Sequencing and necessity are not separable in practice. Time and resources are finite, so prioritization is mandatory. If you define everything as "necessary" and try to do it all at once, you just fail even harder.
Edit: Perhaps a more interesting question is whether we should rate pollution sources by absolute amount or amount per actual utility produced. Gas-turbine-powered AI datacenters surely rate abysmally low on utility efficiency.
The original comment I replied to states: “A 50% reduction would change nothing, reduction to 0 would change nothing.” When talking about individual data centers.
My point is that this is true of basically any since source of pollution.
You can argue about sequencing if you’d like, but every individual source must be dealt with.
And when it comes to the atmosphere and the cumulative effects of each tonne of CO2 has on the climate, it is better and cheaper to prevent adding new CO2 than it will be to remove it once it’s added.
Edit: Perhaps a more interesting question is whether we should rate pollution sources by absolute amount or amount per actual utility produced. Gas-turbine-powered AI datacenters surely rate abysmally low on utility efficiency.