Congo currently supplies about 76% of the world’s cobalt, placing it at the center of the global technology economy.
While such projects may generate economic opportunities, they also reproduce familiar patterns. As with data center development in the United States, claims of job creation and regional development warrant careful scrutiny, particularly in contexts marked by historical inequality and resource extraction.
Artificial intelligence and data infrastructure are now central to economic competitiveness and national security, and these priorities are legitimate. However, if AI is to fulfill its transformative potential, its benefits must be more equitably distributed, and its environmental costs more transparently accounted for. Designating data centers as critical infrastructure should not exempt companies from regulatory oversight or fair contributions to the communities in which they operate. Nor can philanthropic initiatives cloud scientists’ knowledge and recommendations.
Policy interventions are needed to rebalance these dynamics. To make the AI boom work for the public rather than just private investors, companies must fully disclose their water and energy consumption, so that communities can understand what they are giving up to big data centers. State and local governments should condition tax incentives on measurable public benefits, including a pre-set number of durable jobs and investments in local infrastructure. And voters must hold elected officials accountable—at the ballot box—for these agreements.
Additionally, mechanisms such as royalties or revenue-generating agreements—long applied in extractive industries like oil and natural gas—could ensure that communities hosting data centers receive a meaningful share of the wealth generated. While the federal government captures significant revenue tied to AI economic activity, state and local governments should, too.
If the AI sector is to gain any public legitimacy, it must take responsibility both for the technologies it develops and for the social environmental consequences of their deployment.
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One Year of Trump Tariffs Prove Corporate Profits Always Came Before the Public Interest
The 2026 NTE Report makes it clear that the Trump administration's primary motivation behind its trade policy is to protect the profits of big US companies.
Apr 02, 2026
One year ago today, President Donald Trump waved around the annual National Trade Estimates Report when he announced his reciprocal tariffs, calling it a “special book” listing other countries’ purported “non-tariff trade barriers.” Using the threat of tariffs (now deemed illegal by the Supreme Court), President Trump has bullied countries into signing up to “reciprocal trade agreements” that target many of the policies included in the report.
Earlier this week, the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) released the updated 2026 version of this “special book,” and we can now see that this year’s National Trade Estimates (NTE) Report continues and expands its targeting of critical public interest regulations related to safety in the digital economy, climate policy, environmental protection, public health, and more.
Consumer advocates have long criticized the annual NTE because administrations of both parties have used it to parrot the demands of behemoth corporate interests, without sufficient regard to the public interest. After the Biden administration took positive steps, recognizing that public interest regulations should not necessarily be listed as “trade barriers,” the Trump administration reverted to regurgitating the hit list of Big Tech, Big Pharma, Big Ag, and other billionaire interests—and is now doubling down, attacking even more public interest laws around the world.
Big Tech Accountability:
Given the proximity of Big Tech companies to the Trump administration, it was only to be expected that the NTE Report would build on the previous year’s attacks on global digital policies. Unfortunately, this year’s report once again labels other countries’ digital ecosystem policies as “trade barriers,” simply because Big Tech companies find them objectionable.
The brazen attacks against a range of crucial public interest policies, ranging from digital rights to public health regulations, reflect the unfortunate anti-people policies of this administration.
The digital ecosystem regulations being targeted by the Trump administration include:
- Data protection, privacy, and data governance laws: This year's report identifies 34 jurisdictions with laws that regulate cross-border data flows, compared to 27 in the 2025 NTE Report. This includes several data protection and privacy laws, including those in Brazil, Canada, the European Union (EU), Kenya, Nigeria, India, Turkiye, and Vietnam. These laws all aim to ensure that companies cannot evade local privacy and data protection norms simply by transferring data to jurisdictions with low privacy standards. The NTE Report also targets several data governance measures that seek to regulate cross-border transfers of public sector data, sensitive information (such as health and financial data), and geospatial data. This includes laws in Bolivia, Ecuador, India, Korea, and South Africa.
- Anti-monopoly and revenue-sharing laws: Several jurisdictions are attempting to create more competitive digital ecosystems by implementing digital sector-related competition regulation. Many of these are targeted in the NTE Report, which lists nine jurisdictions’ digital competition laws as trade barriers. This includes laws enacted in the EU, Japan, Turkiye, and the UK, and proposed regulations in Australia, Korea, Brazil, South Africa, and Vietnam.
In addition, the report also targets various revenue-sharing regulations implemented by a number of jurisdictions. These regulations typically seek to force Big Tech platforms to support local industries that they cannibalize—such as traditional news producers—or to ensure that Big Tech platforms contribute to local content development. The report lists six jurisdictions with such laws—Australia, Korea, Canada, and the EU, which already have some form of regulation in place, as well as proposed regulations in New Zealand and South Africa.
This is a significant increase from last year’s report, which listed a total of six jurisdictions’ digital competition-related or revenue-sharing laws.
- Digital services and other taxes: The Trump administration has consistently sought to prevent other countries from taxing US-based Big Tech companies. Many countries are unable to appropriately levy income tax on Big Tech companies as these companies do not have a physical presence within their borders. Instead, they use Digital Services Taxes (DSTs) to ensure that these companies pay some tax within their jurisdictions. Similar to last year, the report identifies eight jurisdictions that have DSTs or equivalent taxes in place: Canada, Colombia, the EU, Kenya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Turkiye, and the UK.
- AI regulations: With AI quickly becoming embedded into nearly every aspect of our lives, some jurisdictions are seeking to regulate the development and deployment of AI systems to mitigate potential harms. This year's report lists the EU’s AI Act as a trade barrier (similar to last year), but also includes another five jurisdictions’ AI-related policies as trade barriers, largely to oppose attempts at developing local AI ecosystems. For instance, the report targets Japan’s subsidies for building out domestic AI capacities and sovereign AI infrastructure. Similarly, domestic procurement norms in Korea and Ecuador have also been criticized.
Climate and Environmental Protection:
While the urgency of climate change demands bold action at all levels, this year’s report unfortunately doubles down on the Trump administration’s hostility toward efforts to hasten a clean energy transition at home and globally. Instead of incorporating lessons from other countries to inform our own urgently-needed climate policies, the NTE attacks other countries’ environmental and climate laws on behalf of polluting industries, such as:
- Policies to boost the clean energy transition: The report takes aim at a number of climate-related policies in the EU, including its Renewable Energy Directive, Deforestation-Free Supply Chain Regulation, Eco Design for Sustainable Products Regulation, and Sustainable Aviation Fuel Regulation, which require industry to meet sustainability guidelines. The report also attacks the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) regulation, which went into effect in January 2026, and the UK’s proposed CBAM, scheduled to commence in 2027, which levy charges on embedded emissions of certain imported products to incentivize lower emission production.
- Green certification and local content policies, including the UAE’s green certification program, which gives priority government services (tax exemptions, subsidies, free trade zone benefits) to industries that use sustainable materials and methods, and India’s domestic content requirements for renewable energy government procurement contracts.
- Policies to tackle plastic pollution, including Canada’s Zero Plastic Waste Agenda; United Arab Emirates ban on some single-use styrofoam products, such as cups and lids; Dominican Republic’s regulations prohibiting import of non-biodegradable straws and cutlery; Oman’s regulation on single-use plastic bags; Cote d’Ivoire’s regulations on import of plastic bags; and Chile’s plan to implement regulations to address single-use plastic in bottles (which was successfully derailed by the US through negotiation).
Public Health
In keeping with the Trump administration’s unscientific public health policies as well as the administration’s desire to promote the interests of Big Pharma and Big Ag, the report attacks several critical public health policies from around the world. This includes:
- Drug pricing regulations and processes in Canada, the EU, India, Australia, and New Zealand, which aim to enhance access to lifesaving medicines.
- Regulations in several countries, including Bangladesh, GCC countries, and Ukraine, on the sale of energy and sugary drinks, including restrictions on advertising and the sale of these products to minors.
- Restrictions on the import of genetically engineered (GE) food in the EU, Mexico, Peru, Russia, Serbia, Taiwan, Turkiye, Ukraine, UK, Angola, Ethiopia, Guatemala, UAE, India, Kenya, and Korea.
- Regulation of pesticides in Vietnam, China, the EU, Mexico, Nigeria, Norway, Pakistan, Taiwan, Turkiye, and the UK.
- Restrictions by the EU, Thailand, China, Russia, and Taiwan on the use of growth hormones and beta-agonists such as ractopamine to treat beef and pork products.
- Safety and reporting regulations on the import of infant formula in Ethiopia, India, and Colombia
- Regulations related to chemicals, including the EU’s “precautionary” REACH chemical regulation, new hazard classification, labeling, and packaging of chemicals; and regulation of endocrine disruptors; Canada and the EU phasing out per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), also known as “forever chemicals” that cause cancer, fertility issues, acid rain, air pollution, bioaccumulate in wildlife and fish, and more; and chemical regulation requirements in Korea and Turkiye.
- Indonesia’s mandate for testing heavy metals in cosmetics; Kuwait’s stipulation for health certificates disclosing the country of origin for imported cosmetics, food, and pharmaceuticals; the EU’s regulations on antimicrobial resistance and veterinary medicinal products.
Additional Public Interest Policies
Shockingly, the report targets South Africa’s anti-discrimination and equal opportunities regulations that seek to ensure greater participation of workers and historically marginalized communities in the corporate sector. Elon Musk criticized South Africa’s regulations earlier this year, claiming that Starlink is “not allowed to operate in South Africa simply because [he’s] not black [sic].” Taken together with President Trump’s unhinged claims about apparent “genocide” against white South Africans, the inclusion of these regulations in the NTE Report is a worrying sign that the US government intends to use trade tools to push its "anti-diversity" agenda globally.
The report also targets halal certification laws in several majority Muslim countries, notably Brunei, Egypt, the UAE, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia.
Conclusion
The 2026 NTE Report makes it clear that the Trump administration's primary motivation behind its trade policy is to protect the profits of big U.S. companies. The brazen attacks against a range of crucial public interest policies, ranging from digital rights to public health regulations, reflect the unfortunate anti-people policies of this administration.
Countries across the world should be free to adopt measures to protect citizens’ fundamental rights and consumer safety—without having such measures challenged purely to enable greater corporate profit. And they should not feel beholden to undermine their public interest protections because of the deals they signed under threat of Trump’s sweeping tariffs, especially since those tariffs have now been ruled illegal by the US Supreme Court.
While the Trump administration has made it clear that it intends to double down on its coercive trade policies, including through the use of alternative tariff authorities, we stand in solidarity with civil society around the globe in urging countries to stand up to Trump’s bullying and continue to press ahead with important policies to hold Big Tech accountable and to protect their environment and the health of their people.
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War Is Hell for People and the Earth
Given the increasing violence across the world, it is essential that the international community more seriously address the environmental impacts of war as a persistent threat to the biosphere.
Mar 23, 2026
By any measure, Homo sapiens is one of the most violent animals on Earth. At any one time today, humans are engaged in over 100 armed conflicts and wars across the world, many with a resource component—oil, diamonds, gold, timber, territory, water. In the 20th century alone, over 130 million people were killed directly in war, 210 million if including government killings in non-war situations. The United Nations now reports that the world is entering “a new era” of increasing violence and conflict, and that “unresolved regional tensions, a breakdown in the rule of law, absent or co-opted state institutions, illicit economic gain, and the scarcity of resources exacerbated by climate change, have become dominant drivers of conflict.” Such extraordinary intraspecific violence seems to be unique to humans.
Strict economic losses from war exceed $1 trillion each year, and global military spending continues to rise, now approaching $3 trillion annually, compared to roughly $5 billion (0.2%) per year spent on peacekeeping. Global arms sales now exceed $150 billion each year, and there are over 500 million military assault weapons in circulation.
And often overlooked in assessing the toll of war is that, in addition to its humanitarian and economic cost, war often causes severe, long-lasting impacts on the natural environment.
War significantly impacts every part of the environment—air, water, land, habitat, biodiversity. This includes massive oil spills (e.g. enormous amounts of oil and other hazardous substances spilled from thousands of ships sunk in war, Iraqi forces during the 1990-1991 Persian Gulf War intentionally releasing over 4 million barrels of oil into the Gulf and setting wellheads ablaze, the 2006 Israeli bombing of fuel depots in Lebanon causing the large Eastern Mediterranean oil spill, and millions of barrels of oil spilled in the Niger Delta conflict); air pollution from explosive detonations and fires; land contamination; wildfires; deforestation (the loss of millions of hectares of forests in Vietnam from the spraying millions of gallons of the toxic defoliant “Agent Orange,” and vast areas burned by incendiary napalm); habitat destruction (thousands of hectares of mangroves lost in Vietnam); physical impacts to land (erosion, compaction) from war machinery; and mortality of wildlife (killing tens of thousands of Norwegian reindeer during WWII, and thousands of camels killed during the 1990-1991 Gulf war). Fuel use and carbon emissions during war, and in preparation for war, are enormous, and the US military is the world’s largest institutional user of petroleum.
War and environment are reciprocal drivers of decline—environmental degradation leads to war, and war leads to environmental degradation.
But perhaps the most troubling aspect of modern civilization is the development and threatened use of nuclear weapons, now numbering roughly 14,000 across the world, with a combined explosive yield more than 360,000 times that of the Hiroshima detonation. This global nuclear weapons stockpile, many of which are on a hair-trigger ready to launch, creates significant risk of accidental launch, as well as unsecured weapons (“loose nukes”) being acquired and used by malevolent actors.
The environmental effects of full-scale nuclear war would put at risk much of human civilization and the planetary biosphere. Firestorms from a full-scale nuclear war would suspend millions of tons of black soot into the upper atmosphere, leading to abrupt and unprecedented climate impacts including “nuclear winter,” with global cooling and reduced photosynthesis, causing years of crop failures, famine, and ecological collapse.
As nuclear tensions have risen, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has now set its “Doomsday Clock” at 85 seconds to midnight, closer than ever in history to nuclear annihilation, a move it says “should be taken as an indication of extreme danger and an unmistakable warning that every second of delay in reversing course increases the probability of global disaster.”
We are, and must be, better than this.
UN secretaries general have called the environmental consequences of war widespread, devastating, and debilitating, prompting the initiation of the United Nations’ International Day for Preventing the Exploitation of the Environment in War and Armed Conflict (November 6).
Theoretically, all nations are governed by international rules of war, and those rules specifically prohibit inflicting unnecessary environmental harm.
For instance, Paragraph 18 of the Geneva Conventions stipulates that:
All armed forces, whether regular or irregular, should continue to observe the principles and rules of international environmental and humanitarian law to which the parties to the conflict are bound in times of peace. Natural and cultural resources shall not be pillaged under any circumstances.
In Additional Protocol I, Article 35 states:
It is prohibited to employ methods or means of warfare which are intended, or may be expected, to cause widespread, long-term, and severe damage to the natural environment.
And Protocol I, Article 55—Protection of the Natural Environment—states:
1. Care shall be taken in warfare to protect the natural environment against widespread, long-term, and severe damage. This protection includes a prohibition of the use of methods or means of warfare which are intended or may be expected to cause such damage to the natural environment and thereby to prejudice the health or survival of the population.
2. Attacks against the natural environment by way of reprisals are prohibited.
It is notable that while the US has signed, but not ratified, Protocol I, it is generally felt that the Protocol has achieved status as Customary International Law that is to be abided by all nations, irrespective of ratification.
As well, the Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), established by the 1998 Rome Statute, stipulates in Article 8(2)(b)(iv) that the following constitutes a war crime:
Intentionally launching an attack in the knowledge that such an attack will cause incidental loss of life or injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects or widespread, long-term, and severe damage to the natural environment which would be clearly excessive in relation to the concrete and direct overall military advantage anticipated.
While there are 129 nation-state members to the ICC-Rome Statute, several countries with significant military activities are not, and thus do not abide by its rules—e.g., the US, China, Russia, India, Israel, Egypt, Sudan, Iran, and Syria.
And unfortunately, the laudable provisions cited above are often ignored by both state actors and non-state actors, without consequence. The terms widespread, long-term, and severe are not specifically defined. And the ICC statute requires evidence of intent and knowledge in order to prosecute violators, as such, it has yet to be employed due to this high threshold. Perhaps most importantly, these rules of war lack clarity regarding accidental or collateral environmental damage, which is by far the largest environmental impact of war.
War and environment are reciprocal drivers of decline—environmental degradation leads to war, and war leads to environmental degradation. Put simply, war and environment don’t mix—war is hell on people and the natural environment.
Given the increasing violence across the world, it is essential that the international community more seriously address the environmental impacts of war as a persistent threat to the biosphere. The Geneva Conventions must be updated to specifically and unambiguously define their environmental protections; to establish an international legal mechanism—independent of nation-states—to arbitrate and prosecute claims of environmental damage from war and to impose sufficient consequences for violators; and to hold the perpetrators of conflict financially liable for environmental damage and restoration post conflict.
For now, all combatants, including those in the current Persian Gulf war, must abide by these agreed environmental protections during conflict.
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