Far from serving as a sort of grid-expansion gym to help training for incoming electrification, data centres are actually eating up the finite resources need to accomodate billions of homes, vehicles and industrial facilities

Here's a remarkable example from Tasmania, Australia

In ordinary times, the intensity of the pushback might lead to some moderation, but between the size of the bets that have been laid on massive growth and the messianic visions driving some of the people pushing this, I’m not sure that route can yield much.

Right. The pace of technological development and movement of financial capital is faster than society’s ability to process what’s happening, much less agree to priorities/norms to guide it. So all people are left with is to yell “stop” (at least in my backyard where I still have a little control)

it's striking that none of the arguments *for* data centers was more convincing to those polled than the weakest argument against them. including enabling the digital economy and AI.

Achieving mass adoption of heat pumps, solar, EVs, etc., *requires* actual flesh and blood people to make new choices that carry some amount of uncertainty, even risk. We should celebrate them when they do. And, fortunately, as we describe, millions already have.

frontiergroup.org/resources/cl...

What does this approach do to utilization of existing fossil fuel generating assets, though? Nothing good, right? (In terms of emissions, that is)

The bits/bytes and atoms worlds have merged. They’re the same thing. And if you are advocating changes to the world of atoms that lead to better health and greater sustainability it is really important to understand this, and quickly.

If you are someone ill at ease with the effects of tech on society, AI data centers are the physical manifestation of your discomfort, coming to your neighborhood to suck up your water and power and loom menacingly over your countryside.

Lindsey argues that dissatisfaction with digital life (bits/bytes) will lead to a turning of attention to the physical world (atoms) in a way that somehow backstops the abundance worldview.

In reality, what’s happening is that bits/bytes dissatisfaction is crashing into the “real” world of atoms.

The idea that a wealthier future society will be more effective at addressing climate change than our own assumes a dramatic change in priorities and values that is not going to happen on its own.

Increasingly thinking that post-2025 environmental and climate movements are going to look far different than what we've seen since, say, 2010. New dead-ends erected; new opportunities opened. The times require a whole different world-view and approach, one that will outlast this administration.

We did the same thing with wildlife. Which is why we have - and need - an effective NEPA. So government and industry don’t thoughtlessly and recklessly destroy things we might rather have later on.