Connected consequences

In a country unable to find agreement on almost anything, the efforts to stop Data Centers have emerged as a unifying symbol. Especially in small towns and rural communities, people are finding ways to work together to protect their homes and families from massive developments. Neighbors are exchanging ideas about rising electric bills, loss of wetlands, and methods of influencing public officials. They are helping each other frame issues in ways that matter to people and encourage them to think about our connections and collective responsibilities to each other and to the future.

The energy generated by this kind of collective engagement spilled over into the recent midterm elections as people in Michigan stepped forward to support candidates willing to resist Data Centers. This energy has been built through countless public meetings, protests, and local actions. Today, 16 municipalities in Michigan have some form of a ban on data center construction. Across the country, other communities are exploring similar options at state and federal levels. More than half of Americans say they’d support a national ban on constructing these centers.

Corporate forces pushing data centers have taken notice and are actively trying to undermine opposition. They are joined by administration officials who have decided that rather than give up the idea of such massive construction projects, they will meet one of the major opposition concerns head-on: electricity costs. 

The fear that Data Centers will make electricity unaffordable for millions of people is not unfounded. A recent study by PJM, one of the largest grid operators in the country, estimates that the demand for electricity linked to these centers would add $6.3 billion in costs to the bills of millions of households and businesses within the next three years.

Such staggering costs have not led to a rethinking of this data center project. Rather, it has prompted the Trump regime to encourage Data Centers to buy or build their own energy infrastructure. As the New York Times reports, this encouragement is “driving a boom in gas-burning power plants. Nationwide, at least 82 gas-burning plants are being built or have been proposed to power data centers. 

These power plants have consequences that are dangerous for all of us.  The Times explained, “If built as planned, these plants could spew as much planet-warming carbon dioxide in a year as roughly half of all the passenger vehicles in the country.” Currently, the rush to construct these plants is often bypassing local controls and environmental regulations. They will intensify the climate crisis.

This assault on ecosystems is happening as the earth is unable to bear the strain of industrial, extractive development. Much of the forest lands in the US, Canada, and Europe are burning. These intense wildfires are a reflection of the intensification of drought and heat, directly related to our collective disdain for the health of the earth. And now major rivers from Colorado to Cologne are drying up.

This week our friends and families in Puerto Rico face draconian water rationing. Major reservoirs are depleted, and the Governor has announced that water will be cut off from homes for 48 hours, then put back on, then cut off.

Long before this drought, people were dealing with water shortages there. Last year, people in San Juan had 123 interrupted days without water. Much of this has to do with the aging, unattended infrastructure, as federal and local governments have paid no attention to the needs of people or the protection of basic necessities for life.

And all of this is happening as the UN has declared we have moved beyond “water stressed” environments or “a water crisis.” We are in a time of Global Water Bankruptcy, where the capacity to reverse the damage being done is shrinking.

On every conceivable ecological level, the construction of Data Centers, and of separate sources to power them, is ecological madness.

Over the next few months, people will be talking together about what we hope for our future.  Placing the stopping of data centers at the center of these conversations is a way for all of us to rethink where we are headed as a society and what kind of futures we really want to create.