Climate, Technology, and Justice

The changing climate already disproportionately impacts communities in the majority world, and energy-intensive technologies like generative AI make the problem worse, exacerbating global emissions. With a focus on people and communities, our research explores the full spectrum of environmental concerns connected to technology.

What We Do

We examine the social and environmental repercussions of the expanded global infrastructures and labor practices needed to sustain the growth of digital technologies, from AI and blockchain to streaming and data centers. We trace the environmental implications of technology development across the entire life cycle, from ideation and use to disposal or refurbishment. We also seek to better understand the sociotechnical implications of climate-focused technologies, from low-carbon innovations like community energy, solar, and wind turbines, to the integration of algorithms and AI into climate modeling, disaster prediction, and emissions tracking.

Focus Areas

Our researchers are tracking the relationship between the environment and the digital world: from participatory impact assessments of AI’s environmental harms and analyses of how communities on the front lines of climate change and environmental racism are resisting data center encroachment, to interviews with tech worker activists who agitate for their companies to take on and meet climate goals while organizing across the labor supply chain.

Environmental Impacts

We explore the material impacts of technological industries and innovations, how communities grapple with them, and how they should be assessed and mitigated. Our approach goes beyond quantitative measurements of carbon and water costs to include downstream impacts on communities and ecosystems.

Use and Reuse

We examine how communities use and repurpose technologies in their responses to climate change, and document the circular economies attached to the planned obsolescence of technology development, from platformized fast fashion to e-waste refurbishers.

Troubling Climate Innovation

We research the data-centric implications of technologies involved in climate response, such as clean energy, disaster prediction, and electric vehicles. By examining how climate technologies interact with everyday life and social practices, we endeavor to diversify the public climate agenda, remove obstacles to adoption, and pursue climate justice.

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Meet the Team

  • To understand the ways that the digital value chain is impacting both the planet and vulnerable communities around the globe today, we must situate the current context across time, geographies, and the supply chain — while at the same time zeroing in on specific places and their unique situatedness.
    Excerpt from The Cloud is Dead, Deadly, and Haunted

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