Bill Gates recently made headlines by suggesting that climate change is no longer a priority, but the American public begs to differ.

In this last election, climate change was a defining issue in states like Virginia and Georgia, where voters grappled with rising energy costs. And no matter how much tech billionaires try to distract us, increasing power costs and our worsening climate are directly connected to corporations like Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon racing to dominate the AI landscape.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the price of energy has risen at more than twice the rate of inflation since 2020, and Big Tech’s push for more power-hungry data centers is only making it worse.

The data centers proliferating across the country drive up energy costs by powering energy-ravenous generative AI, cloud storage, digital networks, and other energy intensive programs—much of it fueled by coal and natural gas that exacerbate climate change.

We can demand that tech giants like Microsoft, Meta, Google, and Amazon uphold their commitments to use 100% renewable energy and not rely on fossil fuels and nuclear energy to power data centers.

In some cases, data centers consume enough electricity to power the equivalent of a small city. The wholesale price of electricity in areas housing data centers is up a whopping 267% from five years ago—and everyday customers are eating those costs.

Americans are also shouldering increasing costs of an extreme climate.

The Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard noted that insurance prices rose 74% between 2008 and 2024—and between 2018 and 2023, nearly 2 million people had their policies canceled by insurers because of climate risks.

Meanwhile, home prices have gone up 40% in the past two decades—meaning the cost of........

© Common Dreams