Award Winner for Volume 18
The Double-Edged Sword of AI in Climate Change: Opportunities, Risks, and Responsible Governance
Artificial intelligence (AI) has emerged as a powerful tool in climate action, enhancing strategies for mitigation, adaptation, and resilience-building. AI technologies enable real-time emissions tracking, improved climate forecasting, renewable energy optimization, and disaster preparedness, significantly improving climate response capabilities. However, despite these benefits, AI’s deployment presents critical ethical, environmental, and governance challenges. AI’s high energy consumption, reliance on resource-intensive hardware, and potential bias in climate models raise concerns about its long-term sustainability and equitable access. Additionally, AI is paradoxically being used to enhance fossil fuel extraction, prolonging reliance on carbon-intensive industries. These challenges necessitate a balanced approach that prioritizes sustainable AI development, fair distribution of AI-driven climate solutions, and transparent governance frameworks. This article provides a comprehensive analysis of AI’s applications in climate change mitigation and adaptation, critically evaluating its benefits, risks, and ethical considerations. It also outlines policy recommendations to ensure that AI remains a responsible, sustainable, and globally accessible tool for addressing climate challenges, including the implementation of transparent energy reporting standards for AI systems and the development of global governance frameworks to prevent technological monopolies and ensure equitable access. This article finds that while AI holds transformative potential for climate mitigation and adaptation, its benefits can only be fully realized through equitable access, sustainable infrastructure, and ethical governance. By aligning AI innovation with global climate justice goals, it can become a powerful force for building long-term climate resilience and environmental sustainability.
My article, “The Double-Edged Sword of AI in Climate Change: Opportunities, Risks, and Responsible Governance,” grew out of a question that stayed with me for a long time: Can the technologies we create to solve the climate crisis also deepen it in unexpected ways?
I wrote this piece because climate change and artificial intelligence are two of the defining conversations of our time, yet they are not often discussed together with enough ethical attention. AI is increasingly being used to track emissions, improve climate forecasting, strengthen disaster response, and support renewable energy systems. These developments are exciting and full of possibility. But at the same time, AI brings its own challenges like energy consumption, environmental cost, unequal access, and questions about who benefits from these technologies and who gets left behind.
This article was my attempt to sit honestly with both sides of that tension. Rather than treating AI as either a solution or a problem, I wanted to explore it as both: a powerful tool with transformative potential, but one that requires thoughtful governance, ethical reflection, and collective responsibility.
On a personal level, this work reflects the broader direction of my academic journey. My research often lives at the intersection of philosophy, ethics, and contemporary global issues. I am especially interested in questions of responsibility—how we respond to urgent problems, how we make decisions collectively, and how we imagine a more just future.
Writing this article reminded me that climate change is not only an environmental or technological issue. At its core, it is a human one. It asks us not only what we can build, but how we choose to live, care, and act responsibly toward one another and the world we share.
—Mansi Handa