ACTIVISTS CALL OUT META’S AI EXPANSION AMID CLIMATE AND DEMOCRACY CRISIS

NEW YORK, NY — This morning, two climate activists with Extinction Rebellion NYC staged a bold protest at Meta’s offices in Moynihan Hall of Penn Station, disrupting business as usual by chalk spraying their office windows. Alongside the messages “Zuck Loves Trump”, “Meta Makes Kings” and “Zuck Fcks Climate,” one activist dumped water to symbolize AI’s massive climate footprint, and chanted “Dump Trump, Meta!” Both individuals were arrested.

Meta’s deepening role in the ethical collapse of artificial intelligence demands urgent attention. Despite its branding as a future forward company, Meta is accelerating climate breakdown, enabling authoritarianism, and eroding the basic foundations of truth at a global scale.

As the company pours hundreds of billions of dollars into AI development and energy-intensive data infrastructure, it continues to frame this expansion as visionary. In reality, the pursuit of AI dominance is accelerating global emissions, putting new pressure on already fragile energy systems, and deepening ecological instability. While Meta publicly commits to becoming water positive, communities near its data centers are already facing water stress, raising urgent questions about who bears the cost of this so-called progress. 

Front and center at Trump’s 2025 inauguration was Mark Zuckerberg alongside other Big Tech CEOs—Tim Cook, Sundar Pichai, and Sam Altman—who have all publicly acknowledged the severity of the climate crisis, yet have also promoted the claim that AI can solve it—a claim widely challenged by experts and one that makes the hardest problem humanity has ever faced much harder to solve.

Despite Meta’s public image of being committed to public trust and democratic values, Mark Zuckerberg’s high-profile meetings with President Trump, the recent $25 million settlement, and the rollback of third-party fact-checking suggest something deeper: an ideological alignment between Mark Zuckerberg and the Trump administration. It reflects a broader pattern of powerful billionaires leveraging political access to protect their own interests—enabled by a government unwilling to regulate private power and actively dismantling environmental protections.

This isn’t neutrality—it’s a direct role in accelerating the collapse of a livable planet.

The latest climate models project 3 degrees of warming by 2060. Another new study predicts up to 4 billion deaths and a 50% loss of global GDP this century. Climate-related disasters are also expected to drive insurance costs sharply higher, with global insured losses potentially reaching $145 billion in 2025 alone.

Extinction Rebellion NYC calls on the public to vote with its dollars; the future depends on it. Boycott tech companies that enable authoritarianism and expand fossil fuel use. 

Photos and videos available here. Content is free to use with credit to Extinction Rebellion NYC.

QUOTES

“Mark Zuckerberg and the class of CEO’s he belongs to know full well the impacts their businesses have on our planet. Why else would he have built a bunker island in the middle of the ocean? They will pay the price of change today socially, or tomorrow existentially. We are hoping to force the first option, for life on Earth,” said Greg Schwedock, an Extinction Rebellion activist who took part in the action.

“Is Mark Zuckerberg, one of the richest people on the planet, really more afraid of Trump than of the collapse of the world his kids will inherit? When will he choose to stand for the future instead of his bottom line?” said Devin Lilly, a spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion.

“The hypocrisy is staggering. Trillion-dollar firms built on innovation, companies we all rely on, are now quietly bankrolling a regime that’s dismantling democracy, gutting climate action, and widening inequality. And it’s the very people who made them rich—users, workers, the public—who are left to pay the price,” said Will Regan, an Extinction Rebellion activist who took part in the action.

“The math is clear. There is no wealth to be preserved, no markets to expand, and no profits to be had on a planet that’s burning, drowning, and collapsing. Investing in false solutions and ignoring the climate emergency isn’t just a moral failure—it’s economic self-sabotage,” said Miles Grant, a spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion