Earth Overshoot Day

Today’s Earth Overshoot Day is a reminder that from tomorrow, humanity consumes what the planet cannot regenerate this year.
Nobody intends to overspend a planet. It happens because millions of decisions are made independently, with nobody holding the overall budget.

We observe the same pattern emerging in enterprise AI:
Only 12% measure the environmental footprint of their GenAI.
Only 20% weigh that footprint when selecting or building a model.
74% say their providers do not give them the transparency to measure it.
So, the impact is not unknown. It is unowned. It is set early, in architecture decisions, and surfaces later in a bill nobody can decompose.

We had the privilege to contribute to the second edition of the Sustainable IT Playbook for Technology Leaders, with a chapter on ‘The eco-digital era: why AI must go green’, addressing those patterns directly.

Thank you to the authors, Richard R. Pastore and Niklas Sundberg,
and to my Capgemini colleagues Fabian Schnippering, Felix Caspari, Henning Klasmeier and Fabian Brack.