Warby Parker Announcer (3:09)

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Dena Temple Raston (3:39)

Click here. I'm Dena Temple Rastin. AI can feel miraculous. Predicting hurricanes, translating whale songs, promising to shave hours off our weekdays. It's also ravenous. Every query, every model, every server farm is gobbling up power, not just driving up prices, but spewing emissions out into the atmosphere. And that invisible appetite is starting to show up in unexpected places like the national power grid and in your monthly electricity bill. Well, if your electric bill has gone up lately, you are not alone. Artificial intelligence data centers are predicted to drive demand to record highs in the coming years. Google announced this week it is well behind on a pledge to all but eliminate its net carbon emissions by 2030. Its emissions are actually up nearly 50% since 2019. One factor artificial intelligence and the energy required. And Google isn't alone. Across the industry, the promise of greener computing is colliding with the reality of AI's energy appetite. And there's another story here, one that starts not in a data center, but with a single coder. A man who stumbled on a surprisingly elegant way to shrink that footprint. By fighting fire with fire. These days, Stuart Clark works in it, but that's not where he began. His dad worked construction, and the expectation was that he he would, too. But Stuart wanted something different, a path that was his own. So he picked up a pair of scissors and became a hairdresser.

Stuart Clark (5:27)

My hands were far too soft and gentle to be working on building sites. My, my, my wife says my hands are so soft, they're like ve. And so, yeah, it's a compliment. It is a compliment. Yeah.

Dena Temple Raston (5:45)

Stuart cut hair in salons for almost 20 years. But by 2008, the Shine had kind of worn off. So he reinvented himself again.

Stuart Clark (5:55)

I thought, what's next on the list? And so, yeah, I got into tech, and I was very fortunate. And my career really took off.

Dena Temple Raston (6:03)

He taught himself to code and landed jobs with some of the biggest names in tech. And somewhere between Cisco and Amazon and Spotify, Stewart started noticing how much energy the Internet was consuming. Because suddenly, everything was getting wired up. Not just Computers. But toasters, cars, light fixtures, children's toys, Every smart device was adding to the demand, and most people didn't even realize it was happening.

Stuart Clark (6:32)

We think about cars, think about plastic in the ocean, but we don't think about our digital footprint just yet. The digital world feels somewhat cleaner, if not weightless.

Dena Temple Raston (6:43)

As someone helping build that digital world, though, Stuart understood better than most just how heavy it really is. So he set out to calculate the cost, to give it a label, something you could size up at a glance and maybe act on. The way we do when we shop for a car, checking the miles per gallon or when we buy a dishwasher with that energy saver sticker slapped right on the front, you know, we're making.

Stuart Clark (7:08)

Choices there based on energy rating, like, you know, how many miles to a gallon of car does how much CO2 it uses. And it's kind of like, well, if I had that information to hand, I could make a conscious decision when I was using an app, for example. But some of this data is just incredibly hard to actually find. The industry is as transparent as it needs to be.

Dena Temple Raston (7:37)

Consider the data center, one of the biggest drivers of all those rising emissions.

Stuart Clark (7:42)

They're built in the most possible, indiscreet way. Many years ago, Google's data centers weren't even on any maps. One of Google's data centers was called Lord Voldemort because it was like, he who shall not be named, we do.

Dena Temple Raston (7:56)

Not speak his name.

Stuart Clark (7:57)

Voldemort. I've been to data centers which have got moats in front of them, and they've actually got armed guards around them. They have better security than most airports do.

Dena Temple Raston (8:15)

But after some digging, he finally was able to put a number on it. And I have to say, even for someone like me, who already had a sense of the problem, the numbers were staggering.

Stuart Clark (8:26)

If you go onto your Internet, you know the search that you've done. Every search that you make on that device will melt 0.2 grams of Arctic ice.

Dena Temple Raston (8:36)

For context, Google alone handles about eight and a half billion searches every day. Over the course of a year. That would mean melting more than 100 square miles of Arctic ice. And that's just a Google search. In a year, the average person's YouTube streaming has a carbon footprint equal to driving a car. Almost a hundred. And TikTok, here's another crazy statistic. To offset its annual carbon footprint, you'd have to plant 26 million trees today and let them grow for 10 years. And that's just TikTok's usage in the US, UK and France. When you widen the lens and add up all the energy used by the infrastructure that keeps the Internet running, the searches, the streaming, every click and scroll and convert that into greenhouse gas emissions, the picture gets darker.

Stuart Clark (9:30)

If the Internet were a country, it would be the fourth largest polluter on earth. So that's going to be behind China, behind the us, behind India. And unlike those countries, the Internet, its growth really goes unchecked.

Dena Temple Raston (9:45)

So when Stewart saw those numbers, he felt a little crushed, even guilty. Maybe you do too. But then, right in the middle of tallying up all that damage, when he was buried in a coding project, Stewart stumbled onto something he hadn't expected. Not a full solution exactly, but a glimmer of hope. A surprising one. And that's when we come back. Stay with us. Support for Click Here comes from Factor. You want to eat better, but you don't have the energy to make it happen. And it's not that you're failing at healthy eating. It's just that you don't have the three extra hours every night for meal planning and shopping. Not to mention prep, cooking and cleanup. What if you let Factor handle it all? Factor is designed by dietitians, ready, made by chefs and delivered to your door. Their meals are exactly what you would make if only you had the time Lean proteins, healthy fats, colorful vegetables and whole food ingredients. Personally, I'm most excited about the Thai Yellow Curry chicken with Ginger rice, but you can choose from 100 rotating meals made every week in categories like Calorie, Smart, Mediterranean and a new MusclePro collection for strength and recovery. Factor meals are always fresh, never frozen, and ready in two minutes. Just heat it and eat it. Head to FactorMeals.com clickhere50OFF and use the code clickhere50OFF to get 50% off your first factor box. Plus free breakfast for a year offer is only valid for new Factor customers with code and qualifying auto renewing subscription purchase. Make healthier eating easy with Factor support for Click Here comes from Quince. Quince has you covered with luxe essentials that look polished and feel effortless at prices you can actually afford. From the stitching to the fit to the fabrics, the quality is clear so you'll be able to wear their styles season after season. My quince suede slip ons have become a staple for me. They're comfortable, attractive and I get compliments on them all the time. But Quince isn't just about shoes. They have everything Soft mongolian cashmere sweaters, 100% silk tops, perfectly cut denim And Italian wool coats. All premium materials produced in ethical, trusted factories and priced far below other luxury brands. Refresh your wardrobe with quince. Don't wait. Go to quince.com clickhere for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's Q U I n c e.com clickhere to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com clickhere.

Recorded Future Announcer (12:55)

In cybersecurity, your greatest fear isn't the threats you see. It's the critical signals lost in the noise. Every day, security teams sort through millions of potential threats. That's why Recorded Future exists. To give you precision intelligence tuned to your needs. Our advanced AI detects patterns humans might miss, while our threat intelligence experts, veterans of military and intelligence services, provide crucial context. With Recorded Future, you gain the confidence to identify critical threats and the precision to act before they become attacks. Learn why 1900 customers, including 45 plus sovereign governments, trust us to detect threats faster and achieve 350% plus ROI within a year.

Dena Temple Raston (13:56)

After crunching the numbers, Stuart was stunned by how much energy the Internet was eating up. But something seemed off. So he went back to his code.

Stuart Clark (14:07)

How this started for me was is that I was reviewing some code that I was working on and then one day I just found this bug.

Dena Temple Raston (14:17)

A bug, a mistake in his code.

Stuart Clark (14:19)

And if anybody's ever seen my code, you'll know that it's actually quite heavy in bugs. I don't claim to be the greatest, I claim to be the greatest coder. I was pretty much self taught on coding.

Dena Temple Raston (14:29)

This particular line of buggy code was supposed to request information from a database all at once. But instead it asks for the data one tiny bit at a time. Literally hundreds of separate requests instead of just one.

Stuart Clark (14:44)

This is like going to the library to get a 500 page book. But instead of checking out this entire book, the whole book, you're checking out one page at a time. Yeah, you're reading it and then you're walking back. You check out page two 500 times, you know, so if you can hear.

Dena Temple Raston (15:01)

That kind of inefficiency is invisible to users, but not to the data servers doing all the heavy lifting. Think of it this way. Imagine you're the one walking to and from the library for each individual page of that 500 page book.

Stuart Clark (15:17)

After like the 20th trip, you could, you know, you might feel sort of like quite physically exhausted. You know, I think even the fittest person would be like starting to sweat a little bit. So you Know, you can imagine a server doing exactly that same sort of process. It's just getting hotter and hotter and hotter.

Dena Temple Raston (15:36)

His one line of code did just that. It made the servers work harder, which made them run hotter, which set the cooling systems into overdrive too. Energy demand spiked.

Stuart Clark (15:49)

So I actually did the math on this as well. Just this one line, one single line of code was responsible for generating what I estimated to be 2.3 tons of CO2 emissions per year. Wow. Just because of one lazy algorithm.

Dena Temple Raston (16:08)

Every time that one line of code got used, it consumed as much energy as an entire American household using in four months. And when Stuart tweaked that line of.

Stuart Clark (16:20)

Code, the fix was to reduce the server load by 99%.

Dena Temple Raston (16:25)

A 99% reduction from a single line of code. Suddenly, servers ran cooler, Power use fell. The carbon footprint shrank dramatically. His mistake had become a solution. And that solution turned into an epiphany. He thought, maybe we can't convince billions of people to scroll less, but we could write code that's better for the planet. If big tech companies made these tiny code tweets behind the scenes, if they built in tiny efficiencies, the impact could ripple out to billions of users all at once. Like, instead of going door to door asking every family to recycle, just asking Amazon to switch to environmentally friendly packaging. A few subtle shifts to the code itself, and the Internet could start treading a little lighter on the planet. Stewart started calling it sustainable software. And here's the twist. The very technology driving energy demand to record heights right now could also be the tool to fix it. Because Stewart says, AI can practically automate sustainable coding.

Stuart Clark (17:43)

I'm using AI to write my code. I can actually write within there to, say, use the most sustainable way possible to use as less CPUs. We can just put that in there and AI will say, yeah, I can do that for you. I can do that.

Dena Temple Raston (17:59)

Some companies are already experimenting with this, cooling data centers more efficiently and cutting energy use nearly in half. And Stuart says that's the equivalent of taking a million cars off the road.

Stuart Clark (18:14)

Artificial intelligence necessarily isn't bad. We just have to choose our path here and how to do this in a way that's both healthy for us as humans and unhealthy for us as a planet.

Dena Temple Raston (18:34)

Because, as Stewart likes to say, the Internet isn't weightless. Every search, every stream, every line of code leaves a trace. And if we pay attention, those traces don't just point to the problem, they point to the way out of it. Click here is a production of Recorded Future News and prx. Today's show was written and produced by Megan Dietre, Sean Powers, Erica Guida, and Zach Hirsch. It was edited by Karen Duffin and Lou Olkowski and fact checked by Darren Ancrum. Original music is by Ben Levingston with additional music from Blue Dot Sessions. Our staff writer is Lucas Riley and our illustrator is Megan Gough. Jesse Niswonger and Jake Cook are our sound designers and engineers. Find us on X or Facebook at Click Here. Show or leave us a voice message at 6615CHTalk. Sometimes we'll turn those moments into reporting, sometimes into a conversation, and sometimes into a future story you'll hear on this show. We'll be back on Tuesday with an all new episode of Click Here. Have a great weekend. Support for this program comes from Recorded Future. In cybersecurity, the biggest risk isn't what can be seen, it's what gets missed. Recorded Future analyzes billions of signals to help organizations stay ahead of threats. Recorded Future Know what matters?

Recorded Future Announcer (20:11)

Act first looking for more of the cybersecurity and intelligence coverage you get on Click Here? Then check out our sister publication the Record from Recorded Future News. You'll get breaking cyber news from reporters in New York, Washington, London and Kyiv, among others. And you'll see for yourself why it attracts hundreds of thousands of page views every month. Just go to the Record Media.