This is potentially good news for everyone who wants to do anything less dirty than a datacenter (logistics, cold chain, light manufacturing/assembly, etc) because they'll probably be able to get the precedent extended to them in the next decade or so. The people and communities that make money off that sort of stuff will probably do well. Most of that sort of industry is in poorer sections of states where the municipalities are constantly being hamstrung by their own state because the municipalities want to permit it but state rules make that hard. So there is potential for some good to come out of it.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/pfas-forever-chem...
"Great" news indeed.
Pros are running out of time to square their ambitions with a public that's about to go from needing a leg up to a public that wants their heads.
I get one small comfort knowing that Wall Street will be increasingly under water as the climate disaster progresses (remember Sandy?).
People who thinks they need the planet to survive until they die sees it as a great opportunity to reap the value they generated over their lifetime.
It's very shortsighted and foolish desire.
Critics on all sides have ample ammunition AFAIK
I can surely squirrel away a couple of GPUs into any random closet and rent out the capacity.
So, yeah, political disasters take time to reach their conclusions, and the slide can be arrested at any point before it gets too bad. I think it’s probably correct that we’ve been in the midst of one for at least two decades, if not longer.
The world has not literally ended yet, so all concerns are overblown.
Democracy is for good and for worse not a one-and-done thing, it is a continuous fight.
How do you think you as a voter who presumably aren't a billionaire (or CEO of a mega corporation) with politicians on speed dial who will take the call get the politicians to pass those laws?
If the electorate is asleep at the wheel, the people pushing the politicians are all pushing them one way and the car isn't going in the direction that most of the electorate would necessarily want.
If you value your democracy you sometimes have to be an active participant in it and sometimes that means turning up more than once ever X years and ticking a box.
If they are not required by legislation then you just deal with the change.
While you're thinking about this, realize even the Democrats are annoyed at how weaponized things like NEPA have become to slow down necessary changes.
2. Vote
3. Vote
4. Find every publicly accessible local forum with _your_ representatives at every level, and get on the mic. Tell your reps they will lose your vote and the votes of your entire network for complicity in harm against society on behalf of the billionaire class. Follow through on that threat.
Extreme option: Run for election yourself on the platform and get voted into office. The bar is lower than ever in some places.
Elections will never save you when the parties in power serve the billionaires.
Democrats aren't by default better on this issue vs republicans so you need to be more involved than just voting in the general.
If you are in a D leaning district, then register as a D and vote in the D primary. Make sure the candidate you vote for is the most likely to win who isn't captured by big business.
A good example of a datacenter friendly dem that just won by the skin of their teeth is Crowley for governor in Wisconson.
The only thing that matters is Democrats gaining control of Congress and state governments. The choice that isn't a democrat is the wrong one. The time to vote out an incumbent was the primary.
I agree, that's why I'm saying you should be involved in the primary and not just the general. Because, as I said, it's not the default position of the democrat party to be for regulating datacenters. I gave an explicit example of that where a dem is completely aligned with the republicans on DCs.
Dems win power, but they are still beholden to OpenAI, then they'll be no better than the republicans on this issue.
It's too late for 2026 and IMO you should vote for Ds wherever you are at. But if you want to affect change on DCs then voting in the primary for anti-dc dems is what you have to do. It's not enough to just vote in the general elections.
> they'll be no better than the republicans on this issue.
There is no reason to think this is true. I will eat a gas generator if a Democrat president orders his EPA administrator to break established rules and precedent like the current one is doing.
No I'm not. We can walk and chew gum. It's important to recognize when and how Dems fail and this is one case where more than a few are failing their voters.
> There is no reason to think this is true.
There is if people aren't involved. A Gavin Newsom president would absolutely be pretty happy to receive campaign funding from AI firms.
> I will eat a gas generator if a Democrat president orders his EPA administrator to break established rules and precedent like the current one is doing.
Break the rules, no that's unlikely. However, it's entirely possible that the same results and rubber-stamping happens with enough campaign contributions. You need to look no further than all the money that's been dumped into "clean coal" and "CO2 capture" boondoggles by democrats to understand how this sort of thing works.
I could completely see a democrat president allowing DCs to be built so long as they buy carbon offsets, which is every bit as corrupt as just telling the EPA to not regulate. It's simply just not as brazen.
But I don't think this is true of any or all democrat presidential candidates, just some. Specifically Newsom would very much pull this sort of shit.
Republicans just took a vocal public oath of loyalty to their President in which they promised to cheat in the the election. That happened. It's on video.
My claim is that you should vote for the other party. That sounds reasonable to me.
I voted in the primary against the incumbent. The incumbent won. I will vote for them because the Republican opponent is a documented sexual predator. That is literally true.
These are the "two sides" we are dealing with.
Note that this promise is itself illegal. It is a violation of 18 USC 597.
See: https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=title%3A18+section%3...
It's not that simple. The Democrats are shit, and lost to Trump twice because of that shittiness. Perversely, Trump has allowed them to convince themselves that they don't have to reform.
I don't expect anything to change if the Democrats gain power, they'll curb only the most egregious abuses curbed a bit, while leaving the overall thing intact. Then they'll lose again because they're shit.
You've made it clear why you think people absolutely shouldn't vote for Democrats, but haven't really stated what people should do instead, just left the implication.
And a return to voluntary membership in the Paris Agreement?
The proposal to put data centers in space doesn’t seem too far fetched.
A data center can simply put the heat pumps onto the roof or in the backyard pointing away from housing. Humans have developed noise protection systems for ages. All this stuff is available.
This is just end-stage capitalism giving a sh*t about humans, burning fossil fuels without any filters of any kind next to kids playing outside like it's the year 1920.
>Last year, Lee Zeldin, who runs the EPA, said it was now the agency’s top priority to “make the United States the artificial intelligence capital of the world.” The 56-year-old agency was established in 1970 to protect the environment and public health.
lol, reminds me of those videos where a host will say one thing and then the cameraman pans to reveal the lie
but of course a lot of permanent damage can be set in motion in that time
I'm not wholesale against data centers, but there are more than a few projects that are downright irresponsible.
The sub 100MW data centers are mostly relying on the grid, but even a number of them plan on having natural gas turbines.
This type of thing will just enrage the opposition more, give them far more fuel, and attract far more people into opposing data centers.
The ruling regime is used to controlling a subservient political group that always, 100% falls in line to marching orders. Now that they control the entire country, they either need to have oppressed tho populace enough that all objection gets arrested or is subject to immediate political violence. But that's not going to be possible with how unpopular they have made themselves.
Second, why is the article trying so hard to make datacenters out as racist?
The article is from Capital B, which focuses on news affecting the Black community.
Yeah, that stuff. And other nasty things in the exhaust as well.
The "other stuff" is lower than the emissions in cars "other stuff".
If you are rallying behind "Natural gas generators are poisoning our town" you are 100% guaranteed to look dumb upon any rational analyses. Its a bad angle and should be abandoned. Go after noise if anything.
Also noise is pollution too.
Are all new data centers being built with on-site power generation (for regular operations, not just emergency backup)? I'd assume they'd prefer utility power where they could get it.
AI Datacenters are classist.
Because of their negative externalities they will always be constructed near the poor who have the least political power.
Humans are racist.
So there is a strong systemic correlation between that group of disenfranchised people and people of color.
The most directly harmful impacts of datacenters are racist, transitively.
https://wjla.com/news/local/data-center-noise-fumes-create-f...
Material wealth is only part of the picture. I'd rather have a Honda Civic and a quiet, clean place to live than own a Ferrari and have to pick and choose when I can go outside so I avoid the noise and particulate pollution from a nearby data center.
Your knee jerk reaction to refer to something as “woke slop” belies your privileged distance from anything remotely resembling hardship (I LiVe iN LoUdOuN) and an underdeveloped sense of empathy.
Anyway, we should be extremely skeptical of how infrastructure is built out in the US because of historical baggage. Poverty and industrial development create a vicious cycle that leads people to walk around with their thumb in their ass and claim that the poors just aren’t pulling themselves up by their bootstraps hard enough.
Also the article is trying to connect gas turbines from 2 years ago with cancer rates..