The almond thing is actually propaganda put out by the beef industry as part of a widespread campaign to demonize plant based protein btw

Also everyone complains about golf courses using irrigation, but no one complains about baseball fields, soccer fields, football fields, and public parks that all do the exact same thing, so maybe you're the one that isn't actually upset about water usage.

Or maybe, black-and-white purity tests like this are stupid because they leave no room for nuance and productive conversation.

Anyone complaining about AI water usage that doesn’t also complain about golf courses

Isn't living next to a golf course.

Yeah, people have materialistic views and materialistic concerns. If it's out of sight, it can easily be out of mind.

But the thing about these mega-projects that pop up in your backyard practically overnight and immediately jack up the cost of living in your rural township is that they are highly visible.

When a single almond uses more water than over 500 AI prompts

I don't care, because I don't live next to an almond grove. But I do care when I live next to an AI prompts factory.

Even then, we're rapidly approaching parity. You're weighing 1 trillion almonds/year against 100 trillion tokens consumed per year. And the number of tokens being consumed is rising rapidly, while the volume of almonds being produced are in decline.