This is all so easily avoidable if they would spend a little more money to make them quieter, water efficient, and pay for their own energy. The technology exists. We could engineer a solution.
But I guess it’s cheaper to bribe a few councilmen.
Except that the environmental impact of AI data centers is actually quite small compared to tons of other things that they could be protesting.
It’s quite ironic, there’s an old golf course near my home town that’s likely going to be replaced with a data center in the near future (it’s shutting down and being rezoned, that’s enough to get the protests started) but golf courses are way more water-hungry than data centers are.
This is all so easily avoidable if they would spend a little more money to make them quieter, water efficient, and pay for their own energy. The technology exists. We could engineer a solution.
But I guess it’s cheaper to bribe a few councilmen.
They’ll get protested anyway since those aren’t the real motive behind the protests to begin with.
Environmental concerns are certainly among the genuine reasons people are protesting, though there are also other reasons.
Except that the environmental impact of AI data centers is actually quite small compared to tons of other things that they could be protesting.
It’s quite ironic, there’s an old golf course near my home town that’s likely going to be replaced with a data center in the near future (it’s shutting down and being rezoned, that’s enough to get the protests started) but golf courses are way more water-hungry than data centers are.