By Fatima Ghufran (Pakistan)

The Earth is in distress, and 2025 has made it impossible to look away. The recent floods in Pakistan, wildfires in California, and deadly rains in Africa are each disasters that carry the unmistakable imprint of a climate spiraling out of control. The signal could not be clearer. We are living in a state of Code Red for humanity.

But the pivotal question is how does AI connect to all of this? Most people don’t pause to consider the link. To them, AI is an exciting, playful, and helpful tool. People use Gemini to create images of themselves with celebrities and even deceased loved ones. Students turn to ChatGPT or Grok to draft assignments and emails. It feels such a seamless transaction. you write a prompt, you get an answer. Convenient, quick, satisfying. But does the process end there? Where does that data go? What fuels it? And what are the unseen costs?

This is not the complete cycle. Far from it. And this is what this article seeks to uncover. While AI has simplified life in ways we once only imagined, it is also consistently and significantly endangering the future of our planet. The energy behind every click, every prompt, every generated image or essay accumulates. Behind the joy of convenience, lies a carbon cost that the Earth is already struggling to bear. Each interaction may feel harmless, but together they form a digital tide that pushes us deeper into Code Red.

Each prompt we type, each image we generate, each task we offload to machines carries an invisible cost. It may feel small in isolation, but together these choices are reshaping the climate in ways we can no longer ignore. The future we dreaded is unfolding in real time. Code Red is today.

The relationship between AI and climate change is under growing scrutiny; and not only for the solutions AI offers, but also for the costs it conceals. A United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) technical paper (2025) notes AI’s potential in forecasting extreme weather, optimizing renewable energy, and improving disaster preparedness, but also warns of its heavy electricity and water demands. For developing countries, this strain is profound. Pakistan, despite contributing less than 1% of global carbon emissions, suffers year after year from devastating floods and heatwaves. Meanwhile, wealthier nations enjoy AI’s benefits while remaining far better protected from its environmental toll.

The Harvard Business Review adds a sharper layer to this debate by highlighting AI’s escalating environmental footprint and its unequal distribution across the globe (Ren & Wierman, 2024). Training a single large model can consume thousands of megawatt hours and release hundreds of tons of carbon, alongside staggering freshwater usage for cooling. Crucially, these impacts are not evenly shared. Data centers in regions like Finland can run on 97% clean energy, while those in parts of Asia rely almost entirely on fossil fuels. Similarly, water-intensive cooling disproportionately harms drought-prone areas such as Arizona and Chile. As the authors argue, the environmental inequity of AI risks compounding existing socioeconomic disparities, leaving already fragile communities with the heaviest burdens.

Taken together, these findings point to a sobering paradox. While AI is hailed as a “green enabler,” it is simultaneously intensifying pressures on the very systems it seeks to safeguard. Without urgent governance reforms, sustainable design practices, and equitable deployment strategies, the “Code Red” warnings of climate change could be deepened rather than diminished by AI’s unchecked expansion.

The remedies are pretty obvious including but not limited to; sustainable AI design, stricter governance, equitable deployment, and a recognition that every digital choice carries a climate cost. Yet the harder question is; what will actually stop us? If I can draft an email in two minutes instead of thirty, why wouldn’t I? If a student can finish an assignment through AI when their teacher won’t answer questions, what’s the barrier? Convenience is addictive, efficiency irresistible and merely a click away. But if there is no red line, no boundary where we pause and come face to face with the price; we risk entrenching ourselves deeper into catastrophe. Code Red is not imposed by AI. It’s the reflection of our choices and consistent inaction.

Ask yourself, at what cost?

Author is a Law Student at University of London who writes about Social and National issues of Pakistan.