During the 118th Congress, the Artificial Intelligence Environmental Impacts Act of 2024 was proposed and rejected. This bill would have required a comprehensive study of the environmental consequences of AI along with a subsequent reconvening of Congress in order to decide what to do about the results. Its rejection didn’t even make national news—yet it represents a turning point in our history.

AI companies have gotten away with concealing the total energy input required for their AI models for far too long. Under the current presidential administration, which has promised to “reject radical climate dogma and bureaucratic red tape” in order to boost AI development in the United States, the passing of this bill is more urgent than ever. The creation, training, and maintenance of new artificial intelligence models require enormous amounts of electricity and water, rare earth metals for computer chips, and numerous other precious natural resources. AI giants are investing in new data centers across the globe, creating a new spike in electricity demand and forcing fossil fuel power plants in the process of retiring to stay online rather than being replaced by renewables. The IEA predicts that at the current pace of development, the global energy consumption from AI-optimized data centers will more than quadruple by 2030. Despite ongoing gains in the energy efficiency of AI software, the accelerating growth of the AI sector and associated data centers will, without intervention, inevitably reverse much of the progress we’ve made against climate change.

Only you can stop this, by making your voice heard. Add your signature to this petition and join the voices calling for the reintroduction of this bill to Congress. You can also visit ai2congress.com to learn more about the issue and spread the word using downloadable flyers.