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Following the invasion of Iraq, the US occupation of the country became a reality after the collapse of Saddam’s government. Faced with a fait accompli, the UN Security Council had to accept the new status quo.

According to International Humanitarian Law, occupation forces – in this case, the US and UK – become responsible for the well-being of the populations they occupy. So, UNSC Resolution 1483 was issued on 22 May 2003 to establish the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) as Iraq’s administrator and create the Development Fund for Iraq (DFI) to manage Iraqi oil revenues.

Note that Resolution 1483 did not mention the US Federal Reserve as the depositary of Iraqi funds, nor did it assign a location for the DFI headquarters or account. In fact, the resolution specifically states directed that the DFI should “be held by the Central Bank of Iraq.” It was the CPA, led by Paul Bremer, that decided unilaterally to house the account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

This decision allowed the US government to maintain tight control over Iraq’s oil revenues. From that point until today, the Iraqi Ministry of Finance has had to submit requests for funds to the US Treasury, which then approves or denies these requests based on its own criteria.

This monthly transfer of US dollars – which are literally flown into Baghdad in pallets of hard cash – determines Iraq and its 40-million-population’s ability to pay for basic needs like salaries, food, and medicine.

Whenever Washington feels that Iraq is not compliant with US regional goals, these fund transfers can be delayed or reduced. In January 2020, for instance, after the Iraqi Parliament voted to expel US troops following the assassination of Iranian Quds Force General Qasem Soleimani and Iraqi Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) Deputy Commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the Trump administration threatened to freeze Iraq’s access to its oil revenues.

Today, Iraq’s financial situation remains dire. Despite having oil revenues piling up in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York – estimated today at around $120 billion – Iraq is burdened with a growing debt that matches this amount.

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Animal agriculture is undeniably worse, but we should keep in mind that we are talking about two industries which are really not comparable in scale. Half of the planet's habitable land is used for agriculture, and of that land, if we combine global grazing land with the amount of cropland used for animal feed, 80% of it is for animal agriculture.

There are no direct comparison studies that I'm aware of, but AI, despite it's explosive expansion and hunger for resources, is still a very young industry. It may be that we'll be having a different conversation in 20 years, but right now, animal agriculture is orders of magnitude worse for the climate. The sheer scale involved is not even comparable.

Water use is the most cited metric with AI, so lets look at that. In 2023, U.S. data centers consumed about 228 billion gallons of water. The contribution of AI to this total is estimated to be between 15 to 20 percent, so about 45 billion gallons. 2023 appears to the be the most recent available data, so it is likely higher than that now. Animal agriculture in the USA alone consumes approximately 34 to 76 trillion gallons of freshwater annually.

GHG emissions is the other one people discuss, again AI is quite young so some of these measurements aren't reliable, but we think that AI contributes about 0.01% of global greenhouse gas emissions, at the moment. It is difficult to measure full end-to-end impact, though, since we've only just started to really track how this technology is using resources.

We have much more robust data sets for food production, which is responsible a full quarter of the world's GHG emissions, and 31% of that comes from animal agriculture, not including and use change or supply chain emissions from the production of crops for animal feed.

Again though, these figures don't mean a lot because AI is very new technology. We don't have a lot of long-term data on it's impact and how it may increase or even decrease if it becomes more efficient over time. It also just serves a totally different function, so it is less comparing apples to oranges and more like comparing apples to air conditioning units.

> that country

“It’s okay Steven, I’m never alone. I fucking love you so much.”

now i cant do anything. i just have to block his number, keep doing survival sex work and pray i dont get hurt anymore.