We’ll never tease anyone for being a conscientious consumer, walking to the corner store instead of driving there, or buying reusable grocery bags instead of cluttering your cupboards up with the plastic ones. But comparing a typical American’s carbon footprint to that of even the most eco-friendly billion-dollar corporation, it’s a drop of water in the ocean.
We’re hardly the first to tell you that data centers stand among the worst offenders, but we’re willing to bet it’s worse than you thought, and, once you read the numbers, you’ll never second guess a day at the track ever again.
AI Data Centers Pollute More Than You Ever Could
Mercedes-Benz AI-generated data centerMercedes-Benz
Financial Times recently ran an analysis of the 60 largest data centers under construction in the US by Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft. The analysis estimates a potential cumulative production of 101.5 million tons of carbon dioxide a year, as soon as they’re operational.
That would come out to 7% of all US power sector emissions, or the equivalent of 27 coal power plants. Or, more importantly, 24 million gas-powered cars, which is considerably more cars than Americans buy in a year. We registered 16.4 million new vehicles last year, nowhere close to the estimated 24 million equivalent. This means that, in 2026, new data centers will have a provably worse effect on the environment than new vehicle registrations.
In total, we have somewhere around 268 million cars on the road in the US, and, sure, that adds up. Carbon dioxide emissions are still a major concern for the automotive industry at a fleet level. But, individually, the EPA estimates that a typical driver produces around 4.6 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year.
A small data center can produce around 50,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide in a year, meaning it would take over 10,000 new cars to match the emissions of a facility about as big as a Walmart. A large data center can produce millions of tons of carbon dioxide in a year all on its own. Meta alone was producing 8.2 million tons of the stuff back in 2024, and the company has only expanded since then.
Sooner Or Later, This Directly Affects Us All
A Shot Of A 2012 Nissan Versa Sedan’s Climate ControlNissan
All the long-tail effects of air pollution aside, consider that data centers have been seen to raise the base temperature of the surrounding environment by as much as 16°F in a six-mile radius. Your air conditioning bill isn’t getting more expensive just because these facilities are driving costs up, but because they’re overheating your neighborhood and leaving you to foot the bill.
We could go on about the water resources AI data centers use, but we don’t even need to get into it to prove that these projects make life measurably worse for people who live around them.
An Afternoon At The Track Won’t Even Budge The Needle
2027 Audi RS 5 in Bedford Green Metallic driving on trackAudi
Not that we don’t have a stake in any of this, but this is a website by and for drivers. Whether you’re into supercars or pickups or off-roaders, or you just want help deciding between a Civic and a Sentra, if we’re not giving you some useful, actionable information, we’re not doing our jobs.
So, in the interest of practicality, let’s give you the tools to make the case the next time someone suggests that your time at the track is damaging the environment. Here are some key numbers to keep in mind for the next time someone makes that argument.
- The EPA estimates that burning a single gallon of gasoline produces just shy of 20 lbs of carbon dioxide.
- If you burn 20 gallons of gas at the track, you’ve produced around 400 lbs of carbon dioxide.
- A 50-mile trail ride might burn as much as four gallons of gas in a Jeep Wrangler Rubicon. This comes out to just 80 lbs of carbon dioxide.
- The Honda CR-V averages 34 MPG on the highway. So, driving the whole 2,448-mile length of Route 66, from Chicago to Santa Monica, will burn around 72 gallons, producing 1,440 lbs of carbon dioxide.
- The Department of Energy estimates that a Class 8 truck driver (long-haul commercial truckers) burns just under 10,000 gallons of diesel a year. This comes out to at least 100 tons of carbon dioxide.
By those numbers, it would take around 500 truckers to equal the output of a small data center, or around 10,000 of them to equal the output of a large data center. You could drive back and forth along Route 66 some 1,390,000 times before you had the same effect as a large data center.
According to MIT, just training a single AI model can produce 626,000 lbs of carbon dioxide, meaning that the AI they plugged into your infotainment system may have already produced more carbon dioxide than you will in 60 years.
The World’s Biggest Polluters Love To Blame Drivers
2026 Kia K4 Hatchback rear 3/4 view on the highwayKia
Do you know where the term “litterbug” comes from? A coalition of executives from the beer, soda, cigarette, packaging, and chemical industries all got together in 1953, and developed the Keep America Beautiful campaign, spearheading a drive against litter, insinuating that pollution was the responsibility of the individual.
If you think they did that out of the goodness of their hearts, how are you already able to read when you were born yesterday? That same year, those same American Beverage Association executives were actively lobbying against Vermont’s first bottle bill, which would ban the sale of beer in non-refillable bottles, and they won, killing the bill.
Guess who coined the term “carbon footprint”: British Petroleum, or BP. The brand pushed this term in 2004 with the slogan “It’s a start.”
Once you put an idea like that out to the public, you’ve got us measuring our own output and fretting that we’re not doing enough to help the environment, while BP was responsible for 33.7 million metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2025 in operations alone, not counting the gasoline the brand sells.
And yet, somehow, it’s all your fault.
Don’t Skip Track Day, Just Get Involved
BMW M2 M Performance Track KitBMW
You and a hundred friends couldn’t match the carbon emissions of even a tiny data center if you tried. If terms like “carbon footprint” and “emissions” cross your mind when you’re considering a road trip or a highway cruise, or you feel guilty about taking the truck instead of riding your bike, quit fretting. On an individual basis, a typical American’s effect on the environment is relatively inconsequential.
On the other hand, one personcanhave a meaningful positive impact. Erin Brockovich (yeah, that one) has been tracking AI data centers and their environmental impact on communities across the country. The project is crowdsourced, meaning anyone can contribute.
American Voters Are Stopping Data Center Projects All Across The Country
Hazle Township, PA City Hall
The people of Hazle Township successfully stopped a data center projectSmallbones via Wikimedia
If you think the fight is unwinnable, consider the Hazle Township, Pennsylvania victory over an AI data center proposed by NorthPoint Development. Two hundred residents made their voices heard, and the Hazle Township Board of Supervisors unanimously rejected the data center proposal. Or take a look at Texas, where voters convinced Governor Greg Abbott to reverse his position on a series of data center expansions, announcing strict new guidelines and halting around 1,800 proposed projects.
The consensus is clear: we don’t want these facilities in our communities. We don’t want to watch our electricity bills double, we don’t want our homes to overheat, and we don’t want to subsidize the massive tax breaks local governments often offer these companies. Keep an eye out for data center proposals in your area, show up for hearings, and reach out to every zoning board, city council member, city commissioner, or other local authorities you can contact to make your voice heard.
And don’t hesitate to drive to the zoning board meeting in your oversized pickup or your Chevy Corvette. You’re not the problem, and politically speaking, this is one of those rare issues that seems to unite the majority of Americans, regardless of who you voted for.
Sources: Financial Times, CNET, PBS, EPA, CNN, DOE, Earth Island, Brockovich Data Center Reporting, Food and Water Watch, Gallup, Business Insider, BP, MIT.
