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No One, No One?
"No one here is really against AI," the local attendee of the Texas Data Center Rebellion told me, matter-of-factly. "Think about it: Your cup was made with AI. Your shirt was made with AI." It was a frank assessment, and, as the day wore on, proved to be a tad fringe. There was a definite "burn it down" sentiment among many of these who are losing the fields they played on as children, choking on air pollution from new power plants feeding the facilities, or watching a retreating aquifer in the Panhandle get tapped for demands expected to literally suck away their future. Yes, we're embedded in AI. But that's a new condition. For those holding out for the next cool gadget, maybe that after hearing Sanjay Ravigopal—who, yeah, is building a career inside artificial intelligence, albeit as a rising skeptic—take the floor.
"One reason they are building data centers if for artificial general intelligence, AGI. And that's supposed to replace the human brain. ... They want to create AGI to replace us. ... And they're destroying our environments just for their experimental sake. AI already works, but they're trying to get to the next level."
Next level seems to be the one most of us want to avoid. If we could dial back to War Games- or Tron-era technology, I think most of us would adjust just fine. Especially if it meant we could also somehow manage to keep our coral reefs and Amazon Forest. Of course, this was also a 'No Kings' weekend, too, and the closing of Todos Agua III in San Antonio. So I had to beg off for most of Day Two of the Rebellion. Yet I still couldn't escape AI concerns. There deep in the marching throngs I encountered a software engineer in eye-catching pink outfit and giant red line scraping out AI on a poster:
"AI is really doing a lot of bad stuff," they told me. "I'm a software developer right now and what's doing to the industry: It's taking away jobs, it's lowering the quality of the kind software we're putting out. It's gonna be a nightmare. We can't control it."
I was reminded of the popular critique that gets leveled by at least one fossil fuel booster at least once at most climate-related public meetings: "Who drove to this meeting? What powered your car? Gas?" Yes. We live in a world wrapped in pipelines too. That fact does not mean we won't shouldn't draw upon all the tools available to us to shut down the industries smothering the Earth and threatening the present and future of so many of our relatives. We drive to meetings building a better world. Some also bus. Or bike. The work of regeneration is about our climate shadow, not footprints.
Then just a few days after No Kings I drove to Dilley to visit CoreCivic's gulag for kiddies. The connection between big tech, state surveillance, and the industrial-deportation complex is real—and growing. As ICE Watch wrote last newsletter (See "How Women are Leading the Way to a World Beyond Detention"): This mounting injustices are literally built on the back of Amazon and Palantir and AT&T. Cut the cord already. For an update on that trip to Dilley, where I met Stacey Abrams and the new face of the Reading Rainbow, watch for ICE Watch's new issue, coming out next week. (Though you can catch a few pics as preview on my personal Facebook.)
Welcome back to Water & Power. We'll do our best to take care of you.
— Greg Harman
From South Texas Environmental Justice Network: "Urgent: the LNG project, Rio Grande LNG, which is already under construction on Highway 48, is seeking a permit to expand the facility to export more methane. The community should submit a public comment to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) urging it to deny this permit for Rio Grande LNG’s expansion, as it would release even more toxic pollution into the Rio Grande Valley’s water, air, and land and worsen climate change." More.
Texas Data Center Rebellion Attendees Seek to Regulate what the State and Feds Won't
Data center development nationwide has gone into warp speed. The drive for generative artificial intelligence (AI) and surging crypto interests, both strongly backed by Trump and his MAGA base, are poised to triple the number of data centers in just a few years, gobbling up massive amounts of land and water, and pushing a buildout of new fossil fuel power plants that together are forcing the planet beyond the red lines of climate catastrophe.
Last December, a long roster of environmental groups called for a national moratorium on new data center construction and permitting. Texas signatories included: Climate Conversation Brazoria County, Frontera Water Protectors, Hold the Line Campaign, Texas Physicians for Social Responsibility, and Turtle Island Restoration Network. The letter summarized that:
“The rapid, largely unregulated rise of data centers to fuel the AI and crypto frenzy is disrupting communities across the country and threatening Americans’ economic, environmental, climate and water security.”