When I was a sociology graduate student and teaching assistant, we learned about the global fight over oil, that the center of oil dependence is in the Middle East, and that eventually we would go to war with Iran. Fast forward 20 years later and the predictions of my professor have reached fruition. As many of us are now catching up to, roughly 20% of the world’s oil supply flows through the Strait of Hormuz, whose shipping lanes are currently closed and controlled by Iran and Oman.

As fraught relations with Iran continue to play out, and regardless of our political alliances, it is important for us to realize and remind ourselves that crude oil, petroleum, is a finite and non-renewable resource. Earth’s reserves took millions of years to form, and we are using them up at an alarming rate. If oil demand continues to increase over the next few decades, we are not in a position to meet that demand.

Scientists have been predicting that peak oil, the time when oil production and demand is highest, will come and go, but AI will change that. Data centers, large buildings housing servers, data storage, and related equipment, require elaborate power and cooling systems to run and further tax our energy grid. According to research, there are over 4,000 data centers in the United States with 643 in Virginia alone. In 2024, these data centers consumed more than 4% of our country’s total electricity and 26% of total electricity supply in Virginia. Fifty-six percent of the energy needed for AI data centers is from gas and coal; natural gas supplies over 40% of this electricity. In order to meet these needs, utility companies are expected to increase the average residential bill. The AI trajectory is not only fossil fuel dependence, it is continued extraction where environmental problems are converted into revenue. This trend of profit for some at the expense of many people and the environment will accelerate our depletion of our natural resources, and we should all be concerned.

Access to cheap fuel is not a right. It is a subsidy built on violence, both societal and environmental harm. The price of cheap oil is exploitation and death, including death of children and the destabilization of our climate, which all risk future generations' viability on Earth. In the face of such consequences, surely we do better.

In learning how to........

© Common Dreams