Climate Culture

Spies, Boos, and Shein Buying the Soul of Sustainable Fashion

This week billionaires are getting checked. By Utah women. By college graduates. And by the slow collapse of every brand that promised to do better. What we cover: Mr. Not-So-Wonderful — Kevin O'Leary wants to build a hundred billion dollar data center on forty thousand acres in drought-stricken rural Utah. Locals said no. He called them Chinese spies. On national television. By name. We break down the project, the process that approved it in a private room while residents watched on a livestream, and the two women who responded better than any PR team could have scripted. AI Gets Booed — Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt mentioned AI at a University of Arizona graduation and got booed. Repeatedly. We dig into why that reaction makes complete sense, what Pew Research says about how an entire generation actually feels about AI, and why telling people to just get on the rocketship lands very differently when you are the one who built it. Everlane Sells to Shein — Everlane spent a decade on radical transparency, ethical factories, and sustainable materials. It just sold for a hundred million dollars to the biggest polluter in fast fashion. Fast Company called it the end of the era of millennial optimism. We agree. And we trace the same pattern through Allbirds, Beautycounter, OpenAI, and everyone else who led with the mission and sold it when the money ran out.

Where's the Water?

Episode 5 — Where's the Water? This week we follow the thing nobody in Big Tech wants to talk about. The water. Where it goes. Who takes it. And what happens when nobody is watching. What we cover: Where's the Water — A Georgia data center secretly drained twenty nine million gallons from a community's water supply over fifteen months. Residents noticed because their water pressure dropped. The county didn't fine the company. They called it customer service. We break down the Georgia story, the Pennsylvania transparency bill, and why only two out of eleven major tech companies publicly report their water use. AI Slop is Pollution With a Prompt — Shrimp Jesus. Fruit Love Island. Cats with twelve fingers. AI generated slop is everywhere and it is costing the planet real energy and real water every time someone stops scrolling to look at it. We break down the numbers and make a simple ask — stop feeding the machine. Claude Meets Colossus — Anthropic built Claude to be the ethical AI. They said no to government surveillance. They founded the company because OpenAI moved too fast. And now they are running Claude on the Colossus data center in Memphis — the one with the unpermitted gas turbines, the NAACP lawsuit, and the community with four times the national average cancer risk. We use Claude to make this podcast. We are calling it out anyway.

When Protecting the Planet Gets a Standing Ovation

Episode 4 — Billie, The King, and Two Billionaires in a Courtroom This week we go from a pop star greening her tour to a king getting a standing ovation in Congress — with a billionaire courtroom showdown in between. What we cover: Billie Eilish Goes Green — Billie sat down with National Geographic and got honest about the concert industry. Private jets. Diesel trucks. Plastic everywhere. Then she changed it. We break down what her Hit Me Hard and Soft tour actually did differently and why it is working when so much climate content falls flat. Spoiler: she led with comedy not guilt. Elon vs Sam — The Trial of the Century — OpenAI started as a nonprofit. Build AI safely. For people and the planet. Not for profit. Elon donated thirty eight million dollars. Then ChatGPT exploded. Now it is worth eight hundred and fifty billion dollars. Now they are in a federal courtroom in Oakland suing each other. We break down the drama, the hypocrisy, and what it says about what happens to every mission when enough money shows up. King Charles Goes to Washington — The King walked into the most divided room in America and got a standing ovation from both sides for talking about climate. We dig into his fifty year history as an environmental advocate — back when people thought he was dotty — and why that moment in Congress proved that protecting the planet was never actually a political issue. Viro Update — New features just dropped. Add sources to your Projects. Share your Personas. Go update the app now.

Dirty Data Centers, Beautiful Clean Coal, and the AI Fighting Back

This week we go deep on the real cost of the AI boom — and who's actually paying for it. What we cover: The Billionaire Problem — The Atlantic followed Bezos into his consequence-free reality. We connect it to what's actually happening on the ground. The people accelerating AI the fastest are the ones who will never feel the downside. Everyone else absorbs the damage. Elon's Illegal Power Plant — xAI built a private power plant next to a majority-Black neighborhood in Memphis using unpermitted gas turbines mounted on truck beds. No permits. No public input. No notice. The NAACP sued. The story is worse than you think. Maine Almost Stopped It — Maine lawmakers passed the first ever state moratorium on data centers. The governor vetoed it. Denver is trying too. Bernie Sanders wants a federal pause. We break down what data centers actually cost communities — energy, water, air quality, and your electricity bill. Beautiful Clean Coal — Trump rebranded coal as beautiful and clean and signed executive orders to keep it alive. We break down why that's an oxymoron, what clean coal actually captures, and why it doesn't matter because renewables just beat coal globally for the first time since 1919. Links: * NAACP lawsuit against xAI → EarthJustice [https://earthjustice.org/press/2026/xai-sued-for-illegal-power-plant] * Maine data center moratorium → Politico [https://www.politico.com/news/2026/04/24/maine-gov-mills-vetoes-data-center-bill-00891762] * Ember Global Electricity Review 2026 → Ember Energy [https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/global-electricity-review-2026/] * Try Viro AI → ai.viro.app [https://ai.viro.app] * Partner with us → nick@viro.app

Wait, Allbirds is an AI Company?

This week Allbirds sold their soul — and their shoes — to become an AI data center company. We break down the absurdity, the Benefit Corporation betrayal, and what it says about the AI gold rush. Then we talk about Tom Steyer, the climate billionaire running for Governor of California who might actually be the real deal. And we end in the last place you'd expect — Texas — where solar, wind, and batteries are quietly reshaping the most fossil fuel friendly grid in America. The energy transition isn't coming. In Texas it's already here.