More Than 200 Environmental Groups Demand Halt To New US Datacenters (theguardian.com)
- Reference: 0180334065
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/12/08/2158223/more-than-200-environmental-groups-demand-halt-to-new-us-datacenters
- Source link: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/08/us-data-centers
> A coalition of more than 230 environmental groups has [1]demanded a national moratorium on new datacenters in the U.S. , the latest salvo in a growing backlash to a booming artificial intelligence industry that has been blamed for escalating electricity bills and worsening the climate crisis. The green groups, including Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, Food & Water Watch and dozens of local organizations, have urged members of Congress to halt the proliferation of energy-hungry datacenters, accusing them of causing planet-heating emissions, sucking up vast amounts of water and exacerbating electricity bill increases that have hit Americans this year.
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> "The rapid, largely unregulated rise of datacenters to fuel the AI and crypto frenzy is disrupting communities across the country and threatening Americans' economic, environmental, climate and water security," the [2]letter states , adding that approval of new data centers should be paused until new regulations are put in place. The push comes amid a growing revolt against moves by companies such as Meta, Google and Open AI to plow hundreds of billions of dollars into new datacenters, primarily to meet the huge computing demands of AI. At least 16 datacenter projects, worth a combined $64 billion, have been blocked or delayed due to local opposition to rising electricity costs. The facilities' need for huge amounts of water to cool down equipment has also proved controversial, particularly in drier areas where supplies are scarce. [...]
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> At the current rate of growth, datacenters could add up to 44m tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere by 2030, equivalent to putting an extra 10m cars on to the road and exacerbating a climate crisis that is already spurring extreme weather disasters and ripping apart the fabric of the American insurance market. But it is the impact upon power bills, rather than the climate crisis, that is causing anguish for most voters, acknowledged Emily Wurth, managing director of organizing at Food & Water Watch, the group behind the letter to lawmakers.
"I've been amazed by the groundswell of grassroots, bipartisan opposition to this, in all types of communities across the US," said Wurth. "Everyone is affected by this, the opposition has been across the political spectrum. A lot of people don't see the benefits coming from AI and feel they will be paying for it with their energy bills and water."
"It's an important talking point. We've seen outrageous utility price rises across the country and we are going to lean into this. Prices are going up across the board and this is something Americans really do care about."
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/08/us-data-centers
[2] https://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/national-data-center-moratorium/
Environmentalists demand we only subsistence farm (Score:3, Insightful)
Environmental groups demand we don't do energy-intense manufacturing, don't do resource extraction, don't drive cars, don't have data centers, don't raise cattle, etc. Did anybody ask them how would US look like if all their unreasonable demands met?
Re: (Score:1, Informative)
Your views will not survive contact with the reality. Citations:
don't raise cattle: [1]Cattle ranching harms the climate [animalagri...change.org]
don't do energy-intense manufacturing: [2]Steel industry emissions are a big contributor to climate change. [science.org]
don't do resource extraction: [3] Environmental groups oppose Bill to boost mining [theturtleislandnews.com]
don't drive cars: [4]Car culture is driving us to disaster [davidsuzuki.org]
[1] https://www.animalagricultureclimatechange.org/cattle-ranching-climate/
[2] https://www.science.org/content/article/steel-industry-emissions-big-contributor-climate-change-can-go-green
[3] https://theturtleislandnews.com/index.php/2025/06/04/environmental-groups-and-some-first-nations-oppose-ontarios-bill-5-to-boost-mining/
[4] https://davidsuzuki.org/story/car-culture-is-driving-us-to-disaster/
Re: Environmentalists demand we only subsistence f (Score:1)
What if they paid a basic income and people chose self-provisioning over industrial modes of production where selling subscriptions to a carefully enclosed supply takes away control from the little man?
Re: Environmentalists demand we only subsistence f (Score:4, Insightful)
> What if ... people chose self-provisioning over industrial modes of production...
Then most of us would starve to death.
Re:Environmentalists demand we only subsistence fa (Score:4, Insightful)
There appear to be two interrelated issues with your sources. (Although thank you for giving sources, which was much more than the person you were replying to did.) First, there's a substantial issue with how representative these environmentalists are from the general movement. The ability to point to specific people doesn't really say much about the movement as a whole (although I will grant there's a decent fraction of the environmental movement which really does seem stuck in a 1970s sort of "degrowth" or "antigrowth" attitude). But you seem to also confuse sources saying "Hey, this is creating a serious problem" and not wanting to have that thing at all. The Science.org article for example is about the actual fact that steel production really does contribute seriously to climate change, but then much of the article is about the effort to make steel manufacturing more environmentally friendly. So the article is not about getting rid of steel manufacturing but about making it work better. Others in your list are not about getting rid of things, but moderation. To use the very last example, large scale car use really is creating a lot of problems. But one can recognize that and favor more moderation in terms of car use without getting rid of cars as a whole.
Re: (Score:1)
> First, there's a substantial issue with how representative these environmentalists are from the general movement.
I do not have a way to say how representative such views of a typical environmentalist. I don't believe I am engaging in [1] nut-picking [fallacycheck.com] and I am open to seeing counter-evidence. I came up with these links by searching for key phrases (e.g., methane emissions from cows) and people (e.g., Suzuki) from memory and there were many similar links to chose from. Do you believe these views are not representative? If so, what makes you think so?
> But you seem to also confuse sources saying "Hey, this is creating a serious problem" and not wanting to have that thing at all.
This is a valid criticism. My view is that I use expressing concerns as a
[1] https://fallacycheck.com/fallacy/nut-picking
Re: (Score:1)
Do you agree then that those claims are true though? Cattle ranching and steel emissions cause changes to the atmosphere, mining tends to be environmentally destructive and that car culture has many negative effects on health and society?
Not even getting prescriptive yet, no argument yet about what to do about that but can we agree those are true statements? Because if not then bringing up what some people think should be done is really irrelevant.
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> our habitat that should be utilized for humanity's needs
Agree, but then you need to draw the line between needs and wants , and some people draw that line further to the right than others.
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Americans eat an average of 0.23 lbs of beef, 0.18 lbs of pork, AND 0.32 lbs of poultry per day ( [1]source [ourworldindata.org]). That's a lot of freakin' meat, almost three quarters of a pound (or a third of a kilogram) a day.
Cows need to eat a LOT, and they mostly eat grain. Instead of using that grain to feed cows, we could eat it (and other vegetables grown on that land) ourselves, saving enormous resources.
We also buy a lot stuff we don't need, and that doesn't last (planned obsolescence in almost every industry). Which is
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-meat-usa
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put aside the environmentalists for a moment. think about high power bills. I see datacenter zoning referendums coming.
Environmental issues are exaggerated (Score:3)
The environmental issues are exaggerated. It is true that electricity prices are going up, [1]https://www.solarreviews.com/blog/average-electricity-cost-increase-per-year [solarreviews.com] but this is barely a blip above the current (very high) inflation rates [2]https://www.minneapolisfed.org/about-us/monetary-policy/inflation-calculator/consumer-price-index-1913- [minneapolisfed.org]. The complaints about water usage are also not highly reasonable. The vast majority of water used for data centers get reused. Current data center water usage is about a 10th of the water usage for golf courses by the most extreme plausible estimates, and US golf courses account for a bit over 1% of all water usage, so being concerned about data centers here when a more useful thing would be to not have golf courses in the middle of Arizona would be a far more reasonable concern. [3]https://www.usga.org/content/usga/home-page/articles/2025/03/water-conservation-playbook-released-golf-industry.html [usga.org]. There are legitimate grid concerns; AI data centers don't just use a lot of power, but they use it in hard to predict ways, which makes load balancing the grid very difficult. So there are legitimate concerns.
But it seems like much of the left has adopted an anything involving LLM AIs is bad attitude in the US. This seems connected to the fact that the US attitude towards LLM AIs is more negative than pretty much almost every other country [4]https://today.yougov.com/international/articles/53654-english-speaking-western-countries-more-negative-about-ai-than-western-europeans [yougov.com]. But rather than having a serious discussion about the positives and negatives of this technology (and there are a lot in both columns), there's this tendency to just pick any possible negative and throw it on the wall. This is also particularly unfortunate right now in the US because there's major problems with the Trump administration rolling back all sorts of environmental regulations, including not just those for CO2 but for many other pollutants, and the administration is now actively stopping almost any new US wind and solar on a large scale. While there's been some legal pushback against some of that (see for example, this victory just today [5]https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/08/climate/trump-offshore-wind-federal-judge.html [nytimes.com] ) this would be a far better use of these groups time and resources than going after a specific industry.
[1] https://www.solarreviews.com/blog/average-electricity-cost-increase-per-year
[2] https://www.minneapolisfed.org/about-us/monetary-policy/inflation-calculator/consumer-price-index-1913-
[3] https://www.usga.org/content/usga/home-page/articles/2025/03/water-conservation-playbook-released-golf-industry.html
[4] https://today.yougov.com/international/articles/53654-english-speaking-western-countries-more-negative-about-ai-than-western-europeans
[5] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/08/climate/trump-offshore-wind-federal-judge.html
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1/10 of 1% of all the water used in the country doesn't sound like much ... if you're an idiot.
Re: (Score:1)
Narcc, why are you incapable of polite discussion with people you disagree with? Would it hurt you so much to some day, maybe try to do people the courtesy of responding to what they have with some detailed arguments or reasoning rather than insults?
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It doesn't matter. What matters is the high power bills. I see datacenter zoning referendums coming.
Wrong sovereignty (Score:2)
NIMBY is a matter for local politicians, not the federal government. Not everywhere in the US has poor water management practices. Not everywhere in the US burns fossil fuels for power generation. And Greenpeace doesn't give a shit about environmental issues, only satisfying the egos of its founders -- they'll happily substitute nuclear power for coal just to win an argument.
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put aside the environment angle for a moment. think about high power bills. I see datacenter zoning referendums coming.
Re: Wrong sovereignty (Score:2)
And if they vote to allow it, would you still want the federal government to put a stop to it?
Response: (Score:2)
laughs in capitalism
Courage of your convictions. (Score:2)
"A coalition of more than 230 environmental groups... "
Let them come back when they themselves are fully off-grid. Until then, it's hypocritical.
The issue I have with new datacenters is their expectation that the utilities should pay for the infrastructure and amortize it over 10s of years. But what if it's a bubble? (and it is) - the datacenters should pay for the infrastructure here and now, or everyone else is going to be stuck paying for it via higher rates in the future.
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> The issue I have with new datacenters is their expectation that the utilities should pay for the infrastructure and amortize it over 10s of years. But what if it's a bubble? (and it is) - the datacenters should pay for the infrastructure here and now, or everyone else is going to be stuck paying for it via higher rates in the future.
Fully agree. However, even if they agree to pay, there is no equipment (transformers, etc.) or manufacturing capacity to produce equipment fast enough to ramp energy production to meet the AI data center demand. Source: [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpEEDnV1gXw [slashdot.org]
[1] https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/12/08/2158223/Peter
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> Let them come back when they themselves are fully off-grid. Until then, it's hypocritical.
No one should express concerns about the environment unless they themselves live fully off-grid, is the most asinine opinion I've read all day.
We can keep this going all day:
No one should express concerns about rising wealth inequality unless they themselves take a vow of poverty.
No one should express concern about food safety standards unless they forage for berries in the woods and hunt with a sharpened stick.
No one
Re: (Score:2)
> No one should express concerns about the environment unless they themselves live fully off-grid, is the most asinine opinion I've read all day.
Excellent! Since you're posting on Slashdot you are clearly not "fully off-grid." Therefore you can't complain about the PCB dump we're putting in your neighbourhood.
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Why do they have to be fully off-grid to not be hypocritical? It's possible to be on-grid and a responsible user of shared resources.
I think it's a very valid complaint that data centers are coming online and expecting bulk discounts on electricity and tax subsidies to locate to a specific area. They don't benefit the local economy at all long term, only short term construction jobs.
These data centers should be required to install an equal amount of renewable energy capacity within 5-10 years so there
Ha. Ha. Ha. (Score:2)
As if that is going to happen? Where do these people come from? Are they born or do they spawn?
Re: (Score:2)
They are the sons and daughters of the hippies who protested nuclear power back in the day. Their parents are more or less directly responsible for a large portion of atmospheric greenhouse gases, as a result.
I'd assume that listening to them now will be about as helpful as listening to their parents was.
Will slashdot join them? (Score:1)
Do they share AI DS with a lot of slashdot posters?
Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth... (Score:2)
Anything these particular bands of loonies are opposed to, I automatically consider a good idea.
I consider myself an environmentalist and ... (Score:1)
... this demand is politically stupid.
Read [1]the letter [foodandwaterwatch.org].
It should be obvious from the last few election cycles that America is nowhere close to accepting such a demand. Making it will just inflame those on the right and make you look stupid or overly-demanding to those in the middle. This hurts your credibility and makes it that much harder when you need to ask the government for something else in the future.
A better/more-politically-savvy approach would be to issue a softer, open-to-negotiation request/sug
[1] https://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/National-Data-Center-Moratorium.pdf
Data centers a problem? (Score:2)
Just wait till everyone has a mandated EV and everyone plugs in to charge during the evening after they get home from work.
Which high profile environmental group missing? (Score:1)
No Sierra Club? I wonder why?
Are datacenter zoning referendums coming? (Score:1)
I don't see how datacenter referendums pass. Nimby will be too strong.
Meanwhile... (Score:3, Insightful)
These people have no power in China, who will proceed full speed with AI and data center expansion.
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You sound like you really dislike China.
What's your problem then with them repeating their "housing boom" from a few years ago, which left them with an enormous sunk cost in the form of empty ghost cities and an economy riddled with bad debt?
You should be cheering that they are dumping good money into another bubble with no exit in sight.
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There, the story if their datacenters:
[1]https://www.technologyreview.c... [technologyreview.com]
[1] https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/03/26/1113802/china-ai-data-centers-unused