Juts search for "AI water consumption" or "data center water consumption". I'll agree that "we could be using this to wash our cars" is a silly argument, but water shortages affect between 2 and 3 billion people every year (https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/imminent-risk-global-water-crisis-warns-un-world-water-development-report-2023). We could be doing more with this water than cloud computing and AI.
I just switched my gaming laptop to slowly running Manjaro. So far I've had good luck running most everything in my steam library, including some major titles. All look great at very high end settings. You should give it another go.
I had a buddy, and we talked in great detail about this. I chase challenges, and am always looking for the next big puzzle to muddle my way through. He chased freedom. He just wanted to be who he was and spend his time how he wanted.
My point is people are motivated by different things. Find your thing and pursue it. Don't worry what anyone else is doing. You don't answer to them, and they're not any happier than you.
Wells Fargo uses Theta Lake, even going far enough to add it to their startup accelerator program.
Some facilities is do this. They're not 100% efficient, so some is lost to evaporation, some must be dumped because it has too much mineral content (and too much conductivity) to go back through the cooling system. Reusing is only about 50% efficient (according to Google's numbers).