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> Or, if you want to focus on individual consumer choices, the water footprint of eating a hamburger.

To drive this point home: if every American ate exactly one less hamburger per year, it would entirely offset the annual water consumption of all US datacenters (including, therefore, the water footprint of AI).

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> if every American ate exactly one less hamburger per year

I fear that you have unwittingly led us further into the inevitable Environmental Hamburger-Cost Continuum.

Wherein we will use EHCC units to inform the hamburger voters about a) the nobility of even the smallest hamburgerian sacrifice, and b) the gentle, loving hand of industrialisation.

> the annual water consumption of all US datacenters

How many hamburgers will it be if all the proposed/pending datacenters are completed and running?

I would expect within the same order of magnitude. Worst-case, skipping a burger once a month instead of once a year is hardly some insurmountable sacrifice (and I say that as a fatass who loves himself a good burger).

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