Those in power seem to think that a compute advantage is necessary to maintain economic advantage. Despite this, the voters universally hate data centers, so much so that both NY and TX have data center construction moratoriums.
Despite this, those in power refuse any environmentally aware energy policy nor water policy. Despite this, companies have been trying to be environmentally aware for either moral or marketing purposes to get social permission to build DCs. Despite this, companies are “forced” to build their own “dirty” power sources since political power is disrupting green energy build out. Despite this, demand is still high so that compute costs are continuing to rise. Despite this, our economy is increasingly predicated on a few companies using more compute than geopolitical rivals with cheaper electricity. Despite this, those in power are, again, unwilling to create a compromising policy (aka clean energy) that voters actually would demand before tolerating more DCs.
What’s going to lose first? Voters/environment, politicians/the oil lobby, big tech, or the overall american economy?
The overall American economy is going to pay the price in the long term. And current foreign policy is reducing trust in America as a reliable and stable partner, which will make things even worse.
> The entire planet will lose as ecosystems die out, food and water supplies run low, refugee crises and global conflicts ramp up.
This is not true and this is misinformation in the way stated.
While agreed that emissions going up will lead to some ecosystems, some food problems, some water supplies getting worse.
But in aggregate, the things are all around going to get better - life expectancy will go up either way. Food insecurity will go down. Prosperity goes up.
So you will be in a better situation in 100 years without reducing emissions.
I have been trying to look for sources myself and I feel like this whole sector is rampant with "noble lies".
If you dig into the sources you will find
Economic predictions:
The most serious mainstream institutions[1] will dress it up us an imminent catastrophe as if humanity itself will collapse if we don't do anything. But once you read the real predictions, you will realise that that it they just say things would be better if you had reduced emissions compared to if we did not, but not compared to today (crucially)
Tail risks and irreversible damage:
I have read on tail risks, ecological collapse, species death and all of these models are strange and not supported by the mainstream generally. For example [2] article says that 5% of our species will go extinct by 2100 or so. That means more than 200k species! And in the last 50 years fewer than 1500 or so went extinct and it is not some abnormal number.
I would encourage you to actually read the studies and see what people believe and the models used.
This is just pure histrionics, you have no understanding whatsoever of the scale of data center water consumption, electricity consumption, new capacity coming online, etc.
All this AI doomerism is hiding the obvious and immediate harm that will cause a mass extinction event. Funnily enough people at Anthropic are predicting the end of the Anthropocene, completely absolving themselves from any responsibility for the actual reality that the Anthropocene is defined by human made geologically noticeable changes. Like causing a global climate catastrophe.
So even when xAI (which is now Tesla? Or SpaceX maybe?) was "operating dozens of unregulated gas turbines that worsen the air quality in one of the most polluted parts of the country"[0] this didn't place them above this new Amazon not-even-built-yet data center? Are they competing who can destroy the earth the fastest or what's going on?
Note that this is about absolute pollution, not relative to power output. Pollution is high, because power output is high. Relatively, for what it's worth, it's just a fairly normal gas plant.
So the most interesting thing to take away from this: There is a lot of demand for more power and in this instance it's satisfied by gas. Which is still much better than coal. Which is still much worse than renewables.
Ok. A serious question.
I frequently hear that wind and solar are the cheapest forms of electricity. Then why are they using gas turbines? Is it because they can generate more power with a smaller real estate footprint?
Texas specifically has heavily politicized and demonized wind power, in spite of having massive successes with it prior to 2016 and being a leading producer of it. Solar isn't as bad, but is still seen as "leftist." The political landscape in TX is vastly more friendly to natural gas.
In other words, they are using gas turbines because the politicians are stupid.
Under current administration, I'm not even sure its possible to build out green energy for this sort of thing at scale - this article[1] was on the front page just yesterday
Renewables require storage because they are bursty - sun goes down, wind stops blowing. This is more expensive than just burning as much nat gas as you need.
You know, we don't actually have to do this. The people could block the gates and prevent the delivery of the turbines. The local fire department could fail their inspection and prevent the gas from being turned on. The UPS could "mysteriously" go up in smoke during it's commissioning.
None of this is preordained. We, the phyical persons, can choose how we want to live, and what constraints the corporate persons must accept.
A lot of new data centres have been announced in Alberta, Canada. Which is a weird location given that Alberta has a derelict power grid that can barely serve the current load, and runs almost entirely on fossil fuels.
Meta, for instance, plans a $13B data centre in Sturgeon County.
They all plan on powering them by building massive natural gas generating stations with each. In a free for all race to destroy the environment and doom humanity (aside from your plutocrats who'll live in their bunkers). Until a week or so ago Meta still had a clean energy pledge, but finally they just abandoned that silly greenwashing lie: https://finance.yahoo.com/energy/articles/meta-quits-clean-e...
We are basically in the end game now, and despite that weird guy running through these comments telling everyone how great everything is going to be in a hundred years, things are looking utterly grim.
Climate catastrophe itself is ideology driven. The mainstream view isn't that if we increase emissions, it will lead to a literal catastrophe. Our lives will become better in 100 years with emissions or without.
I would urge you to stop spreading misinformation about imminent catastrophe unless we reduce emissions. Catastrophe meaning our lives would be even worse in the future than now.
Europe is burning, rivers are at all time lows, new temperature records ar being set every year, oceans are rising and you have the gall to demand we ignore the obvious?
Please share numbers on the predictions instead of anecdotes. You are doing the thing where you focus on specifics instead of focusing on the whole. Please share sources that show that things are overall going to get worse instead of specific cases.
Bitcoin received a lot of backslash due to its power usage and ecological footprint. It's obvious that HN users don't have the same criticisms towards AI data centers. Maybe someone with a short position will coordinate that communication soon..
Why is HN so absolutely terrible at understanding the scale of pollution, water consumption, etc? It is quite minuscule in real terms, but everyone here is losing their mind. Ridiculous.
Despite this, those in power refuse any environmentally aware energy policy nor water policy. Despite this, companies have been trying to be environmentally aware for either moral or marketing purposes to get social permission to build DCs. Despite this, companies are “forced” to build their own “dirty” power sources since political power is disrupting green energy build out. Despite this, demand is still high so that compute costs are continuing to rise. Despite this, our economy is increasingly predicated on a few companies using more compute than geopolitical rivals with cheaper electricity. Despite this, those in power are, again, unwilling to create a compromising policy (aka clean energy) that voters actually would demand before tolerating more DCs.
What’s going to lose first? Voters/environment, politicians/the oil lobby, big tech, or the overall american economy?
But hey, line go up!
This is not true and this is misinformation in the way stated. While agreed that emissions going up will lead to some ecosystems, some food problems, some water supplies getting worse.
But in aggregate, the things are all around going to get better - life expectancy will go up either way. Food insecurity will go down. Prosperity goes up.
So you will be in a better situation in 100 years without reducing emissions.
If you dig into the sources you will find
Economic predictions:
The most serious mainstream institutions[1] will dress it up us an imminent catastrophe as if humanity itself will collapse if we don't do anything. But once you read the real predictions, you will realise that that it they just say things would be better if you had reduced emissions compared to if we did not, but not compared to today (crucially)
Tail risks and irreversible damage:
I have read on tail risks, ecological collapse, species death and all of these models are strange and not supported by the mainstream generally. For example [2] article says that 5% of our species will go extinct by 2100 or so. That means more than 200k species! And in the last 50 years fewer than 1500 or so went extinct and it is not some abnormal number.
I would encourage you to actually read the studies and see what people believe and the models used.
[1] https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/investing-in-climate-fo...
[2] https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adp4461
- [0] https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/20/musks-xai-is-being-sued-ov...
This race to the bottom will have plenty more to give us in the coming years.
So the most interesting thing to take away from this: There is a lot of demand for more power and in this instance it's satisfied by gas. Which is still much better than coal. Which is still much worse than renewables.
In other words, they are using gas turbines because the politicians are stupid.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49208314
> I frequently hear that wind and solar are the cheapest forms of electricity
presumably they put zero value on stable production or count subsidies as income
The Gargantuan Lie That is Collapsing The World’s Climate: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49208686
None of this is preordained. We, the phyical persons, can choose how we want to live, and what constraints the corporate persons must accept.
Meta, for instance, plans a $13B data centre in Sturgeon County.
https://www.vozpopuli.com/indux/en/alberta-approved-a-932-me...
They all plan on powering them by building massive natural gas generating stations with each. In a free for all race to destroy the environment and doom humanity (aside from your plutocrats who'll live in their bunkers). Until a week or so ago Meta still had a clean energy pledge, but finally they just abandoned that silly greenwashing lie: https://finance.yahoo.com/energy/articles/meta-quits-clean-e...
We are basically in the end game now, and despite that weird guy running through these comments telling everyone how great everything is going to be in a hundred years, things are looking utterly grim.
Capitalism is a death cult, AI capitalism doubly so.
I would urge you to stop spreading misinformation about imminent catastrophe unless we reduce emissions. Catastrophe meaning our lives would be even worse in the future than now.
Please share your sources saying it's not getting worse.