In seeing such powerful and potent numbers, the body can experience an internal agitation. Getting "worked up" seeing the scale of things, and how it is so large. Much larger than the footprint of any one person.
The purpose of this page is to support you in your experience as your being synthesizes and creates meaning from these statistics. What do these numbers mean for me and what might I do about them?
To start, we'll clearly define the function and purpose of data centers: buildings intended to sustain the infrastructure to process and store data. This data can be the "cloud" — all the computation necessary to carry out the tasks in our digital lives, like social media and streaming and online bank payments. Or it can be "AI", and the energy-intensive processes of training a model, creating a new model, and sustaining the prompt-response services of a model. Or both!
AI-focused data centers currently make up the "data center boom"1 and the majority of deployment of "hyperscale data centers", large (million square foot) buildings with huge environmental footprints (as depicted in this website).
In one vein, data centers are integral components of our digital lives, and facilitate many crucial services to our government and economy. In another vein, we can see a clear trend with AI-driven frenzy leading to excessive and unregulated development, indifferent to the impact and burden they create on the lands, communities, and ecosystems they're situated in.
While many might advocate for personal lifestyle changes with tech and AI use (and that's perfectly fine), I strongly encourage tapping into collectivist action as data center encroachment is becoming a widespread public health issue. With shady tactics, like using non-disclosure agreements to advance their development without communities knowing, data centers are shown to be irreconcilable with transparency and accountability.2
Collective action can take a few forms. A starting point I would recommend is logging onto your social media account, and searching something like "data center [your city]" or "data center [your city] petition" or "data center [your city] town hall" and seeing what comes up. If there is existing organizing in your town, it's likely that the group's advocacy work has tried to sustain some digital presence.
If not, you can reach out to your local environmental activism group, like a Sierra Club or Sunrise Movement chapter, and ask around.
I'm by no means an expert in this area, but I'm aware of a few resources from research and time working with the Piedmont Environmental Council:
MediaJustice Toolkit for the Field3
- Great things like "power mapping" in this toolkit, where you can
map all the possible levers for change.
Site Fight Guide: Stop Data Centers, Free the Robots4
Four Pillars of Data Center Reform, Piedmont Environmental Council5
Good luck!!