January 2025: The Pacific Palisades burns as Microsoft announces expanded AI operations requiring three new power-hungry data centers. While 180,000 Angelenos flee hurricane-force Santa Ana winds, tech bosses celebrate another escape from they’re climate promises. The smoke from Los Angeles carries a message: the Paris Agreement has outlived its usefulness to power. read the headlines and they’re more about why there are lesbians heading the fire department and rainbow colored fire hydrants in LA rather than climate change.

January 2025: The Pacific Palisades burns as Microsoft announces expanded AI operations requiring three new power-hungry data centers. While 180,000 Angelenos flee hurricane-force Santa Ana winds, tech bosses celebrate another escape from their climate promises. The smoke from Los Angeles carries a message: the Paris Agreement has outlived its usefulness to power. read the headlines and they’re more about why there are lesbians heading the fire department and rainbow colored fire hydrants in LA rather than climate change.

The timing tells the story better than me. Microsoft's announcement came exactly nine years after world leaders signed their landmark climate agreement. That same week, 37,000 acres of California burned in unprecedented January wildfires, causing *$150 billion* in damages and 24 deaths. so what, you ask? well, Microsoft now consumes *50 terawatt-hours annually* just for AI training alone - power that could run Greece for a year. so, quite a lot.

Satya, Bezos’ replacement, and Sundar, all discovered a perfect excuse in artificial intelligence. Computing requirements make emissions cuts impossible, they claim. Each new language model demands more electricity than the last. Google and Amazon followed Microsoft's lead, declaring AI development incompatible with previous climate targets. The race for algorithmic supremacy trumps environmentalism.

Behind this convenient pivot lies a deeper rot. The International Emissions Trading Association - created by BP and Shell - wrote Article 6 of the Paris Agreement. Their framework lets polluters purchase "offsets" rather than reduce emissions. A *2023 Guardian investigation* exposed these offset schemes as largely fraudulent, often claiming credit for protecting already-protected forests or funding inevitable projects.

The Pacific Palisades inferno exposes this system's true cost. Budget cuts left firefighters battling 100-mph winds with insufficient resources and dry hydrants. Meanwhile, companies pour billions into new data centres that devour more electricity than many nations. When questioned, they point to theoretical solutions like nuclear fusion. February's much-heralded JET fusion breakthrough produced enough energy to boil a kettle - yet somehow justifies unlimited AI expansion today, and they may be right; it just feels like to big a gamble.

Consider the ledger since Paris:

- Record global emissions every year

- 300% increase in top tech firms' energy consumption

- $850 billion in carbon credit trading profits

- California's fire season now runs year-round

The AI gold rush reveals market-based climate solutions as magical thinking. Corporations consistently choose potential profits over planetary stability. They fund climate science skepticism, lobby against regulations, and claim technological imperatives override environmental concerns. It’s also political, “we must beat China.”

The Paris Agreement placed climate solutions in the hands of those causing climate breakdown. As Los Angeles demonstrates with terrifying clarity, the market will not solve what the market created. The atmosphere follows laws of physics, not quarterly earnings reports.