…for now (and how I limit it)

Using artificial intelligence in a climate project is a contradiction, and I treat it as one. AI has real environmental impacts — energy use, carbon emissions, water consumption — and those impacts matter.

But this project has a mission:

to build clear, accessible, emotionally sustainable climate literacy every day.

Here is the transparent explanation of why AI is used and how strictly it is limited.

1. AI helps integrate global and local reporting

Climate information is scattered across:

• research institutions

• national climate services

• international journalists

• local disaster reporting

• government agencies

• scientific labs

• climate YouTubers

• social media threads

• NGO data feeds

AI allows me to integrate all of this, daily, into clear and concise summaries that would take a single human many hours to assemble.

2. AI brings historical context and future projections into each episode

Each episode includes:

• past scientific findings

• previous related events

• historical baselines

• long-term scientific projections

• updated research

• trend comparisons

AI helps connect today’s story with yesterday’s research and tomorrow’s implications.

3. AI helps cross-reference previous episodes

Climate understanding is cumulative.

AI allows:

• quick checks against earlier reporting

• updates to evolving scientific consensus

• connections across multiple articles over time

• continuity in story arcs and data trends

This ensures viewers get the long view, not isolated fragments.

4. AI is used extremely lightly

Each episode uses only 3–5 prompts.

Per month, the entire project uses under 500 prompts.

Why?

Because the environmental cost matters.

And I want this project to be as responsible as possible.

Researchers studying AI energy use estimate that 500 text-based prompts is roughly comparable in CO₂ emissions and water use to driving a car across San Francisco once — about seven miles.

This is an approximate, responsible, conservative comparison meant to contextualize the scale.

This project stays under that boundary every month.

5. AI is never used for manipulation or fabrication

AI helps with:

• summarizing research

• organizing complex information

• comparing global and local data

• generating structured outlines

• maintaining Echo and Paladin’s voices

AI is not used to:

• invent facts

• generate deepfakes

• simulate experts

• manipulate emotions

• create misleading visuals

• pretend knowledge it doesn’t have

Transparency is the ethical foundation.

6. If better, lower-impact tools emerge, we will switch

The AI Climate Project is not attached to any specific technology.

Its allegiance is to:

• truth

• clarity

• accessibility

• emotional sustainability

If cleaner, lower-emission tools become available, the project will transition immediately.

7. This is the paradox — and it’s part of the story

We are living in a time where every tool has a cost.

Pretending otherwise is dishonest.

This project embraces the contradiction openly, limits AI usage tightly, and uses the technology only in the ways that meaningfully support public climate literacy.

That is the commitment.