Gen Z can't save the planet while doomscrolling it dry

As data centers drink billions of gallons of water each year, the youth can no longer wait for others to step up

- Voices SARA YASSI GUEST CONTRIBUTOR

GEN Z CALLS itself the climate generation. We post infographics, hop on Lime bikes instead of calling Ubers, offset flights we still take for weekend getaways and stage walkouts with reusable bottles in hand. But somewhere between our climate optimism and the dopamine hit of an endless scroll, we became part of the problem we were left to solve.

It’s a relief that corporations — including groups like Google, Meta and Microsoft — exist to mask our digital gluttony. They become the public face of environmental harm, letting us believe that climate guilt can be outsourced, as long as someone else is taking the heat.

Last month, a leaked internal document at Amazon showed the company working hard to bury the fact that its data centers consumed a staggering 105 billion gallons of water in 2021 to cool its facilities, outdrinking nearly 1 million homes, or the equivalent of a city “bigger than San Francisco.”

It’s a defining warning that the green economy's breaking point isn’t just carbon, it’s water. Just in the U.S., data centers consumed more than 211 billion gallons last year, much of it in drought-prone states like Colorado and Arizona. The same pattern is emerging in my native Britain, where in Scotland alone, data centers already consume around 13.5 billion liters of water each year. Regulators warn that continued expansion could deepen Scotland's projected 240-million-liter daily shortfall in public water supplies by 2050.