As Musk’s SpaceX, Bezos’ Blue Origin, and other companies expand into space, they risk causing more problems for Earth in the process: air pollution, climate effects, and light pollution. The practice of downplaying these negative consequences while trumpeting the message that space operations can make life better on Earth has a new name: “starwashing,” a term the space researcher Melissa E. Yingling helped popularize in an article published in The Conversation earlier this month.
It’s a play on the term “greenwashing,” used to critique companies that highlight small sustainable investments to divert attention from the pollution their businesses cause. Space companies are appealing to a sense of “cosmic wonder” and making promises to benefit humankind, along with promoting their environmental bona fides, Yingling wrote.
Musk has built some EVs.
Musk has also built many data centers.
Many more than he needs, by the way, because that’s the current business model of the xAI branch in SpaceX: to build data centers for rent.
I recently read somewhere that the total new pollution caused by data centers (more specifically, by the generation of the electricity they require) is now already significantly higher than the total pollution that has been avoided by all EVs.
So SpaceX has absolutely made the life of everybody worse who lives in such a country where these data centers are (mostly Usa, I assume).
Well I’d love to see that source. I do care about actually understanding the relative carbon footprints of these industries. You can’t make informed decisions without being informed, so that matters to me.
But that said, the EV industry desperately needed a kickstart, and it wasn’t happening prior to Tesla. You can actually attribute that move to electric to Tesla, as other car companies felt they needed to compete with them or be left behind.
On the other hand, you can’t attribute all AI data centers to Elon musk, he’s not responsible for AI in general. It only really makes sense to blame them for the percentage of carbon emissions generated by xAI. I’m having trouble finding any source to pinpoint what percentage that might be, but it’s very likely that xAI makes up for less than 10% of the global AI data center power consumption, probably much less.