Who Pays for AI’s Energy Binge?

Have you noticed your browser defaults to AI-generated overviews before search results? Convenient, perhaps, but convenience has a cost, one we've seen before with single-use plastics and disposable products. What's the environmental price of default AI?

I tested this myself. I asked an AI: "In 30 words, why do AI data centres require so much energy?" Its answer: "AI data centers require immense energy because training large neural networks needs trillions of calculations. Running inference on thousands of GPUs, each using 300-700W, plus cooling, drives huge power consumption." My question consumed 900 billion floating-point operations.

Here's the stark reality: A Google search uses ~0.3 Wh. A 100-word AI answer uses ~3 Wh, 10 times more energy. With 16 billion Google searches daily, the potential waste is staggering.

For Saskatchewan, this isn't just theoretical. It's a direct strain on our grid. Such waste is the last thing we need when facing the cost of coal plant refurbishment and small modular nuclear reactors. (Energy conservation, efficiency measures, and/or renewables could delay or even eliminate the need for both.)

 

Image by Gordon Johnson from Pixabay

This isn't about rejecting AI. It's about rejecting waste. Big Tech is normalizing energy-intensive defaults without our consent.

You can act now. Install a "Disable AI" browser extension and bookmark AI tools for when you actually need them. But individual action isn't enough.

Canada must act. Sign the AI data centre petition at ourcommons.ca/petitions/en/Petition/Sign/e-7550. Demand your MP stop the waste. Tell your MLA to push Ottawa.

The Boulder Kids Can’t Dodge

Are you familiar with the song line, “If it wasn’t for bad luck, I wouldn’t have no luck at all”? It is very applicable to the Saskatchewan Child Poverty Report Card 2026 by Simon Enoch (PhD), a Senior Researcher with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) in Saskatchewan. Before diving into the report, let’s build an analogy for child poverty using a boulder dropped in a stream.

Author Ed Smith explains that an early critical chance event in your life is like a boulder that diverts the course of your stream, changing it forever. Child poverty is a proven cumulative disadvantage: each effect builds on the last, narrowing the channels of possibility at every stage.

Image by N Carswell from yayang art and OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay 

Let’s follow the childhood poverty stream path over time. As an infant, limited access to nutrition, healthcare, and stimulation can restrict physical and cognitive development. In early childhood, this shows up as lower school readiness and weaker academic performance. As the child grows, openings to engage in holistic growth activities like sports or the arts are limited. In adolescence, growing up in under-resourced environments can heighten stress and feelings of insecurity, while also limiting access to supportive social connections that are vital for coping, learning, and emotional growth. By adulthood, the stream has narrowed further with lower educational attainment limiting access to stable, well-paying work.

Without intervention, the constricted stream of opportunity carved by child poverty threatens to shape not only one life but the course of the next generation as well. Enoch’s Saskatchewan Child Poverty Report Card 2026 gives the Saskatchewan government a failing grade. Here are some grim Saskatchewan poverty statistics:​

·     Children living in poverty 27.1% with children under six 30.39%

·     Children in northern regions over 60%

·     Lone-parent families 49.4%

The report explains how government transfers combat poverty and urges the Saskatchewan government to prioritize anti-poverty strategies to prevent long-term harm to children. These include:

·        Use rent caps to prevent sudden increases in housing costs.

·        Create a Saskatchewan child benefit to supplement federal support. ​

·        Ensure social assistance benefits covers basic utilities and are indexed to inflation

·        Increase the minimum wage

·        Boost provincial transfers, including tax credits and sales tax rebates. ​

·        Continue commitment for universal affordable childcare

Let’s start working upstream and make sure that no bad luck boulders of poverty divert children’s lives. Ultimately, their bad luck is bad luck for all of us.

(This is longer than a 250 word letter to the editor.)

Libraries and Librarians Feed Hungry Minds

Are you familiar with the award-winning children's story The Very Hungry Caterpillar? Another story I heard could be called The Very Hungry Mind.  There was a 12-year-old in Regina who spotted a rare bird.  When interviewed, Nick Selinger sounded perplexed when asked how he knew it was a Eurasian Tree Sparrow.  He knew because his birding book confirmed his observations. 

Like the hungry caterpillar, Nick had a hungry mind.  He became interested in owls after reading a fiction book.  He read all the owl books but he was still hungry.  He read all the raptor books but he was still hungry.  Then he started to read all the books about birds.  His local library and librarian had a central role in feeding his hungry mind.

As fields of knowledge grow, hungry minds begin to make connections that lead to innovations.  While we credit a particular innovation to a particular innovator, history shows that commonly others were making the same connections and the innovation was inevitable.    

Libraries and librarians are organized to feeding hungry minds in a way the internet cannot. The Saskatchewan government cuts to libraries risks cutting innovations.  The low hanging fruits they thought they were harvesting are the seeds we need for future innovations. Visit your local library or the Action Centre http://savesasklibraries.ca to learn how you can help reverse the cuts.

Can You Name All Six Parties That Ran in the 2016 Saskatchewan Election?

Can you name all six parties that ran in the 2016 provincial election?  Each of these parties is a voice for their voters yet we ended up with a two party government. Where are the other four voices?

Of the 431,140 votes, 277,379 were cast for the winners and 153,761 were cast into the wind.

Adding in the 320,424 eligible voters who did not vote, we have 63% of the people of Saskatchewan without a voice in government. Yet, we are told we have a majority government.

Recently Stephen Lewis says replacing first-past-the-post with proportional representation (PR) "is a fight we have to win: it should consume our energies."  PR is any voting system designed to produce a legislature where the voices of voters are represented in proportion to their numbers—not their bank balance.

Countries with PR like Sweden, Denmark, and Norway have more income equality and more gender equality in government.  They are more likely to have stronger economic growth and at the same time better environmental report cards.  Why?  Because the parties don't waste energy beating each other, they use their energy to win voters and cooperate for the common good.

If the Liberals don't come calling to consult you on their promise that the 2015 federal election would be the last using first-past-the-post, you can call on Minister of Democratic Institutions Maryam Monsef to support PR.  Once our votes count federally, it won't be long before they count provincially.