England is currently in a drought, which is the most Severe Climate Crisis™ since last year, when England experienced sustained flooding.
In an effort to Stay Calm and Carry On, the U.K. Environment Agency has told Brits to keep a stiff upper lip and do their part, including ... deleting emails.
From Helen Wakeham, director of the Environmental Agency:
We are grateful to the public for following the restrictions, where in place, to conserve water in these dry conditions. Simple, everyday choices - such as turning off a tap or deleting old emails - also really helps the collective effort to reduce demand and help preserve the health of our rivers and wildlife.
"Deleting old emails"
The irony, of course, is that inert data is, well inert.
By instructing people to delete old data, they are making that data active, which uses far more energy than simply leaving them alone.
Here is a map of data centers in the British Isles. You can't see that many of them are situated on rivers. What you can see is that the nation is quite literally surrounded by a body of water known as the ocean.
There are also a number of undersea cables that connect Brits to data centers the world over.
And for a final stroke in our irony quartet, the government committed to "turbocharging AI" just this year.
But the United Kingdom is resolute in its suggestions.
The energy consumption of data centres is predicted to increase, and while the impact of deleting a single email is minimal, the agency says that a collective effort could alleviate the demand for water at these data centres.
Brits responded in-kind to their government's call to action:
In addition to the government's suggestions, there are also mandatory measures in place, such as a regional garden-hose ban.
Brits, this is what your summer could have looked liked if you would have declared independence:
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