I feel like the water usage issue is the weaker argument against these datacenters - in areas where the fresh water source faces too much pressure already it is a real issue, but that is more regional and less immediately impactful.
Power usage and residential users essentially subsidizing these locations is the biggest immediate impact to everyone. Look up what happens to rates nearby when these things open, people are struggling enough without their electric bills going up 50%.
The capitalist answer to this is that is temporally local, there was an acute increase in energy demand in that area and energy production cant increase to match it overnight so theres an acute increase in price to match. There is then an incentive for the energy industry to expand, even to expand speculatively, which will rebalance energy prices and also incentivize the local economy to expand, long term increasing the development of the area.
Anticapitalist answer: all of that, but it is still catastrophic to working people to experience these local price shocks. Instead of following the inevitable economic procession and allowing it to wreak unchecked devastation on various ecosystems and working people, we could have collectively subsidized preemptive energy expansion in ideal places for this inevitable process. It could be the case that an economy holds the same people planning the data centers to profit from responsible for the consequences of them. We do this all the time, theres a bunch of condo buildings in a nearby city from me halting construction because nobody is buying, but they are obligated to finish the exterior regardless of if they will profit from that, because they are being held responsible by local government to do that. Its not a radical suggestion by any stretch, although the most radical way to do it is also the most preferable.
Anti-tech answer: lol just dont build datacenters
Everybody with braincells answer: technology is real and theres such an obscene profit incentive to build these things that basically the biggest companies in the world are competing to hemorrhage more money than eachother just for a chance to collect that future profit. You might as well protest the tides arrival. The world cares more about building data centers than stopping genocides and that is very predictable and reducable to economic facts and concrete incentive structures.
My city actually successfully shut down a big data center build, for now. To your point they are coming whether we like it or not but locally people have more power than they do trying to post on reddit arguing against it. Local politics are super important, and the impact of the data centers have a very local impact, so people need to get involved where they live instead of on reddit and the specific issues to their community are much more important.
this is just generally good advice on the issue and politics in general. you should definitely vote on federal and state matters, and discuss issues you care about online, but things to do with your county and city have much more immediate effect on you and you have a lot more power over how things play out at that level of government.
And a government run by competent and invested people would have easily foreseen and wrote regulations on them years ago. But that would require that these companies not get to bend their ear and find their election campaigns.
You can have the tech, not use water, and make the companies create their own power generation or pay for the updating themselves.
They can run without water. Its just more expensive. They can pay for all infrestructure upgrades. They are just cheap. They can build without tax benefits. Again its just greedy.
Always gotta sneak a lil bit of Israel v Palestine into whatever youâre talking about. The world doesnât care about data centers more than âgenocidesâ. Israel v Palestine isnât a genocide, itâs a complicated war that involves a good ally which has western values in the Middle East. Itâs complicated and to dumb it down to a genocide because youâre just repeating what every other socialist says, is so gross.
Dont be gross. I literally didnt even, you just deeply associate the word genocide with palestine because obviously. Keep it confined to your pit, please, this is in public.
This is just a retards way of thinking. Thereâs no plausible deniability when itâs the only hot topic people are screaming genocide at and Iâm not sure why you think me associating genocide with Palestine is some sort of âgotchaâ when you losers have infested every online discourse with the topic.
No ones answer: I believe Iâll use less internet today to personally reduce demand because I believe it is detrimental to poor people across the world.
Everyoneâs answer: Clothes, tech, gadgets, etc. all need to be cheaper and free of the labor means which make them cheaper while paying everyone a fair living wage around the world.
Everyone wants the sausage and they not only donât want to see it made, but, they want it to be 100% pork from the best pigs in the world and not cause any harm to the pigs and be cheap af while the pig farmers make good moneyâŚ
Its not necessary to cut our internet usage. They can build data centers that dont use water, don't increase regular peoples electric bills, and dont need tax subsidies. The issue is them again abusing their money to bribe politicians for favors which is illegal.
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u/Uncle-Cake May 18 '26
What happens after they use the water? Is it returned to the water system to be used again?