Environmental Ethics Fellowship

The rapid expansion of data centers raises a set of ethical dilemmas about who should bear the environmental costs of digital infrastructure and who should have a voice in deciding whether those costs are acceptable. The 2026-27 Environmental Ethics Fellowship will be dedicated to the development of a user-friendly ethical framework to help persons and communities think through the ethical challenges brought on by the global push for data centers. The framework will draw on literature in environmental ethics and on key arguments from Magnificent Humanity, the encyclical on AI issued in May 2026 by Pope Leo XIV. 

Data centers can require substantial amounts of electricity and water, generate air pollution through backup generators, and place new demands on local infrastructure, while the benefits of the computing services they support are often distributed far beyond the communities where the facilities are located. This creates a question of distributive justice: is it fair for local communities to bear concentrated environmental and resource costs for technologies whose economic and social benefits are widely dispersed? There is also a question of responsibility and transparency: should data center operators be required to disclose their actual water consumption, energy use, emissions, and impacts on local resources, rather than leaving regulators and communities to estimate them? And when those impacts are uncertain or cumulative, how much evidence should be required before a project is approved? These questions become particularly difficult when data centers bring jobs, tax revenue, and technological investment, because the ethical issue is not simply whether their environmental impacts are acceptable, but who gets to decide what tradeoffs are acceptable, who bears the risks, and whether affected communities have enough information and power to meaningfully participate in that decision.