Fear of data centers outpaces knowledge about them Do they hurt the environment?(deseret.com)

2 pointsby nephihahaเมื่อวาน1 comments

Fear of data centers outpaces knowledge about them Do they hurt the environment?

https://www.deseret.com/u-s-world/2026/06/21/what-environmental-costs-do-data-centers-have/

1 comments

jeromie10 ชั่วโมงที่ผ่านมา

Let's be real. Developers and investors know what the community objections will be before they propose a project. They could overcome those objections by making strong contractual guarantees up front, particularly around building closed-loop cooling systems, strong ambient noise controls and performance thereof (managed well outside the human range of hearing to minimize effects on wildlife), self-generation capacities that exclusively ban Grok-style temporary gas turbines and other fossil-fuel sources at the facility, and or other formal contractual guarantees that costs to energy suppliers will be directly absorbed by the facility and not the backs of consumers in the local energy market.

Supply-side constraints aside, none of this is actually hard, it just eats into profit margins. Any argument that prioritizes time to market concerns over irreparable harm to ecosystems and communities doesn't, umm... hold water.

When these ventures ultimately go bankrupt (that time to market argument predicates a few winners and many losers) and leaves abandoned mega-structures behind, who cleans those up? The tiny rural communities where many of these facilities are proposed to be sited? The federal government? Licensure should include an escrow account with funds sufficient to restore the site to a leave-no-trace state. If it's good enough for my campground, it's good enough for a datacenter.