Data center #4
This week the news for billionaire backers of mega data centers got worse. Although the county commissioners for Box Elder, Utah approved the construction of a project over the objections of thousands of local residents, there are no signs that the opposition is going away. And this mega center, like most others around the country is going nowhere fast.
This is because there is fierce community-based opposition to the construction of these centers. Over the last year, using creative legislation and imaginative actions, local communities have either rejected or halted over $64 Billion in mega data center projects, making these initiatives more mirage than reality. These emerging communities of resistance hold the promise of opening a serious rethinking of who makes decisions in our land, how they are made, and why. The questions of how we govern ourselves and the role of corporate interests in our lives are being faced in hundreds of local communities as they find inventive ways to challenge corporate power.
Moreover, the publicity surrounding these mega centers is encouraging more opposition. We are all rapidly learning the real costs of such gigantic development schemes. The proposed Stratos Data Center in Utah is mind boggling. The development would cover 62 square miles, or more than three fourths of Detroit’s land mass. It would require more electricity than the entire state of Utah consumes and would remove vast amount of water from the fragile Great Salt Lake ecosystem.
We are learning that these production facilities have a “thermal load,” meaning they can alter the average temperatures significantly. The byproduct of cooling systems is they include hot pipes that raise daytime temperatures anywhere from 2F to 5F and nighttime temperatures even more significantly by 8F to 12F. Professor of physics at Utah State, Rob Davies, concluded, “The thermal load from the proposed Stratos project is extreme. Of course it has effects. One of those effects is this: this facility imposes substantial drying on a watershed and ecosystem already in active collapse.”
We are being told by the billionaire backers that there is nothing to worry about. All the electric power needed to run these things will be new and “clean.” We shouldn’t worry about the water. And of course we are told data centers will create jobs.
These old, time worn arguments have proven false time and time again. Especially when they are uttered by venture capitalists like Kevin O’Leary, the man behind the Utah effort. He is most known for his appearances on Shark Tank. Still, we should take his statement during a Fox News interview seriously. “I don’t think there’s a bigger site in the world than this, O’Leary told Fox News.” “It shows the Chinese and the rest of the world we are not messing around, we are going to get this done, move it forward and provide the compute power to our AI companies that defend the country.”
This is more than a turn of a phrase. It is an effort to delegitimize the resistance to these centers, calling protestors “paid outside agitators” and implying that objections are unpatriotic, possibly treasonous.
Even these arguments are getting old. In reality almost all of the resistance to data centers in motivated by love. Love of community, love of the land, love of place.
A recent Gallup survey found that seven in 10 Americans oppose constructing data centers in their area and nearly half of them strongly oppose such moves. This figure is significantly higher than the opposition to nuclear power plants which have kept new construction in check for nearly 40 years. Gallup reported that “53% of Americans say they oppose building a nuclear energy plant in their area, far less than the 71% opposed to data center construction. Since Gallup first asked the nuclear power plant question in 2001, the high point in opposition has been 63%.
The profoundly grotesque size of these plants, the enormity of the impact they would have on ecosystems and on the basic values of life that define our communities are galvanizing people in new and unexpected ways. The connections being forged in these struggles are bringing forward new opportunities to come together over values that affirm life and love.