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My guest today is Erald Kolasi.
Erald Kolasi is a writer and independent researcher focusing on the nexus between energy, technology, economics, complex systems, and ecological dynamics. His first book, The Physics of Capitalism, came out from the Monthly Review Press in February 2025. He received his PhD in Physics from George Mason University in 2016.
Back in January I hosted Erald on Urgent Futures for the first time, and he offered a lucid, powerful argument for decarbonization, including actual proposals for how we get there, even in the face of the immense obstacles in the way.
Later this spring, he reached out to me about a piece he’d been researching, generously inviting me to join him as a co-author. The fruits of that work now live in our recent report, “The Global Energy and Emissions Footprint of AI Diffusion.”
It’s the first—to our knowledge!—comprehensive lifecycle analysis of the AI industry’s climate footprint, focusing on energy and emissions but also getting into water, downstream consumption, and rebound effects. It’s a beast of a report so it’d be foolish to try to recap it all here, but the headline numbers are that we estimate the AI industry is producing 1.1% of all global energy demand & 1.2% of GHG emissions in 2026.
We break down how we got there and explain our methodology in this conversation, so I hope it makes for an accessible invitation into the report, and in the meantime be sure to subscribe to Erald’s Substack via the button below!
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CREDITS: This podcast is edited and produced by Adam Labrie and me, Jesse Damiani. Adam Labrie also directed, shot, and edited the video version of the podcast, which is available on YouTube. The podcast is presented by Reality Studies. If you appreciate the work I’m doing, please subscribe and share it with someone you think would enjoy it.
Find more episodes of Urgent Futures at: youtube.com/@UrgentFutures. Past conversations include Taylor Lorenz, Lisa Messeri, Legacy Russell, William E. Rees, Renée DiResta, and more. Here is another recent episode with Karen Attiah:
