Podcast Summary: "Setting a 'Tech Agenda' for Climate Week"
The Tech Policy Press Podcast, September 21, 2025
Host: Justin Hendricks
Overview
This episode, recorded live ahead of New York City’s Climate Week and the UN General Assembly, tackles the urgent intersection of technology—especially artificial intelligence (AI) and data centers—and climate justice. Justin Hendricks convenes activists and experts to discuss the rapid expansion of tech infrastructure, Big Tech’s entanglements with fossil fuels, and the gaps in policy, public understanding, and social movement responses. The aim: to set an actionable "tech agenda" for Climate Week that moves beyond corporate PR and into deep, community-based accountability.
Guests:
- Alex Dunn – CEO & Founder, The Maybe
- Holly Alpine – Co-Founder, Enabled Emissions Campaign
- Tamara Nies – Director, Climate Technology and Justice Program, Data & Society Research Institute
Key Discussion Points and Insights
1. Why Climate Week, Why Now?
(03:26–06:04) Alex Dunn explains the moment and motivation.
- Climate Week in New York brings together a powerful mix of stakeholders: government officials, activists, and even celebrities.
- The current “crescendo” around tech’s impact on climate, especially the AI infrastructure boom, demands attention and new conversations.
- Alex Dunn: “Big Tech is essentially rapidly investing in environmentally devastating projects globally as part of a larger project to push a vision of our future on us.” (04:45)
- There’s irony and tension about holding these discussions in New York as U.S. federal climate leadership falters.
2. Inside the Tech–Fossil Fuel Nexus
(06:47–10:19) Holly Alpine draws from experience at Microsoft.
- Tech companies make strong public climate pledges, but often simultaneously enable fossil fuel expansion behind the scenes.
- At Microsoft, internal activism reached its limits when efforts to address these contradictions hit a wall—prompting Holly and her partner to start the Enabled Emissions Campaign in early 2024.
- The campaign pushes for accountability on how tech is used (i.e., digital tools boosting oil and gas), not just its operational footprint.
Quote:
“We’re seeing a lot of conversations around AI and climate, but…what we’re not even seeing at all is what the tech is used for and how it actually fuels more fossil fuel production.” —Holly Alpine (09:50)
3. Challenging Corporate Narratives in AI and Climate
(10:53–13:59) Tamara Nies on data, organizing, and supply chains.
- Much of the discourse centers on speculative claims that “AI will solve climate change," usually without evidence or clarity.
- Real impacts come not just from infrastructure, but from supply chains and social harms—pollution, land use, displacement, labor exploitation.
- Community and activist involvement is key to countering misleading narratives and collecting actionable, ground-level data.
- Tamara Nies: “The entire history of computing is based on systems of exploitation and extraction. It’s just capitalism. At some point, it isn’t completely new. But…the hyper investment in AI has led to an intensification of things that were already happening.” (18:39)
4. The Scale of Harm in 2025
(14:46–19:32) Digging into specific impacts.
- Holly: AI and “advanced technologies” have driven a tripling of U.S. oil production since 2007. Companies like Microsoft are core partners for Big Oil; these emissions are omitted from tech firms’ carbon ledgers.
- Tamara: Data centers intensify fossil fuel demand, keep coal plants open, hike consumer utility bills, and trigger land use conflicts. Their supposed economic benefits to host communities are murky at best.
5. Information Asymmetry and Local Resistance
(20:32–29:21) Alex Dunn and others on organizing challenges.
- Tech giants hold all the cards: they deploy experienced lobbying teams and hide their actions (often via anonymous LLCs), leaving local communities overwhelmed and under-informed when data centers are proposed.
- Alex Dunn: “Every single community is learning from step zero. …the information asymmetry makes it more of a coercion…than any type of democratic process.” (23:07)
- Hidden data on water use, environmental impact, and economic benefit further impedes community action.
- New networks are emerging where communities share tactics and data, learning from one another’s “site fights” to mount more effective resistance.
6. Corporate Commitments vs. Reality
(30:44–35:32)
- Tech firms publicize grand sustainability goals (e.g., “net zero” pledges) that often exclude the largest categories of emissions: those “enabled” by their products, especially for oil and gas customers.
- Holly: “Right now there is zero responsibility for it. …It’s not part of the current GHG protocols. …It’s not part of any of these tech companies’ commitments and we think that it should be.” (31:02)
- Tamara: The net zero narrative itself, already critiqued as greenwashing, is fading as it becomes politicized and companies seek loopholes.
7. Silicon Valley's “AI-for-Climate” Excuses
(35:32–40:18)
- Some tech leaders justify aggressive growth with a quasi-utopian argument: invest in AI now (even if it means burning more fossil fuels), and AI will deliver the tools to solve climate change later.
- Justin Hendricks: “It seems like…a suicide pact almost. Let’s burn it all as fast as we can to get to that point.” (36:39)
- Alex Dunn: “It’s a sickness…but it is also an incredibly cynical set of arguments…They’re racing to be so embedded [in infrastructure] that you can’t undo it. They know they’re going to need a bailout.” (37:03)
- Investigative reporters are increasingly crucial, as companies obscure key facts (e.g., redacting water usage in public filings).
8. Gaps in Organizing and Policy
(40:51–49:14)
- Tamara: Site-specific data vital for local “site fights” is rarely available in time. Transmission lines cross borders, spreading harm and complicating organizing efforts.
- Holly: There’s a “huge blind spot” around how tech directly enables fossil fuel expansion. No carbon accounting, few regulatory guardrails, and voluntary measures are grossly insufficient. She points to the EU AI Act as a possible template for labeling fossil-fuel-enabling AI as a “high-risk application.”
- Alex: Technical experts entering movements often start from scratch; more intentional collaboration with established social justice organizers could speed up effective resistance.
- The “whack-a-mole” problem: stopping a data center in one location may just push it elsewhere. Rights-based, scalable legal strategies are needed.
9. Actions and Ways Forward
(49:43–55:01) Each guest offers practical advice and resources.
- Alex Dunn: Attend events centering community organizers during Climate Week; push for specificity and transparency from tech companies about real social benefits and trade-offs. “We need to be asking more aggressive questions…because once…they actually engage, the dramatic trade-offs will become…non-starters.” (50:25)
- Tamara Nies: Join cross-sector events combining tech, resource governance, and human rights activists; study histories of resistance to techno-extractive projects. See Data & Society’s "Cloud" series for more.
- Holly Alpine: Sign up for Enabled Emissions and share relevant skills for campaign work. When discussing tech’s environmental harms, include scrutiny of what the tech is actually being used for, not just how it’s built or powered:
“If the robot is going out and mowing down the Amazon and dumping gasoline into rivers, we need to look at what that robot is actually doing as well…. It seems like we’re starting to finally look at how that robot is built…but almost entirely leaving out of the conversation what it is currently doing and has been doing for the last decade.” (54:00)
Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments
-
On corporate accountability:
“They don’t want to put all the information on the table and then have a very reasoned conversation about is this worth it? Because if we have that conversation, they know what the answer is going to be.”
— Alex Dunn (39:30) -
On tech industry narratives:
“AI will help solve problems—climate change—without any details ever pointed to in that respect.”
— Tamara Nies (11:10) -
On organizing strategy:
“There are movements that have been in operation and in solidarity with each other for a really long time. …If you seek those people, you can speed the process up.”
— Alex Dunn (47:00) -
On calls to action:
“Force them to answer questions on how they are stopping the bad way. When you’re getting healthy, you can start eating carrots…but if you’re also still smoking a pack a day and eating a dozen donuts per day, you need to stop doing that to get healthy.”
— Holly Alpine (53:19)
Timestamps for Important Segments
- 00:12 – Introduction by host (Justin Hendricks)
- 03:26 – Alex Dunn on The Maybe, global context, and Climate Week’s significance
- 06:47 – Holly Alpine’s journey from Microsoft to Enabled Emissions; inner contradictions at Big Tech
- 10:53 – Tamara Nies on cutting through AI hype, participatory research, and community organizing
- 14:46 – Holly Alpine breaks down the magnitude of tech-enabled fossil fuel expansion
- 16:43 – Tamara Nies on intensifying harms of data centers: land, energy, labor, and colonial legacies
- 20:32 – Alex Dunn on information asymmetry, Big Tech’s tactics, and emerging resistance networks
- 29:21 – Audience Q&A: On ESG commitments versus reality
- 35:32 – The myth of "AI will save us" and Silicon Valley logic of burning more to innovate
- 40:51 – Where movements and policies fall short—organizing, guardrails, cross-movement solidarity
- 49:43 – Each guest’s closing recommendations for listeners
Conclusion
This powerful episode blends sharp critique with practical organizing wisdom, exposing how Big Tech’s AI and data infrastructure boom is compounding climate and social harms, often in the least accountable ways. The guests call for transparency, tough questions, and building durable alliances—especially at the local level—to resist and reform the tech sector’s deepest climate injustices. They urge listeners to scrutinize both the infrastructural and application uses of tech, get informed, connect with frontline organizers, and push policy makers and companies for more than empty promises.