Rural America is resisting the surge in data center construction

Many rural communities are viscerally opposed to AI infrastructure.

See full article...

 

[Thinker_in_TX]

Amazon was forced to abandon a proposed data center project in Tucson, Arizona, after residents raised concerns over water and energy use

For the record, this data center is being built right now just outside the city limit. Local opposition only manager to blow up a proposed partnership between the city of Tucson and the development company. It felt like a victory at the time, but ultimately, it just means that we won't get a say in how the data center operates. =(

I don't know about Arizona law, but I'd be surprised if they don't have laws about how cities can annex land outside current borders. In Texas, it called ETJ. Just some time and Tucson can absorb the data center and squeeze them.

 

[SubWoofer2]

I was reading this article for the connection with maga principles, and these data centre initiatives surely are at the heart of the maga movement and were probably voted for, by the people who are complaining in this article.

I don't understand.

 

[Feniks]

There is this giant steel mill in my country that has been scientifically proven to cause pollution and health problems. And yet they still have the support of the community. How? Because they provide jobs and support the community.

AI company CEOs are sociopaths who will never sponsor the high school gymnast team or pay for Christmas decorations at the mall.

 

[DDopson]

I wonder if you realized how much of a point in favour of Solar Panels you just made...

Replace Illinois corn farms specifically meant for Ethanol production with Solar Farms and Battery Storage. You likely just generated enough power to power all of Illinois.

No, not just Illinois. That would be enough power the whole country.

Illinois uses 11-million acres to produce 13% of the US corn supply. A typical utility-scale solar deployment generates 300 to 500 MWhrs / yr, which multiplies to 3,300 to 5,000 TWhrs / yr for converting all Illinois corn to fields of panels with typical row spacing. Total yearly electricity demand in the US is about 4,000 TWhrs, so that's either just below or just above enough yearly electricity to cover all US demand. Naturally it's not that simple because you'd also need a bunch of batteries to cover night and evening demand, and you'd still have some seasonal mis-match that can't be economically covered by batteries, and we anyways are going to continue operating a lot of existing hydro dams and nuclear plants and wind turbines and whatnot. But from a crayon art perspective, yeah, Illinois corn farms are on the order of the land area needed to shift the US to 100% solar generation.

Bioethanol consumes 33% of all US corn production to power 6% of our transport miles. Converting our cars to EV would leave that land without a use, and were we to fill it with solar, it would generate enough electricity to power 100% of transport miles, plus all electricity demand, electrification of all residential and commercial heating demand, electrification of all hydrogen production for the chemical industry, and a pretty large surplus of energy for other things. Of course, it's also about $10T in capex, so, non-trivial, but the key point is that land isn't the bottleneck.

 

[graylshaped]

THis would enable lots of new power plants to be built quickly if the west was working right.

Did you even hear the whoosh?

 

[Random John Smith Guy]

I think, beyond any of the underlying technical details, data centers and AI are simply the most publicly visible representation of the oligarchic concentration of wealth in America, and thus act as a proxy for our much larger social and economic issues.

Anyway let’s all vote for more billionaires again, as they so dearly care about the common man.

Except they're really not. I'm not going to go all "It's a Wonderful Life" on y'all, but the mega data center buildout has... mostly lit huge quantities of private equity and credit on fire, while causing a massive run-up in the equities market. Which is to say, those data centers are, in fact, your 401(k)s. While there's a handful of nominally massively valued private companies in the business, these valuations are purely paper and likely to not pan out.


Although, sapping all that private credit/VC money has actually hurt everyday Americans indirectly. All these job cuts, "enshittification", even the flagging labor market are the result of diversion of so many resources into the data center buildout. And, to a lesser degree, capital intensive manufacturing built or initiated during the Biden administration (no manufacturing has been built under Trump).