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Comment by pj_mukh | Hacker News Reader

"environmental impact and effect on residential energy pricing"

Sooo, how does that change in New York in a year? You've mostly re-inforced my point. And specifically the bill doesn't use any automatic re-enablement criteria, so data centers are basically dead in the state.

Realistically, this is a canard, AI scares people and environmental impact is a lever to use to stop it. Ask yourself this: if this was a new Ford plant (dirtier, also uses a lot of energy), would we be having this conversation?

I actually do mean politically impoverished. Banning Data centers is a horsehoe populism issue, the right wing loves it too. The data center builders will just have to find municipalities with less people and/or a less engaged political atmosphere aka politically impoverished. They mostly already have.

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Yeah - there seem to be a lot of pretenses which don't actually justify banning a particular industry.

If environmental concerns were the real issue, we'd be talking about how to tweak those regulations. If power distribution was the real issue, we'd be talking about the economics of power companies, and tweaking the rules about billing for infrastructure upgrades.

It's strange how we're suddenly talking about things like illegal concrete dumping, as if concrete foundations were somehow specific to datacenters, and not 99% of buildings built in the past century.

> If environmental concerns were the real issue, we'd be talking about how to tweak those regulations. If power distribution was the real issue, we'd be talking about the economics of power companies

Who's "we" in this statement? It can't be be the general public because historically, legally, and morally, the persons causing the problem are responsible for addressing it. When CFC refrigerants were damaging the ozone, "we" didn't talk about alternative chemistry for heat transfer, we adopted the Montreal Protocol and the industry had to figure out the solutions while being legally constrained from externalizing harm to the general public.

My point is essentially that there are no new problems here, just the usual problems that we already have regulatory frameworks to address. Sometimes those existing frameworks are imperfect, e.g. in some states, power companies can't charge large customers for many of the infrastructure upgrades needed to serve them.

There's no novel problem here that any particular industry would need to find novel solutions for. Just some states ought to tweak their rules about the costs of distribution infrastructure upgrades.

If "this" was a single new Ford plant, I would imagine that the local population around it would be having a similar conversation.

If Ford announced that they were opening 10 new plants in every state, then yes, I imagine HackerNews would be having this exact conversation about it.

The other factor is that these tech backed build outs seem to revel in flaunting regulations. More established businesses tend to at least check the regulatory boxes when building new things. Meanwhile, I opened Reuters this morning to this article:

https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/pollution-musks-unper...

"Meanwhile, I opened Reuters this morning to this article"

This is not a measure of anything, except "news that is popular".

What you're looking for is fraction of datacenters that flaunt regulations, and I'm guessing you don't have those numbers and I'm betting they aren't that actually egregious compared to..anyone else building things. Again, I'm not saying this is bad politics, but let's not claim there is some actual issue here.

I mentioned politically impoverished communities, and that explains the Reuters headline more than anything specific about the people that build datacenters and how much they love polluting the air around Black communities.

P.S: Extremely funny for Mr.Solar Panel-Electric cars to now be installing Gas Turbines to run his data centers.

Sure, that's a fair point. You're right that I don't have those numbers, and I would be willing to be that at the moment, no one does.

> I'm betting they aren't that actually egregious compared to..anyone else building things

And I'm betting the opposite. As little as I trust the current industrial leaders, I trust Altman, Dario, Zuckerberg, and Musk far less. Maybe in 5 - 10 years when the dust is more settled we'll have a better picture.

Regardless, data centers are drawing moratoriums and regulation because they're the ones building things. If 500 new massive auto plants were planned to be built out in the next 5 years, they would also draw similar ire. It's only specific to data centers because that's what's actually happening, and we live in a world that is capable of responding to the actual events that are unfolding.

For what it's worth, I do agree with you about the politically impoverished communities bearing the brunt of our negative externalities. I would like it if we had regulation that priced in those externalities so we couldn't just dump them on communities that are unable to combat them.

Manufacturing plants bring jobs. What benefits do datacenters bring to their communities?

> Sooo, how does that change in New York in a year? You've mostly re-inforced my point

It won’t change at all, of course. I think maybe you don’t understand the reason for the moratorium. A year can be taken to assess what effects are likely to come about and how acceptable they are. Create some guidelines. Right now data centers are being built with no consideration for the effect on the surrounding area and, big surprise, people don’t like that.

> Banning Data centers is a horsehoe populism issue, the right wing loves it too.

Eh. The right wing is far more responsive to business wants than it is to populist demands. Right wing politicians do not like banning data centers even if right wing voters do.

"A year can be taken to assess what effects are likely to come about and how acceptable they are. Create some guidelines. "

Yea, and my bet is none of this is going to happen. There is simply no incentive to make it happen. Why would a government take all these steps? What's the incentive? Much easier to just keep things the way they are, or more likely, simply re-sense the political headwinds in a year.

"The right wing is far more responsive to business wants"

This is all pre-Trump thinking. Trump just randomly banned Fable, tonnes of MAGA politicos running on the "ban datacenter" ticket, all this is simply no longer true.

Republicans are still remarkably pro business. Fable is the exception.

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