Average data centers use 100,000 squarefeet. Hyperscale data centers (AKA AI) use ten million squarefeet. The average size of a data center is dragged up by the hyperscale number. So we could expect your average non-AI data center to be under 100,000 squarefeet. https://programs.com/resources/data-center-statistics/

Being a gamer absolutely does not mean using far more electricity. The primary use of energy in a household is heating and cooling. Gaming electricity is negligible. Someone that lives in a one bedroom apartment uses 1/6th the electricity for AC in the summer as someone that lives in a 4 bedroom home. Your claim on using rare earth minerals needs support from somewhere. Also you can't just look at rare earth minerals and electricity. You need to look at the overall environmental impact across multiple things. I remember someone on these forums proved that all the physical games produced for a single console wouldn't fill a single landfill the size of 5 football fields. This was after someone else claimed that physical games were major polluters. Anyway, your claim that gamers pollute more needs to be backed up with research, because it's easy to make assumptions that fall apart under a microscope. The same way that the "physical games fill up landfills" claim was made to look silly. 

Nobody is arguing that regular consumers can just do whatever they want. We are arguing that calling somebody a hypocrite if they don't live a lifestyle of extreme asceticism is silly.

^THIS!! If AI wasn't eliminating vital jobs in an already unstable global economy, wasting water, using more electricity than entire cities, making deepfake child porn, or making that obnoxious electric hum that's driving away people and animals, I wouldn't be a "fanatic" against AI. Any potential good to be done with AI has been drowned out by selfish and stupid CEOs using it as a lazy replacement for certain human employees.

Gaming is still one of the most environmentally friendly pass times. The biggest factor is, you're not traveling to game. Going for a walk/hike is only 'better' if you start from your house. As soon as you drive / travel somewhere, it's worse than gaming...

As others have said, the electricity used for gaming is tiny, and if you game on Switch or a laptop, it's even less than watching TV. There are very few hobbies that produce less waste than gaming. 

Food, mobility, housing, consumer products all come before electricity used for leisure. 

Who uses most electricity: The industrial sector is the single largest consumer of electricity, accounting for roughly 42% of total consumption, while households (residential) account for about 27%, Commercial and public services consume 21%. (2019 figures)

So yeah you can make compromises, yet before blaming gaming, buy local food, produce less food waste, travel less, keep the house a bit warmer in summer / colder in winter, combine laundry, shorter showers, buy less stuff.

Gaming is the lowest polluter, yet AI data centers already make up a huge chunk of pollution.

Due to the AI boom, some forecasts (like from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) suggest data centers could demand up to 12% of all US electricity by 2028.

12%! While gaming now is about 2-5% (use of electricity for gaming in the house) of 60% (households with consoles) of 27% (households use of electricity) = 0.32% - 0.81%. Stopping AI data centers is over 30x more effective than eliminating gaming...

Nobody with a brain wants the AI boom. Especially when AI vehicles are blocking fire fighters during emergencies. AI is literally killing people.

That happened in the US so did you know that today alone over 100 people will die from car accidents over there with thousands also being injured? Self driving vehicles already being overall safer than human drivers on average is an established fact. There are certainly issues to iron out but driving is undeniably an area where AI involvement is a massive positive so governments not being faster at allowing that is killing many more people.

Try telling that to the first responders who were delayed by that stupid AI car.

The mental gymnastics people go through to prove that what THEY like is perfectly okay but anything past THAT line is bad is astounding.  The idea that the gaming industry isn't part of the industrial sector is equally as wild.

Like other consumer electronics, game console components are sourced via complex global supply chains that rely upon the mining of critical elements (including metals and rare-earth elements) and the production of new plastics, with parts assembled via highly specialized manufacturing processes — linking the gaming industry to oversized carbon emissions and the devastating environmental and socioeconomic impacts of mining and petroleum extraction.

A new console’s ingredient list is stunningly long. It includes gold, copper, lead, nickel, zinc, lithium, cobalt and cadmium — the mining and purification of which are associated with huge energy and water usage, as well as environmental harm. Extracting and processing ores often releases large quantities of hazardous chemicals, such as arsenic or mercury, into surrounding communities and ecosystems. Also, much mining is done in tropical developing nations, where poorly regulated extraction and processing cause deforestation and pollution.  --  https://news.mongabay.com/2022/10/playing-dangerously-the-environmental-impact-of-video-gaming-consoles/

Mining is extremely damaging to the environment. From extraction to production, the process pumps out billions of kilograms of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the air. The manufacturing of the Sony Playstation 4, for example, has produced 8.9 billion kg of CO2 since its release in 2015.  --  https://earth.org/sustainability-and-the-video-gaming-industry/

The Green Gaming Project estimated that 5% of residential electricity use in California is consumed by gaming, including play on consoles, desktop computers and mobile phones. Of those three, “gaming consoles were the largest energy users,” said Norman Bourassa, principal scientific engineering associate at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, where the project was conducted.

“That’s an alarming number,” he said, because it puts game consoles “in the realm of the highest energy users, like refrigerators.”  --  https://news.mongabay.com/2022/10/playing-dangerously-the-environmental-impact-of-video-gaming-consoles/

Don't tell me how pure and awesome you are to be fighting AI when you turn a blind eye to strip mining if it's for the sake of something YOU like.  Don't tell me you care about jobs when you don't give a damn about jobs that are lost in other sectors.  

I get it, though.  You're going to keep saying "but it's not as bad as this OTHER THING," and that's fine.  Just stop with the "moral high ground" bullshit.  Your "moral high ground" is a lot less elevated than you like to pretend.

An Ontario truck driver has admitted to playing an online game on his cellphone when he caused a pileup on a Montreal-area highway that killed a mother and her 11-year-old son.  --  https://www.cp24.com/news/canada/2026/04/17/mother-son-killed-in-pileup-on-highway-near-montreal-truck-driver-was-playing-cellphone-game/

How do you respond to supporting an industry that is responsible for murdering a child?  By your logic it's not the individual's fault, right?

Try telling that to all those people involved in accidents with human drivers. In a few decades, we'll be used to self-driving vehicles, and the thought of human drivers that make way more mistakes will be the case that seems pretty scary. Much of it is about what we're used to rather than what's better overall.