For a Political Ecology of Communication: AI and Ecological Imperialism

Bao H. (2020). The queer global south: Transnational video activism between China and Africa. Global Media and China, 5(3), 294–318. https://doi.org/10.1177/2059436420949985

Barta K. Neff G. (2016). Technologies for sharing: Lessons from quantified self about the political economy of platforms. Information, Communication & Society, 19(4), 518–531. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118x.2015.1118520

Bhambra G. K. Newell P. (2023). More than a metaphor: ‘climate colonialism’ in perspective. Global Social Challenges Journal, 2(2), 179–187. https://doi.org/10.1332/eiem6688

Brand U. Wissen M. (2025). Eco-imperial tensions: Decarbonization strategies in times of geopolitical upheaval. Critical Sociology, 51(4-5), 835–848. https://doi.org/10.1177/08969205241252774

Chen Y. (2022). How has ecological imperialism persisted? A marxian critique of the western climate consensus. The American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 81(3), 473–501. https://doi.org/10.1111/ajes.12475

Ministry of Commerce of the People's Republic of China . (2025). 商务部召开中国关于世贸组织特殊和差别待遇问题新闻吹风会 [Press briefing on China's special and differential treatment in WTO negotiations]. Ministry of Commerce of the People's Republic of China. https://www.mofcom.gov.cn/xwfbzt/2025/swbzkzggysmzztshcbdywtxwcfh/index.html

Crosby A. W. (2004). Ecological imperialism: The biological expansion of Europe, 900-1900. Cambridge University Press.

Fanning A. L. Hickel J. (2023). Compensation for atmospheric appropriation. Nature Sustainability, 6(9), 1077–1086. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-023-01130-8

Ferdman A. (2024). Human flourishing and technology affordances. Philosophy & Technology, 37(1), Article 1. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-023-00686-9

Folkers A. (2020). Air-appropriation: The imperial origins and legacies of the Anthropocene. European Journal of Social Theory, 23(4), 611–630. https://doi.org/10.1177/1368431020903169

Frame M. L. (2022). Ecological imperialism: A world-systems approach. The American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 81(3), 503–534. https://doi.org/10.1111/ajes.12472

Gray K. Gills B. K. (2016). South–South cooperation and the rise of the Global South. Third World Quarterly, 37(4), 557–574. https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2015.1128817

Greater London Authority . (2022). London energy and greenhouse gas inventory LEGGI 2022. https://data.london.gov.uk/dataset/leggi/

IEA . (2025). Energy and AI. International Energy Agency. https://www.iea.org/reports/energy-and-ai

IPCC . (2022). Pörtner H.-O. Roberts D. C. Tignor M. Poloczanska E. S. Mintenbeck K. Alegría A. Craig M. Langsdorf S. Löschke S. Möller V. Okem A. Rama B. (Eds.), Climate change 2022: Impacts, adaptation and vulnerability. Contribution of working group II to the sixth assessment report of the intergovernmental panel on climate change (p. 3056). Cambridge University Press. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009325844

Lehuedé S. (2025). An elemental ethics for artificial intelligence: Water as resistance within AI’s value chain. AI & SOCIETY, 40, 1761–1774.

Lehuedé S. Valdivia A. (2025). Peripheries on the rise: Eco-imperialism in the race for technology resourcing. Available at: https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.5085112

McDermott J. O’Brien M. (2025, January 29). DeepSeek says it built its chatbot cheap. What does that mean for AI’s energy needs and the climate? AP News. https://apnews.com/article/deepseek-ai-china-climate-fossil-fuels-00c594310b22afbf150559d08b43d3a5

Mercer H. Simpson T. (2023). Imperialism, colonialism, and climate change science. WIREs Climate Change, 14(6), Article e851. https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.851

New York City Government . (2023). PlaNYC getting sustainability done. https://www.nyc.gov/assets/climate/downloads/pdfs/PlaNYC-2023-Full-Report.pdf

Nieborg D. B. Helmond A. (2019). The political economy of Facebook’s platformization in the mobile ecosystem: Facebook Messenger as a platform instance. Media, Culture, and Society, 41(2), 196–218. https://doi.org/10.1177/0163443718818384

Nygren A. (2013). Eco-imperialism and environmental justice.In. In Lockie S. Sonnenfeld D. A. Fisher D. R. (Eds.), Routledge international handbook of social and environmental change (pp. 58–69). Routledge.

Nygren A. Kröger M. Gills B. (2022). Global extractivisms and transformative alternatives. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 49(4), 734–759. https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2022.2069495

Schütze P. (2024). The impacts of AI futurism: An unfiltered look at AI’s true effects on the climate crisis. Ethics and Information Technology, 26(23). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-024-09758-6

Shehabi A. Hubbard A. Newkirk A. Lei N. Siddik M. A. B. Holecek B. Sartor D. (2024). 2024 United States data center energy usage report. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. https://eta.lbl.gov/publications/2024-lbnl-data-center-energy-usage-report

Stern N. Romani M. Pierfederici R. Braun M. Barraclough D. Lingeswaran S. Weirich-Benet E. Niemann N. (2025). Green and intelligent: The role of AI in the climate transition. Npj Climate Action, 4(1), Article 56. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44168-025-00252-3

Sultana F. (2023). Whose growth in whose planetary boundaries? Decolonising planetary justice in the Anthropocene. Geo: Geography and Environment, 10(2), Article e00128. https://doi.org/10.1002/geo2.128

Tokyo Metropolitan Government . (2024). Tokyo cap-and-trade program. https://www.kankyo.metro.tokyo.lg.jp/documents/d/kankyo/resultsofthethird3

UNCTD . (2018). Forging a path beyond borders: The global south. https://unctad.org/system/files/official-document/osg2018d1_en.pdf

UNCTD . (2022). Handbook of statistics 2022. https://unctad.org/system/files/official-document/tdstat47_en.pdf

UNEP . (2024). Artificial intelligence (AI) end-to-end: The environmental impact of the full AI life cycle needs to be comprehensively assessed. United Nations Environment Programme. https://wedocs.unep.org/handle/20.500.11822/46288

Valdivia A. (2022). Silicon valley and the environmental costs of AI (Vol. 8). Political Economy Research Centre. https://www.goldperc.uk/project_posts/silicon-valley-and-the-environmental-costs-of-ai/

Valdivia A. (2024). The supply chain capitalism of AI: A call to (re) think algorithmic harms and resistance through environmental lens. Information, Communication & Society, 28(12), 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118x.2024.2420021

Wang P. Zhang L. Y. Tzachor A. Chen W. Q. (2024). E-waste challenges of generative artificial intelligence. Nature Computational Science, 4(11), 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1038/s43588-024-00712-6

Wang W. Downey J. (2025). Becoming cosmopolitan? Comparing climate change coverage in newspapers across countries. Journalism Practice, 19(2), 379–407. https://doi.org/10.1080/17512786.2023.2185657

Warlenius R. (2018). Decolonizing the atmosphere: The climate justice movement on climate debt. The Journal of Environment & Development, 27(2), 131–155. https://doi.org/10.1177/1070496517744593