It literally is just a cartoon villain plan. The AI companies look at something called the "Acid Rain Program" and think to themselves "Fuck that, what's a bit of acid rain going to do?". I truly cannot comprehend the mindset here as hard as I try
The mindset is "if I could harvest your organs for profit I absolutely would, and I would make it illegal to protest against it"
Step 2: declare end of the Anthropocene (defined by man made influence on earth), while simultaneously accelerating mass extinction
Step 3: ???
Step 4: Profit?
In this case, there is a 25 year old regulation that specifies what this program applies to and what it doesn’t. https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-40/chapter-I/subchapter-C...
You might be fine with skirting the technicalities, but the rest of us have to live here and breathe the air.
That’s not how laws work, especially the Clean Air Act. “There are no solutions. There are only tradeoffs.” (https://ozgengungor.medium.com/one-of-those-quotes-thomas-so...).
The Clean Air Act was not designed to achieve cleaner air at any cost, but instead to achieve targeted pollution control that would have the greatest value at acceptable cost. The modern structure of the act was set in place in 1970 under Nixon, and is full of legislative compromises to balance incremental benefits to air quality against burden on industry.
You will notice we are not talking "at any cost". We are talking about a very specific cost to AI hyperscalers.
> full of legislative compromises to balance incremental benefits to air quality against burden on industry.
These technicalities are being exploited for the benefit of approximately 10 people, and to the detriment of everyone else.
Your talking points are old and exhausted.
Legislative compromises aren’t “technicalities.” The exceptions are as much a part of the laws as any other part. If they didn’t exist the laws wouldn’t have passed in the first place.
> Your talking points are old and exhausted
Your talking points—treating law as just an expression of intent rather than a reticulated framework—are third world mentality.
No, in first world countries we follow the letter of the law, including exceptions.
Well, if you juuust let the rich get richer, something (intentionally left unspecified) will trickle down on you.
They want computers in racks now and (rightfully imo) look at yearslong approval processes with disgust. Look at Ashburn, VA - they extract loads of money from these companies, and they keep getting investments because constructing new datacenters is easy thanks to state laws.
It's not about the money here it's about the time.
Disgust of the rules for me but not for thee? The rest of us have to follow the rules, but not them.
How about disgust for actual pollution? They could build clean, quiet and fast if "> It's not about the money it's about the time"
It doesn't add up, like at all.
Yes, it does. If you want solar? You need lots of panels on lots of land far away from the DC. You need transmission lines connecting the two. You need to fight NEPA/CEQA/whatever lawsuits for each element of the plan, the local town councils of wherever the hell you're trying to build, and the worst part is that they aren't even required to give you an answer - they can drag out the approvals for years until you give up and leave.
Compare that to a gas turbine, which can be trucked in, plugged in, and running inside a few days. Yeah, I think we should take measures to limit gas turbine deployments and encourage companies to spend more of their money connecting renewables to the grid, but that means that they need to be able to do it quickly and without catering too much to local interests.
> The rest of us have to follow the rules, but not them.
The rest of us are not installing 1MW gas turbines in our backyards. Even if we were, I don't think the current administration wants to enforce environmental rules on anyone unless it's to block renewables construction.
Let's be clear, democracy isn't perfect and it usually isn't fast. But to date, it's the only system that has any hope of keeping the most powerful in check. Rejecting democracy is begging for someone who doesn't care about you to tell you what's right and wrong.
One AI company's "bullshit" is another citizen's "clean air and water". Since the AI companies don't care about those negative externalities, the government can act help to mitigate the damage.
These are just words. What matters are your actions. Your action is that you will cause other people to suffer pollution in order to enrich yourself. Why can't you stand up like a man and just say that that is what you want to do?
And if you say "I am doing this to benefit humanity who need even more AI so badly" - Well those are also just words.
It remains to be seen if the administration doesn't successfully steal future elections, but the vitriol against data centers is a rare thing that has huge bipartisan support. Texas of all places largely has a competitive governor's race because Republicans have stated they're willing to vote for the Democratic candidate because she has supported a moratorium on data centers while Abbott supports them.