2 October, 2026

After a summer of record-breaking heatwaves and recent claims by Anthropic researchers that AI could cause human extinction by 2030, public attention feels an increasingly finite resource. And AII is not just consuming more energy and water, but is increasingly commanding political and media attention too.

Climate experts worry this shift could push action on climate change further down the global agenda, despite its worsening impacts. While some researchers argue that AI poses an existential threat to humanity, those risks remain largely speculative (despite Anthropic’s eyebrow-raising IPO document published this week). By contrast, climate change is no longer a future problem. It is here already, already reshaping ecosystems, communities and economies. Yet because its impacts unfold gradually, climate change can struggle to compete with newer and seemingly more urgent concerns. The frog is being boiled, and it’s easy to look elsewhere.

The two issues go hand in hand. AI’s rapid growth is increasing demand for electricity, water and computing infrastructure, creating fresh challenges for corporate decarbonisation efforts. Google, which previously pledged to be 100% carbon-free in its operations by 2030, has found its emissions trajectory increasingly difficult to reconcile with its AI ambitions. Businesses will need to decide whether current net-zero strategies are equipped for an increasingly energy-intensive digital economy.

AI and climate change are both human-created systemic risks, shaped by decisions made by businesses and by policy makers. They need to be understood together to some degree, rather than as competing crises and a zero-sum attention game. AI may help accelerate climate solutions, sometimes in transformational ways, but it is also putting existing sustainability commitments under a lot of strain.

From our perspective, the more important question is not about which risk poses the greater threat, but whether businesses and governments can effectively manage multiple long-term risks at once. Climate action cannot become a casualty of shifting news cycles or increasingly crowded policy agendas. Attention may be finite, but climate progress cannot afford to be.

By Charity Rymer