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Maine is about to become the first state to ban major new data centers

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Re: Maine is about to become the first state to ban major new data centers

#51

Post by butvacuum »

km3r wrote: post #19
lbarrow wrote: post #17

For people who support this kind of ban, I'd ask if you would support a similar ban on new factories for, say, car parts. Like data centers, factories use a lot of power -- which drives up electricity bills -- and their construction can have local environmental impacts. Data centers have a reputation for not providing too many local jobs, but modern factories are often highly automated and also don't provide too many…

Why not just require factories /data centers invest in solar/wind/renewables to cover their power usage. Banning is so childish when there is easy solutions.

Because we already do. Its why electricity costs money. In my area big consumers and producers already pay through the nose to tie into the grid.

What we _should_ be asking is where all the money we paid for infrastructure and upkeep went for the last two decades of decreasing power usage.

Re: Maine is about to become the first state to ban major new data centers

#52

Post by AvAn12 »

lbarrow wrote: post #17

For people who support this kind of ban, I'd ask if you would support a similar ban on new factories for, say, car parts. Like data centers, factories use a lot of power -- which drives up electricity bills -- and their construction can have local environmental impacts. Data centers have a reputation for not providing too many local jobs, but modern factories are often highly automated and also don't provide too many…

If they produce large negative externalities like data centers do, then yes absolutely.

In a normal market, tech cos would have to pay for the messes they make (the negative externalities). With so much speculative financing available today, these costs are not being born by the companies creating them. Rather, random people (external parties) are forced to suck up higher electricity costs, noise, environmental degradation, new competition for water, non-employment of local people, oh yeah, and not much more to show for it than a proliferation of new forms of slop.

Tech guys: can’t you think of more economically useful products to launch?

Re: Maine is about to become the first state to ban major new data centers

#53

Post by BrenBarn »

lbarrow wrote: post #17

For people who support this kind of ban, I'd ask if you would support a similar ban on new factories for, say, car parts. Like data centers, factories use a lot of power -- which drives up electricity bills -- and their construction can have local environmental impacts. Data centers have a reputation for not providing too many local jobs, but modern factories are often highly automated and also don't provide too many…

I'm not sure how I'd feel about a ban on factories, but I think cars, as bad as they are in terms of environmental effects, are far less harmful to our society than "AI" companies and the big-tech companies that are intertwined with them (e.g., Google and Facebook).

On the flip side, I'd ask the question: if someone supports banning these data centers, why not support just banning the AI companies entirely?

Re: Maine is about to become the first state to ban major new data centers

#54

Post by rangerelf »

strongpigeon wrote: post #40
dclowd9901 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For people who don't support this kind of ban, I'd ask: What's the alternative? _Requiring_ that states house data centers?

Taxing them to account for the externalities they bring.

This right here is the right take.

Re: Maine is about to become the first state to ban major new data centers

#55

Post by bluGill »

km3r wrote: post #19
lbarrow wrote: post #17

For people who support this kind of ban, I'd ask if you would support a similar ban on new factories for, say, car parts. Like data centers, factories use a lot of power -- which drives up electricity bills -- and their construction can have local environmental impacts. Data centers have a reputation for not providing too many local jobs, but modern factories are often highly automated and also don't provide too many…

Why not just require factories /data centers invest in solar/wind/renewables to cover their power usage. Banning is so childish when there is easy solutions.

That isn't the factories job - that is your utilities job.

Re: Maine is about to become the first state to ban major new data centers

#56

Post by Bratmon »

km3r wrote: post #19
lbarrow wrote: post #17

For people who support this kind of ban, I'd ask if you would support a similar ban on new factories for, say, car parts. Like data centers, factories use a lot of power -- which drives up electricity bills -- and their construction can have local environmental impacts. Data centers have a reputation for not providing too many local jobs, but modern factories are often highly automated and also don't provide too many…

Why not just require factories /data centers invest in solar/wind/renewables to cover their power usage. Banning is so childish when there is easy solutions.

Mainers hate seeing wind and solar plants- they consider them to be a massive eyesore.

The people of Maine won't consider "We'll build something you don't like but we'll offset it by building something else you don't like" as a compromise.

Re: Maine is about to become the first state to ban major new data centers

#59

Post by bloppe »

swarnie wrote: post #43
km3r wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not just require factories /data centers invest in solar/wind/renewables to cover their power usage. Banning is so childish when there is easy solutions.

Imagine the additional space needed to power a scaled DC with solar. I think the number of people opposing the construction would increase when they release its half the county. But what's an extra 500 acres between friends.

It still makes more sense to directly regulate the thing that actually matters. People don't really care about the presence of a DC in their state. They care about the effect it might have on energy prices and potentially the effect it might have on public land use. You can always regulate the electricity market and public land use directly, instead of regulating the construction of data centers which is more of a second-order effect.

These approaches might very well result in the same outcome: fewer DCs, but it leaves the details up to dynamic market forces.

Re: Maine is about to become the first state to ban major new data centers

#60

Post by inglor_cz »

shaky-carrousel wrote: post #42
lbarrow wrote: post #17

For people who support this kind of ban, I'd ask if you would support a similar ban on new factories for, say, car parts. Like data centers, factories use a lot of power -- which drives up electricity bills -- and their construction can have local environmental impacts. Data centers have a reputation for not providing too many local jobs, but modern factories are often highly automated and also don't provide too many…

Yes, I would support a ban on new factories for, say, slot machines.

Slot machines are (ab)used by relatively few people.

OTOH the proportion of Mainers who already use or (say by 2030) will be using AI routinely in their daily lives is likely around 50 per cent. Which makes the initiative a bit of an exercise in political posturing and hypocrisy.

Reminds me a bit of all the anti-nuclear countries of Europe which nevertheless do not mind importing nuclear-generated power from their neighbours if needed.

I would definitely support tech companies charging residents and especially government offices and legislatures of such states an extra fee. As Nicholas Nassim Taleb says, having skin in the game is important, and that would at least be a form of skin in the game.

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