How to reduce the carbon footprint of AI? Can artificial intelligence be deployed to slow down global warming, or is AI one of the greatest climate sinners ever? That is the interesting debate that finds (not surprisingly) representatives from the AI industry and academia on opposite sides of the issue. The big players have clearly understood that the public sensibility towards climate change offers a wonderful marketing opportunity. IBM has launched its Green Horizons project to analyze environmental data and predict pollution. Google has announced having cut by 15 percent the amount of energy used in its data centres thanks to machine learning. Forecasting energy consumption, analyzing satellite data to monitor forest conditions in real time are additional examples. The periodical announcement of new applications of AI that might help fight global warming are meant to put green cloths on an industry that, in fact, consumes devastating amounts of energy. This diverts our attention from the question that really matters: