In Defense of Data Centers

This is an unpopular opinion, but I don't think data centers are the antichrist they've been painted to be.

I'm not contesting the claims of water use and power consumption, that's all true, absolutely. But the same arguments apply to Amazon warehouses and things like the big Panasonic battery factory in DeSoto. That building is just like an Amazon logistics center except they're manufacturing lithium ion batteries in there. The Panasonic factory was courted by locals, the same people who seem to be coming out of the woodwork to NIMBY up when it comes to data centers.

If you want to preserve farmland, that's fine, buy some and farm it. We're not running out of arable land, no matter how true it is that they're 'not making any more.' They're not making any more water either, but thanks to the miracle of evaporation and the mechanics of fluid dynamics, that water isn't 'used' in the sense that gasoline is burned. Water doesn't get just one use and then it becomes not water.

I'm not here to defend how people (including yours truly) use AI. I like it for spit-balling ideas as a writer. Not letting it do the writing mind you, but bouncing ideas off against known facts. I did it just now, and was told by AI that AI does indeed use many times more resources than most light industry. Pardon my skepticism, but compared to what light industries? Offices, sure, battery factories? I have my doubts.

If you think AI is junk, don't use it. If you think it's got too big a footprint for the value it ads, don't use it. I'm fine with letting the good old market sort this out. Not because the market gets everything right, that's insanity. But it's not as insane as letting an HOA or a zoning board dictate what kind of light industry gets developed. We have a homeless problem in this country because nobody wants to allow affordable housing near their house, we need less NIMBYism, not more of it.

Think about that battery factory. Maybe you're against it, and again I'm fine with that if that's your position. I'm not here to tell you what to value. If the jobs that battery factory accounts for offsets the risks and harms of having a battery factory there instead of an asparagus farm or whatever "better" use the land could be put to, then you're probably in favor of the Panasonic plant. If you say no to a data center because it's the same problem minus the jobs (because data centers don't employ many people, and the people it does employ were not the Popular Kids), I guess you're consistent. But to claim the data center is Worse is a stretch to me. A server farm is far less likely to be a future Super Fund site than a battery factory.