Al Gore has a surprisingly calm take on the AI data center backlash

Al Gore has a surprisingly calm take on the AI data center backlash. 25% off tickets now Back by popular demand: Save up to $300 on Disrupt Close Image Credits:Brendon Thorne/Getty Images for Paramount Pictures Climate Al Gore has a surprisingly calm take on the AI data center backlash Connie Loizos 4:43 PM PDT · September 16, 2026 Al Gore has spent more than two decades as one of the most recognizable voices in the climate movement, so when he talks about AI, it’s worth paying attention to what he considers truly scary.

What happened

In an interview with TechCrunch, Al Gore suggested he isn't losing sleep over AI data center emissions — he's more worried about the AI industry's own warnings about where the technology is headed. In an interview with TechCrunch this week alongside Lila Preston, head of growth equity at their investment firm Generation Investment Management, Gore said emissions from AI data centers aren’t what should keep people up at night, despite the mounting opposition over their environmental impacts.

Gore isn’t dismissive of concerns about how these data centers are being powered, by the way. “If God had intended us to have a limitless supply of cheap, clean energy, He — or she — would have put a fusion reactor in the sky. ” Gore said with a chuckle, “The joke makes itself. ” Topics AI data center, Al Gore, Climate, Exclusive, TC When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission.

And it isn’t what has people protesting data centers in the streets. This past May, for example, he described AI data centers to another outlet as a “cause for deep concern, but not panic,” and in our conversation this week, his central point about emissions was about scale. “If you look at the emissions of all of the AI data centers put together, it’s only a fraction of the emissions from uncovered landfills in the world,” he said, adding that a comparable build-out is tied to something that gets far less attention: air conditioning.

The wider picture

The International Energy Agency estimates that global air conditioning already consumes more electricity annually than the entire European Union, and with ownership still under 15% across the hottest, fastest-growing parts of the world, that demand is expected to triple by 2050, putting far more pressure on the grid than AI data centers over the same period. In fact, Gore thinks the public backlash at planning-commission meetings has less to do with carbon emissions than with anxiety over automation upending society in the not-too-distant future.

“I think that part of the reason for the growing bipartisan opposition to data centers in so many parts of the U. Though President Trump and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang shared a laugh at their expense on Monday during a conference in Los Angeles (Trump suggested that Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s public call to slow the pace of capability gains, quickly seconded by Sam Altman and Elon Musk, was a “hoax”), Gore said he takes the warnings at face value.

36B, 90% less than its 2022 valuation Ram Iyer ID verification giant IDScan confirms data breach with more than 150 million driver’s licenses stolen Zack Whittaker Loading the next article Error loading the next article Skip NavigationMarketsBusinessInvestingTechPolitics & PolicyVideoWatchlistInvesting ClubPROLivestreamMenuKey PointsAmazon was granted warrants to buy up to $340 million worth of Generac stock as part of a deal to supply backup power generators for its data centers. FGGNRCAMZNFollow your favorite stocksCREATE FREE ACCOUNTAn aerial view of an Amazon Web Services Data Center known as US East 1 in Ashburn, Virginia, U.

Generac will supply Amazon with backup power generators for its data centers, with initial deliveries expected to total $2.

What has been reported

Amazon Web Services, the leader in cloud infrastructure, has been rapidly building out data center capacity to meet a surge in compute demand tied to the artificial intelligence boom. In this articleAPOFollow your favorite stocksCREATE FREE ACCOUNTAn aerial view of an Equinix data center in Ashburn, Virginia, on Aug. CommentsBack to topJoin the discussionCommentsBack to topYou Might Also LikeIn your inbox: Maxwell Zeff's dispatch on the business of AIWhy normal people aren’t using AI agentsBig Story: How data centers broke American politicsHackers stalked me by hijacking a cheap pink plastic watchSpecial edition: The WIRED guide to expanding your mindLuke Larsen is a product writer and reviewer at WIRED, covering laptops, PCs, Macs, monitors, and the wider PC peripheral ecosystem.

Image source, Getty ImagesImage caption, Data centres, such as this Google site under construction in Hertfordshire, are becoming increasingly common across the UKIn recent days, alarming warnings of threats to humanity have created a din, but it is these low hums that have stirred a backlash in the US which now threatens to envelop its midterm elections, and could cross the Atlantic and come to the UK. In Brick Lane, plans for a data centre likely to service the City of London's high frequency traders face a backlash from those who would prefer to see more social housing and local business developments in the capital's east end.

Image source, AFP via Getty ImagesImage caption, Pressures on energy and water have driven local protestsThe backlash is clearly more pronounced among Democrats on the left, but anti-data-centre sentiment is clear among Republican supporters too. Last year, in New Jersey and Virginia, Democratic Governors were elected partly because of a backlash against rising electricity prices blamed on data centre construction and operation. Take the skull (💀), for example, which has come to be used as a reaction for finding something funny – a visual shorthand for the slang phrase: “I’m dead. ” Or the wilting rose (🥀) which was, according to Google data analysed by the New York Times, the fastest-growing emoji in terms of popularity in 2025 – and was the 93rd most used.

What happens next

Disrupt 2026: OpenAI, Anthropic, Replit, and more take over 6 industry stages. What should concern people more, in his view, are the warnings coming from inside the AI industry itself, which he takes more seriously than many other investors. It’s not a new position for Gore, even if it’s something we haven’t discussed with him in our annual conversations, dating back several years. Naturally, while we had him on the phone, we pressed Gore on the wave of warnings from AI industry leaders that has dominated headlines over the last week.

“I do think that Dario Amodei is very sincere, and I think that Sam Altman and Elon Musk were sincere in seconding [Amodei’s] warning of a few days ago. ” Gore being Gore (he often reaches for literature, scripture, and pop philosophy to make a point), he invoked Maya Angelou’s well-known line: “When someone tells you who they are, believe them the first time. ” Part of what’s changed his calculus, he said, is recent, concrete behavior from AI systems themselves — pointing to “the recent example of models escaping confinement, collaborating secretly, covering their tracks, engaging in deceptive behavior,” and noting that Anthropic has said it stopped instances of Claude being used to help develop biological weapons in different countries.

That said, Gore doesn’t treat AI risk and AI’s climate potential as being in opposition. Unsurprisingly, he suggested that the best thing for humanity would be if the U.

The report has been compiled by The Daily Waves using information reported across techcrunch.com, cnbc.com, wired.com. Details are presented according to the information available at the time of publication and may change as authorities, organisers or other relevant parties provide updates.