America's Data Center Nightmare

How shady deals and unjustifiable tax incentives have allowed Big Tech to commandeer America's most precious land and resources

There are numerous and justifiable reasons why Americans across the political spectrum hate data centers.

Data centers pollute.

They drain resources.

They drive up energy costs.

They cause numerous quality of life issues.

And that's not all.

Because much of the current buildout has been driven by shady backroom deals and unjustifiable tax incentives, data centers have also become a symbol of how big corporations and corrupt politicians work together to screw the people.

And that's before these data centers fulfill their ultimate mission: To power the AI that will make human labor obsolete.

Defenders of data centers argue, for example, that "Amazon's entire global data center fleet uses a day's worth of US golf course watering."

But cherry- (or almond-) picking statistics doesn't change the reality that data centers are making demands on America's water supply that, in much of the country, simply cannot be met.

According to the U.S. government's Fifth National Climate Assessment (2023), "the effects of human-caused climate change are already far-reaching and worsening across every region of the United States."

Even without data centers:

Harmful impacts from more frequent and severe extremes are increasing across the country—including increases in heat-related illnesses and death, costlier storm damages, longer droughts that reduce agricultural productivity and strain water systems, and larger, more severe wildfires that threaten homes and degrade air quality.

Telling us data centers use less water than golf courses only helps if you're shutting down a golf course for every new data center you build.

But the opposite is happening.

In the midst of America's data center nightmare, we have a president who wants to eliminate regulations to build more data centers and golf courses — while encouraging even more burning of fossil fuels in a country that's already facing worse-by-the-year wildfire, extreme heat, and drought emergencies.

In a country with 130 million households, it's estimated that by 2030 data centers will use as much energy as 60 million average households.

A single fossil-fuel-powered site — Stargate in Texas — will soon be emitting more than 7.8 million tons of greenhouse gases each year, equivalent to two million cars.

Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised that communities are actively resisting the data center buildout.

In the coming days, I'll highlight some of the ways people — from tree-hugging liberals to rural conservatives — in states from Vermont to Utah, Oklahoma to Pennsylvania, are challenging Big Tech's resource extraction, protesting "shadow grids" of unpermitted power plants, and demanding an end to the secretive non-disclosure agreements used by developers.

Until then, here are a couple of videos that highlight the scope of the problem and the skulduggery that has brought us here:

Exposing The Dark Side of America's AI Data Center Explosion (a video from Business Insider)

We Saw What AI Data Centers Don't Want You to See (a video by PBS Terra and Floodlight News)

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