The UK government has issued a stark directive to its citizens enduring water shortfalls: your personal digital nostalgia is a burden the planet can no longer afford.

Amid a drought, their official advice includes taking shorter showers and turning off taps. But the final point reveals a profound and disturbing priority: “Delete old emails and pictures,” it instructs, because “data centres require vast amounts of water to cool their systems.”

The narrative is now inescapable. The individual must relentlessly limit their life—conserve, sacrifice, and now, delete their memories—for the climate. Meanwhile, the insatiable engine of Big Data and Artificial Intelligence is granted a limitless pass. It is a sacred cow that must be fed, whatever the cost.

Picture the absurd, heart-breaking reality: a grandparent, sitting in the dark to save energy, meticulously deleting cherished photos of their grandchildren to free up a few kilobytes on a server farm they will never see. All to save a thimble of water for the very data centres that consume it by the millions of gallons.

There are 477 of these data centres in the UK alone. They are the true vessels of our water and energy, the new temples to which we must all make offerings. The message is clear: your life must be constrained so that their operations can expand infinitely.

We are not being asked to save the planet. We are being conditioned to serve the machine.

@delbigtree