> Clean Air Act (CAA) Acid Rain Program (ARP) does not apply to power generation facilities that are not connected to a public electricity grid, commonly referred to as “islanded” power generation facilities.
This of course makes no sense whatever, as whether or not a power generator is connected to the grid has nothing to do with its environmental impact.
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
When it comes to laws, do you just look at the title of the law, or do you look at the actual statute and regulations to see what the law applies to and what it doesn’t? Does a “vehicle inspection program” meant for commercial trucks apply to your car just because the title fits?
Hoggish Greedly if memory serves. Regardless of one's politics Captain Planet is so campy it's fun to watch MST3K-style. Remember Linka from the Soviet Union? "Imperialist pigs!"
"Cartoon villainy" is the best possible way to describe this administration. I'm more than willing to accept lots of policy differences, but so many decisions just seem tailor made to fuck over 95%+ of the public. Like how could any sane person defend this?
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.
The AI companies look at something called the "endless government bureaucracy" and they think to themselves "fuck that, I'm not waiting 10 years for all that bullshit, I'll just use the loophole." I truly cannot comprehend any other reaction because I would rather have my fingernails ripped out than deal with years of government bureaucracy.
Government beauracracy, which provides things like democratic oversight, environmental protection, enforcing power grid standards and interoperability, construction regulations, etc? Would you rather we just didn't have those things?
It should be mind numbingly trivial to stand up a solar farm and ram through some transmission lines in the desert, and mind numbingly hard to set up a temporary gas generator. We needed regulatory exemptions yesterday for clean energy, public transit, and EV charging.
Oh it would be if AI actually made money. Turns out all those companies cheap out and don't actually want to put down the 20 billion for a nuclear reactor- which should be trivial if they were really the future!
All of them are good except for democratic oversight. Those other things are beneficial and cheap and easy to comply with. It's the democratic oversight of what gets built and where that is nothing more than a giveaway to worthless bureaucrats, lawyers, activists, and NIMBYs.
You're not thinking like a techbro. My startup shouldn't have to adhere to those regulations, but everyone else should. In fact, once my startup gets established we should make even more regulations
> I would rather have my fingernails ripped out than deal with years of government bureaucracy.
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.
Who is causing what here? If there is no demand for those services then the data center will sit there idle and cause no pollution. You can't consume services that cause pollution without accepting your share of the responsibility.
What you label "government bureaucracy" is very often environmental protections working as intended.
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.
I would rather take /them/ going through fingernail ripping government bureaucracy for 10 years over /me/ having acid raid, but hey, I'm just a egoistical and don't see the Big Picture or something.
Employees at the companies that do this stuff know exactly what these regulations are for and are violating them quite deliberately. They don't actually think it's "government bureaucracy" whatever they tell the public.
Most generators not connected to the grid are for emergency backup purposes. Granted, this carve out is now clearly being abused, but the original intent is quite rational.
If we enforced strict regulations on all generators without any exceptions at all, your sewage lift station might not have a backup source anymore.
If that is the original intent, why did that not get added into the law? Explicitly specififying that the exception only applies to emergency backup situations would have solved this, right?
Would you be OK with one specific generation station temporarily emitting 3x more than legal limit (e.g., from the hours of 2pm to 6pm) if the alternative is a 5% increase in absolute probability of a multi-day regional blackout? What about a 10% increase? Where is your red line?
My reasonable guess is that they did not want to make those case that need off-grid generation too hard to build. And never considered that anyone would build any actually significant amount of off-grid capacity. At certain threshold grid just makes economic sense. So rational actors would never do that.
Sadly AI companies are entirely irrational actors so this really was rather hard to foresee...
Yep. The loophole is not hard to close, they could restrict the exemption to standby generators which only operate (1) in the event of a grid outage, and (2) for testing purposes.
For a genuine off-grid use case (eg: very rural locations), they could add a new exemption which allows installations up to X kW capacity per site where local grid connections do not exist. Set X large enough that it won't negatively impact applications like cabins or nature retreats, but small enough that it's not useful to a large operator like a datacentre.
Of course, this all requires a functional Congress... so good luck.
Because congress passed the law in 1970 and did not expect we'd lose the ability to pass legislation that fixes minor problems with the original laws.
Since congress can't do that anymore, to maintain a functional civilization we have to turn minor loopholes in the original law into load-bearing aspects of an industrial society.
The law is not a set of hard coded rules. It is an agreement between humans, tied up in unspoken conventions. The principle one being, don't be a dick. The law always breaks down when it is treated as a hard and fast set of instructions that can be "hacked" by slavish adherence to precise language.
Many non-emergency generators are used because there is no grid to connect to and/or the power requirements are not anticipated to be permanent. The cost of a grid connection can greatly exceed anything justified by the use case.
There are entire industries that live off of large portable generators for non-emergency purposes because it is the only way to get power where you need it.
> If we enforced strict regulations on all generators without any exceptions at all, your sewage lift station might not have a backup source anymore.
No need for the FUD.
It would just mean the backup generator connected to the sewage lift station must meet emissions regulations, like in every developed country on earth.
If you’re trying to say there are simply some generators that can’t meet emissions standards, I’m going to say you just aren’t trying.
Some of the most effective emissions control equipment scales down very poorly. The bigger you can make the plant, the more viable these technologies become.
CAA regulations are all based on cost-benefit analysis and also seek to exclude sources that are basically too small to be worth regulating. In this case, the governing regulations have a complex set of criteria before the permitting requirements apply: https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-40/chapter-I/subchapter-C...
These criteria were last amended in 2001, so the EPA is just applying a 25 year old regulation here.
I think its so that like people don't need to do an EPA assessment for their home backup generator right? They are very common where I live due to the instability of the power grid.
It seems pretty much how law (specifically common law) has always worked though. If Congress thinks the law should apply to them, then Congress's job is to write a law that applies to them. The president and judicial branches are not supposed to make new laws, but rather to enforce the laws as written.
My reading of the EPA's statement here is they also wanted to mildly warn the companies that if they ever in the future want to contemplate connecting to the grid (eg. to bring down costs), they should be aware that bypassing compliance now could have expensive consequences for them later. Of course, Congress (local or federal) could also change the law in the much shorter term, so there's risk to them either way if they design without any forward thought for how to comply. On the other hand, if this inquiry to the EPA was merely requesting clarity on whether they are exempt from the reporting paperwork, but are using otherwise standard and compliant designs, then maybe the law is already working generally as intended.
Giving the benefit of the doubt to this President and his EPA that they are simply enforcing the laws as intended is foolish, irrational, and against all known evidence and their own words and policies and actions.
The effects of this will be reduced by the realization that these regulations can be changed in the future. No one will make a large capital investment if it could be shut down in a few years.
> No one will make a large capital investment if it could be shut down in a few years.
They will if they think they can bribe government to give them exemptions to the new rules or they think they can cash out and leave someone else holding the bag before that happens.
This program targets acid rain. It only applies to coal and diesel. No one is building off-grid coal power plants.
Diesel generators are the standard for power generation where a grid connection is not readily available and/or the power needs are temporary (e.g. emergency backups). Cheap, easy logistics, and durable. This use case has always been allowed in practice because there is no practical alternative. Many industries rely on diesel generators for reliable site power.
It doesn't apply to natural gas power plants such as those used in data center builds at all because they don't produce this type of pollution.
I fail to see the big deal. This guidance appears to clarify the language so that it matches actual practice and intent.
That might be a reason, but probably more relevant is the fact that when you want solar to provide all power for a data center, you need a lot of buffering capacity (batteries). And then you also need a back up for when the sun doesn't shine... Which is probably a gas generator.
AI training, not inference, seems like it would actually be a good application for a solar powered DC because you could just checkpoint and pause when it gets cloudy. It might end up worth it for the free electricity.
It doesn’t make sense to do that, hardware deprecates in 5years (it used to be 3) and is currently very expensive. So by using this approach you double the average cost of hardware per unit of compute completed.
If there wasn’t such a hardware squeeze and electricity was a higher percentage of the cost, yes, it would have made sense.
They should definitely use wind power, since you could use the fans to cool the computers at the same time!
I for one would love a nice HTTP status in the form of "due to the weather being nice and calm outside, AI services are down, go outside and enjoy the day"
If coal doesn't pencil out economically for the grid it still likely won't pencil out economically for data centers even if you remove some of the compliance stuff.
Fair enough, I don't know if it matters short term for massive buildouts, but I'm sure whatever comes out of this is not a benefit for anyone except the owners.
It seems likely to happen again. Many US utility coal fired power plants are scheduled for retirement and will not be replaced with new coal facilities. [1]
China is building lots of new coal generation, but also lots of new solar so coal use will be reduced during daylight (not the way a coal plant wants to run, but they'll adapt)
Give it a few more years and data centers with onsite coal will look like a genius cost cutting idea. Never mind all the pollution.
The hope is in a few more years, we'll not have a cult hell bent on accelerating the apocalypse in charge of the largest economy in the world, or are you guys planning something different?
A number of data centres have been proposed in Alberta, including a giant Meta one. Alberta has a derelict, obsolete power grid that can't even serve the current population, so you might wonder how that is possible.
They're coupling them with dedicated natural gas power plants. Meta finally stopped the green charade and simply dropped out of RE100, as they're all just going full speed ahead on destroying the planet.
Hmm... rules for thee but not for me. Sounds like the beginning of the end for the EPA. Two tiered rules breed resentment. There are already plenty of people that don't like the EPA. Making exceptions just makes it easier to argue the EPA is useless or just a tool for oppressing the little guy.
That's because the EPA is being run/bribed by rich assholes who are upset they can't throw their trash on the ground. Intentionally breaking something so that they can complain about how broken it is and push to eliminate it or replace it with something more favorable to them is a very old trick but it remains popular because there are gullible people who still fall for it.
>Rich assholes who are upset they can't throw their trash on the ground. Anyone else is parroting propaganda generated by said rich assholes.
Yeah, that guy who owns a liquor store on 7-mil and can't make the $100k underground stormwater treatment it would take to pave his dirt parking lot pencil out and that city in the rust belt who saw a major manufacturer pack up and leave for a desert state because environmental compliance precluded expanding their site, all their grievances are illegitimate, they're just simping for billionares and BigCos who wanna dump crap in the river.
People looking down their nose and categorically denying that there is collateral damage when you wave the wand of legislation is a large part of how the current populist got elected.
> that city in the rust belt who saw a major manufacturer pack up and leave for a desert state because environmental compliance precluded expanding their site
The one that's about to whine and demand Federal assistance when their water gets cut off because it ran out?
They had a facility with a rail siding. Cheaper to relocate to a new site with expansion potential in another state than pay the state a million bucks an acre to let them fill in wetland (a ~100yo mill pond). The city did what they could to facilitate things but it basically just came down to the discretion of the state officials who live a few hundred miles away amongst all sort of moneyed tech and medical and finance industry and don't really see any upside to economic development in the poor end of the state, especially manufacturing. We're just a line item on the welfare bill as far are they care.
The real cherry on top is that the wetland went away "naturally" as the result of a low head dam removal a few years ago, at the behest of the same agency that said you can't fill in any of the mill pond.
The site is still vacant. It got sold to a REIT that's headquartered a couple blocks from the statehouse and environmental agency. Supposedly Waste Management or Republic Services wants to buy the old site now for it's rail siding and development potential.
The former sounds like a guy being told his trash needs to be picked up and not being able to afford it so not being allowed to generate trash, and the latter was provided with no details at all so I can't evaluate it.
I chose 7-mile for my hypothetical example because the road is an absolute goldmine for "you can't do that these days it's too dense" site plans and there's at least one liquor store with a dirt lot on it but I don't recall where. The "we want to make it nicer but it's not worth the stormwater treatment cost" example is from a business down the street from me. These things get stopped at the engineer/lawyer phase when the true costs become known to the owner.
Basically all the stormwater rules BS come at the expense of incentivizing sprawl. Doesn't really matter if you're walking past 1000ft of strip mall or 500ft of fancy multi level retail with a parking garage in back with 250ft of empty grass on either side, you're still 1000ft from the bus stop.
Why is it any different from "we want an asphalt parking lot but it's not worth the asphalt cost" or "we want a giant sign but the pole to hang it on is too expensive" or "we want an asphalt parking lot but renting the machine to paint the lines is too expensive" or "we want to be open 24/7 but we can't afford to cover third shift"?
Because this is a constraint we've imposed upon ourselves to the detriment of the public. It's like how you have all sorts of workplaces with absolutely moronic rats nests of extension cords and power strips and whatnot because you don't need a permit to plug stuff in. They're following the rule and arriving at a stupider worse solution and we're all poorer for it. We could literally be richer at the stroke of a pen. Whereas to make paving cheaper we'd need to make technological progress.
Nobody's interests, except some spreadsheet pusher who's missing the big picture, and some idiot ideologues, are effectively served by putting a ton of "built to the bare minimum" green space that the users don't actually want anywhere the economic potential of the land supports more density of actual use. And if you have that density there's more than enough money kicking around to manage your stormwater more cheaply than piecemeal private solutions (basically all the same pro/con as septic vs sewer but with less digits in front of the decimal).
Yeah it's nice to have parks and recreational green space, but those are planned to be fit for that purpose. The catchment basin behind the shopping center's parking garage is only fit for making the parties that got to construct and maintain it a little richer.
Framing Trump/MAGA as some kind of divine retribution against the sins of liberals great! All bad things are caused by liberals, because MAGA is mere reaction to their actions. MAGA have no mind of their own, and thus no responsibility for their own actions.
These same types of evil people exist in droves on the right too. They just circle jerk about different topics and peddle different forms of progressivism (lowercase P!!). Right now the establishment is somewhat catering to them, much to the chagrin of the useful idiots who are all in on the other team. They were the ones screeching all throughout the last administration.
At the end of the day has very little to do with MAGA(TM) or Liberals(TM). They're just the current characters in a script that's been played a bunch of times. Kinda like how you can set the basic plot of Romeo and Juliet in any century. From the Tea Party to the Ron Paul thing to the Bernie bros to MAGA the populist movements will keep arising so long as the "we know what's best we're so smart" crowd continues to do things at the expense of the average person. Whether that's back handed environmentalism or facilitating monopolistic big business (or both, for these two examples often go hand in hand) doesn't really matter. The average person doesn't like it even if they can't quite articulate why. And so the populists will keep coming, until one day one shows up that the system can't de-fang. Who knows what'll happen then but I'd bet a lot of money we won't get a stronger EPA or a more favorable environment for big business out of it.
The so-called "Tea Party" was not a "populist movement". It was a billionaire-funded (notably by the Koch brothers, but also by fossil fuel and tobacco companies) astroturf operation.
Correct. The people that don’t like the EPA appointed their friends who also don’t like the EPA to run the EPA.
This is the playbook generally - PE vulturism, but for government agencies. And to their credit it kinda works. Just… not for citizens of the country they have sworn to protect.
Currently in progress at GSA, OPM, CFPB (for a decade+), Interior, EPA, labor, education… Nevermind I should’ve started with an exclusion list instead.
Right? This isnt the first chapter in a long story to come. This is the middle of the book where the villain has all but the final stone of the gauntlet but rather than put up a strong resistance we appear to have elected sycophants who are just watching and saying “dont let him get that stone”
Clarification: During his first term, Donald Trump appointed former Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt as the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). In his role as state attorney general, Pruitt had sued the EPA multiple times to challenge federal environmental regulations, including the Clean Power Plan and the Waters of the United States rule.
> Sounds like the beginning of the end for the EPA
The beginning of the end of the EPA started the day Trump was sworn in. In the last few years several cases have been decided by this Supreme Court that have effectively reduced the EPA to an advisory board, like a group of consultants that have no real authority over anything.
And this same behavior is how Republicans prove their own theory that the Government is useless and evil and bad. Because they do everything in their power to actually make it useless and evil and bad. Do not blame this on the "EPA" as an agency. Put the blame where it goes: conservatives actively sabotaging government programs.
You're neithersidesing an issue where clearly one partisan group is doing evil things to actively make the situation worse and then "see, told you!"
Okay? That has nothing to do with what I said, what about the Biden admin helping run cover for the Gaza genocide? Was that not a case of putting profits, the military industrial complex, above people?
What about when Clinton signed NAFTA and condemned swaths of the US to poverty (rustbelt is not a term of endearment)?
I mean this country's founding document had carveouts for slavers and some of the first laws signed into Congress was the fugitive slave act.
Sorry but it's not US leadership that cares about Americans, it has always been Americans themselves fighting for justice + a better a life.
I am not hand waving anything, this is the reality of neoliberalism and has been a core American trait since our founding: some Americans are more equal than others, elites deserve more money.
There was only a small period of time in our country's history, 1940s to late 1960s, where workers had a true say at the table:
We have yet to return to the only period of history that not only improved the lives of workers materially, but also spiritually by increasing civil rights and making it so that the first time in our nation's history that every American had the legal right to vote.
I mean FFS our leaders are literally allowed to engage in insider trading and legalized bribes, you're trying to tell me with a straight face that these same ghouls somehow have a soul and want to save the planet?
Allowing more carbon dioxide sources is going to be distinctly harmful to profits in the mid-term. As with racial bias, strict gender roles, anti-vaxxing, and being anti-science, being pro-carbon burn is ultimately a foolish anti-truth stance as silly and ill-outcomed as any three year old insisting that they can stay up all night.
Do the octogenarians in power not remember when they couldn’t breathe because of the lead in the gas in the 60s and the lack of emissions controls on everything? Do they yearn for the mines and coal dust of early industrial England?
Everybody loves clean air and water but apparently forget why they have it in the first place.
> Do the octogenarians in power not remember when they couldn’t breathe because of the lead in the gas in the 60s and the lack of emissions controls on everything
No because they were extremely rich and lived in massive houses set far back from the city streets filled with polluting cars and well away from factories spewing poison into the air. They've lived perfectly comfortable lives in climate controlled and filtered spaces and traveled around to beautiful remote areas where poor people can never go and the pollution had barely touched. They know that they and their families can buy a comfortable and safe life no matter how miserable and sick they make the rest of us. They will always have healthy food and clean water no matter how many of us don't.
Our government works best when it's "of the people" but instead the octogenarians in power have almost nothing in common with us (even most of us here, in a forum filled with very wealthy people) and so their interests are not our interests and our concerns are not shared by them.
Most of those octogenarians weren't responsible for any of that. Their parents did it for them. If you're 80 you came of age in the 60's, and you wouldn't have been eligible for the Senate or the Presidency until 1970 or 1975. The decline of the US started pretty much when the baby boomers came to power and the people who fought WWII were all retiring.
The law was specifically written to exclude things like independent power sources and backup generators etc...
From 42 U.S.C. § 7651a(17)(A) [1] which defines the power generation units that are covered by the law:
"(17)
(A)The term “utility unit” means—
(i)a unit that serves a generator in any State that produces electricity for sale, or
(ii)a unit that, during 1985, served a generator in any State that produced electricity for sale."
The key phrasing there is "for sale". The clarification from the EPA simply restated that these units don't fall under the regulatory authority because under a plain reading of the law, they are not generating power for sale. [2]
The EPA certainly cites Trump's power agenda several times, but that doesn't make the plain text interpretation of the law wrong.
This is exactly what the leadership wanted. And as they won the election. Not like in 2016 (where more people voted for the other guy but they won due to the difference in power of votes), or in 2020 (where they lost), they won a clear outright victory, it's exactly what the USA wanted.
I'm not sure it's fair to characterize 49.8% of the vote as a "clear outright victory". Harris got 48.3%; that's a pretty close to even split. The majority of voters didn't vote for this.
It is nonsensical to consider popular vote numbers in an election not decided on the popular vote. How many Democrats stayed home in red states because they knew their vote wouldn't matter? And how many Republicans stayed home in blue states for the same reason? It's unknowable. I'm all for the presidency being decided by popular vote, but until it is there is no point using those statistically-flawed numbers in any debate.
> How many Democrats stayed home in red states because they knew their vote wouldn't matter? And how many Republicans stayed home in blue states for the same reason? It's unknowable.
Just to add on, not voting in decided states is appealing for the winning party as well as the losing party.
Personally, I think a nationwide popular vote would be a logistical disaster, especially in the modern era of alternative facts.
The majority of voters who voted for president got the president they wanted. With a president comes admin of all these agencies. So yeah they voted for this.
In theory the US has checks and balances. Ask 10 years ago if you could have a president selling national secrets via an api and you'd be laughed out of the room.
Carter had to sell his peanut farm. Trump makes billions each year.
Is there a word for this behavior where a politician wins by the slimmest of margins in a first past the post election and then spins it as a mandate from The People instead of an incredibly tight split?
If you are talking about the billionaires and trillionaire who spent as much as they could to get this elected then you are correct it is what THEY wanted.
Thank you. This seems like a pretty straight-forward clarification of current law. The current thread title (OP said taken from Reuters) saying this side-steps the law seems misleading.
For sure, an argument can be made that the text of the law could be tightened up. In my opinion, there's nothing in that text that would exclude these generators. In addition the rationale provide for excluding these generators seems... disingenuous at best.
The entire argument rests on a 36-year-old survey form: "DOE Form 860 (1990) defines electric utility to mean 'a corporation, person, agency, authority, or other legal entity or instrumentality that owns and/or operates facilities within the United States for the generation, transmission, distribution, or sale of electric energy primarily for use by the public.'"
So the leap is: an old survey form says "sale of electric energy primarily for use by the public," therefore anything not grid-connected isn't a sale to the public.
No assessment of prior practice, history, the plain meaning of the statute, or other statutory exemptions. And there are grid-connected plants serving a single customer so why the distinction?
Why the 1990 form? Congress froze it into the statute so a survey agency couldn't rewrite Clean Air Act coverage by editing a questionnaire. EPA is now exploiting that freeze by treating the form's obsolete boilerplate as substantive law; a taxonomy EIA itself abandoned, since modern EIA-860 covers essentially all generators above 1 MW, grid or not.
It's as if Congress defined citizenship by reference to a 1990 Census form, and the agency decided who's a citizen by parsing the instruction booklet.
100% complete BS. The silver lining is that without Chevron deference, this "interpretation" won't survive litigation, though the memo's "not final agency action" disclaimer means challengers may have to wait for an actual permitting decision to sue.
its very much using the letter to violate the spirit - since the pollution is emitted regardless of whether the plant is grid-connected. these datacenter plants don't run as clean or as efficient as proper power plants, but the primary acid rain contributor is no2. how much are we really talking about?
No it isn't. Otherwise the entire concept of Original Intent would be dead in the water rather than a cornerstone of how multiple federal judges all the way to the Supreme court rule on cases.
apparently you're very excited about this partisan victory. at some point we do need to actually think about how to effectively manage the country. there should be a back and forth about the appropriate degree of environmental regulation since it is a tradeoff between economic constraint and qualify of life.
I grew up in the 70s, and my father was a Nixon supporting environmental engineer. At the time the amount of nitrogen and sulfur being emitted into the air in the northeast was turning surface water into acid. a ph of 6 was getting quite common, 4 wasn't unusual, and if you were in a bad spot it was approaching 1. Not only would that water not support life, or be unsafe to drink, but it was actually unsafe to touch.
So if we were reasonable people we would look at the economic activity and the upside of burning these gasses, and add up the numbers and based on past experience make a very reasonable estimate of the impact, and make a decision.
but we fired all those people, and we're very much not interested in having this discussion. I fail to see how that's a win for anyone except the polluter.
What are you basing your they are not as clean assertion on? It's more likely that data center generation can be run continuously instead of turning on and off according to market prices. Can see the swing in amount of natural gas production during a day, https://www.gridstatus.io/live/ercot
This is so amateurish. This document misquotes its own authorities, with grade-school grammar mistakes:
> "In particular, while a “utility” under ARP regulations includes any person that sells electricity, the 1990 edition of DOE Form 860 only covers those electricity generators who sell “electric energy primary [sic] for use by the public.”
Said "1990 edition of DOE Form 860" is included on page 8 of the pdf, and it very clearly reads "primarily"; not "primary". As is proper English.
There are big benefits to having power generation grid connected.
It is more reliable (due to many possible generation sources). It is more eco-friendly (solar in daytime, wind when the wind blows). It is more cost efficient (no need to overbuild for peak usage, generators don't sit idle when computers are off for maintenance).
Yet our electricity grid has such a mass of regulations attached that people are choosing to lose these benefits - and with it we lose the benefit of them connecting to our grid.
That's partly a result of having 50 states writing laws for themselves instead having all statues living under federal laws for everything. The line between what is acceptable to be regulated by federal laws and what is not is something I, not being a lawyer, have never studied. Power and water type utilities does feel like it might be something that could benefit from same rules/regulations every where, but basing regulations on feelings is probably not the best bit of logic
Exactly. Think how much more efficient our government could be if we had one centrally planned government instead of 50 sovereign states. Sometimes I wish I could move to the USSR.
For the most part power grids are federally regulated. The exception is Texas because they are self-contained and don't cross state lines
States rights is not why there are issues with the power grid
EDIT: I should add, states DO also regulate electric utilities but generally that is around local issues like charging rates to customers. the bulk electric system (transmission and generation) is largely the domain of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
Depends. Getting a grid connection, and all the equipment to connect and step down with negotiating prices is not always fun. Especially as there is a limited amount of power on the grid. its not a free lunch and takes time.
Its far easier to just slap shitty local generators on and live off the crappy noisy electricity they provide.
It's ironic when data center operators, who I'd expect to be experts on calculating complex cost/benefit scenarios, check for & arrange what's needed, sidestep better solutions because there's a bunch of requirements attached.
Attaching to the grid, at the powers desired, in the locations desired involves years of waiting beyond construction. Onsite genetation can be built within the overall construction timeline.
Maybe poor site selection, but I'm sure there's a cost optimization there. And my understanding is that there's not a whole lot of excess grid capacity around the country at the moment. Utilities are spending a lot of resources on changing the mix of generation and wildfire mitigation and don't have a lot of resources for adding generation capacity beyond what is immediately needed or increasing interconnection capacity.
This is different than the data center boom in the .com era; site selection was different, the grid situation was different, and the data centers being built were smaller loads.
Those regulations are there for a reason though. I’ll never understand this logic. We have regulations so things are clean and safe. Yes, it would be easier to not have those regulations and just have dirty and unsafe electricity. But that’s the cost of having a business and also having a clean and safe society. Corporations love to externalize costs and that’s what’s happening here again.
The exemption for non-public generators is there for a reason too.
There are lots of businesses and homes with onsite generation for various reasons, and most of them run for less than 100 hours per year. Not a lot of reason to add a reporting requirement and a strong emissions requirement.
Focusing on large scale generation was a good choice (that has worked for decades).
In an ideal world, congress would see this and adapt the rules to apply here as well. Probably an hour limit or a capacity limit or some combination would be a better discriminator than for public use.
Becoming and staying a leader in innovation sometimes requires shortcuts. You can also frame a law to make that exception specific for an industry, a field or a group so it doesn't become the norm (or time box it, if you want). You need innovation, there is no other way USA can lead in AI if you don't build these damn data centers.
Come to live in Europe and you will see how nice it is to stagnate because rule A depends on rule B, but there is an exception C that requires D....
Right, I can only imagine the most foolish DC operators are excited about this. Just more gas on the political fire, when DCs should be boring and out of public politics, even if they rank 15th for water consumption and 8th for energy consumption.
The bipartisan opinion shift towards absolute hate for data centers was extremely fast.
Just adding more fuel to one of the brightest fires out there in politics right now. Expect it to continue and grow as people feel even less heard, and any negative media towards data centers gets lots of clicks.
The AI companies and Trump seem to be doing everything they can to encourage this.
What's frustrating is that the title in this thread is very misleading. This is the way the laws have been: Separate laws for generators feeding into the grid.
Why this is, I don't know. I suspect it's because the vast, vast, majority of non-connected generators were, (until now,) backup generators that only ran occasionally. I even have a "fancy" portable generator in my garage that probably emits way more pollution per kwh than a typical fossil fuel plant, but I probably only run it ~10 hours a year at most.
What's more disappointing is that this loophole is being promoted instead of closed; but everyone here seems to think that laws were weakened.
I suspected that this was the case as the president can't just invent new laws on a whim. They have a fair amount of leeway on their interpretation of laws re: directions to the administration on how/when to do things but they can't just invent a law from thin air.
Also I mean what constitutes a generator if it isn't something connected to the grid? If my car has an engine and it also has a small inverter and an AC outlet is that now a generator and subject to generator laws in addition to car laws?
They can, however, just refuse to enforce a law, or start enforcing the opposite of a law. While they may not be able to change the words on the page, the effect is identical.
Beyond stupid. Why there are any "power generation" mechanisms that could produce air pollutantion in this decade is already incomprehensible. Making rules to allow for them on purpose is even dumber.
First they say data centers should pay their own way on power infrastructure, then when they start springing up entirely off-grid and fully self-funded power infrastructure, suddenly there's a new problem.
The problem was never power or water (water being a known Chinese spy op after Karen Hao was caught exaggerating water usage by 1,000x in her book).
Correct. The problem isn't just data centers or power or water, it's that left unchecked these greedy people will risk the power grid, drain rivers/reservoirs/aquifers, and destroy our natural environment (and cities) with pollution because it's more profitable than doing things the right way. I think more than anything we want responsible, friendly neighbors who are mindful of the impact they have in the areas where they operate.
They're callous, reckless, have no concern for anything but their money. And "self-funded" isn't even true, the tax breaks and negative externalities of these data centers will be paid by the people (see: xAI and Memphis.)
inb4 i'm a chinese operative because I mentioned water. Get bent, I think grass farmers in the desert should be forced to get real jobs instead of exporting our water to China/Saudi Arabia as cattle feed. And people who farm real crops should be forced to convert to less water-intensive methods or shut down.
I'm trying to build a torment nexus and these negative ninnies complained that it used up all the electricity, so I made a machine that turns breathable air into toxic smoke to power the nexus and they don't like that ether!
It is not a new problem. Look at Musk's Tennessee data centers to see the problems with off-grid data centers that don't have good pollution controls.
Second, in many places power is a problem with AI data centers that do want grid power. I don't think you realize just how many new AI data center projects there are and how much more power they use than a normal data center. Combined with the short timeline these projects want they need grid expansion far beyond what anyone had in their long term grid planning.
The environmental impacts of how that power is generated is not a sudden or new concern, it was a concern even if the power was delivered via the grid or not and the fact that the power is generated on site or whatever does not alleviate that concern
You're saying multiple wrong ways to do a thing is evidence that the thing is undesirable?
Why don't you want an auto repair shop in the house next door, and why won't you let them pour old engine oil on your lawn? Are you anti-car-repair? All your "noise and pollution" complaints sound like psy ops to me, paid for by the Chinese EV industry.
The most ironic part of this is that data center pollution will impact Trump supporters the most. In 5-to-10 years, after swimming in the same river their parents and grandparents swam in, kids will start develop breathing complications or their teeth will fall out, and there won't be anything anyone can do about it. Congratulations, MAGA, you played yourself.
They really accel at making people their supporters don't like, angry. To gleefully rub your hands together while your enemies cry is a dream for some.
Everyone is doing it all around you. We can mostly blame the people who make AI but we also have to blame everyone who’s using it. We can boycott AI until they make it safe and clean to use. Until then, everyone’s to blame that uses it or builds it.
Boycotts basically don't work unless you get a big percentage of the company's customers to simultaneously agree to boycott that company because they are really angry. Nobody's really angry at chatgpt.
According to this administration, there isn't one. They have told us this for years, but I guess nobody believed them??? It just took someone willing to not give a damn about working with others and just forcing their will upon others. After all, the people elected them and they are just carrying through with their well advertised plans.
Let this sink in. Nobody cares about you and your children. They don’t care about the planet. These people are sociopaths. A lot of you work for these people. And a lot of you should stop working for these people. And if you’re using AI, you should stop using AI and you should make your boycott vocal.
This is not about Trump. This is not about Republicans or Democrats. This is about people who have the money who control all of those people. The AI play is nothing but pure greed. They don’t want to make your life better. They’re actively making your life. worse while they’re getting rich.
Its for the greater good. Net benefit would still be in data centers favour, as AI replaces useless office workers, it will lower carbon footprint of all those people commuting by car / needing to work in cities. More people living in nature in the country side, doing something productive in the new economy, growing their food. Just invest in banks, to ride out the transition.
AI is making working from home much easier than ever before. You don't really need to live in a city to have a tech career now, and it will accelerate. We don't really need so many office workers going forward in cities. Almost anything they decide to do instead, will more productive in the economy than being a useless cubicle monkey thats no longer needed because AI can do it better.
Sure, they'll be unemployed until they chose to do something else that people will pay for. Like I was reading some guy is making downloads for Minecraft and making great living in it (science fiction a few decades ago). Worse case scenerio, move to the country side, and homestead. Thats how people survived wars and famines. Surely they can survive a tech transition.
Probably not much. But even if it's zero, it's still better than falling behind in a City. The profit margins of being a wagie living in a city, is just a few hundred dollars left over a month, if that. Statistics back this up. Almost all of the money goes to rent and basic necessities now. Most people are broke! In a relatively wealthy country like Canada, something like 10 million / 40 million have food insecurity. 2 million regularly go to food banks. They're trapped by the system, and failing city life and rising inflation. If anything homesteading would be preferable as it would give some independence (own their land) and better shot at food security.
Thirty healthy laying hens will produce about 21 to 24 eggs a day, which can gross you roughly $262 to $300 a month if sold at $5 per dozen.
10 bee hives, making 8,000-10,000 dollars a year profit.
Supplement that with even a part time manual labor job, or a remote tech job.
> Clean Air Act (CAA) Acid Rain Program (ARP) does not apply to power generation facilities that are not connected to a public electricity grid, commonly referred to as “islanded” power generation facilities.
This of course makes no sense whatever, as whether or not a power generator is connected to the grid has nothing to do with its environmental impact.
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
> truly cannot comprehend the mindset
The mindset is "if I could harvest your organs for profit I absolutely would, and I would make it illegal to protest against it"
That’s completely unfair. They would also rent the organs back to us on a subscription plan.
Step 1: steal all of the worlds IP and make a judge rule it is fair use
Step 2: declare end of the Anthropocene (defined by man made influence on earth), while simultaneously accelerating mass extinction
Step 3: ???
Step 4: Profit?
They definitely use three exclamation points instead of that last question mark.
Do not forget loans with APR starting at 24%. Recourse of course. With the collateral taken back if payments fail.
I recommend wathching "Repo! The Genetic Opera" on this subject.
When it comes to laws, do you just look at the title of the law, or do you look at the actual statute and regulations to see what the law applies to and what it doesn’t? Does a “vehicle inspection program” meant for commercial trucks apply to your car just because the title fits?
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...
I think you nailed the mindset with the "cartoon villain".
Less Snydley Whiplash and more the pig guy from captain planet though
Hoggish Greedly if memory serves. Regardless of one's politics Captain Planet is so campy it's fun to watch MST3K-style. Remember Linka from the Soviet Union? "Imperialist pigs!"
Both of whom could happily sit together on a corporate board. It's just capitalism!
"Cartoon villainy" is the best possible way to describe this administration. I'm more than willing to accept lots of policy differences, but so many decisions just seem tailor made to fuck over 95%+ of the public. Like how could any sane person defend this?
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.
The AI companies look at something called the "endless government bureaucracy" and they think to themselves "fuck that, I'm not waiting 10 years for all that bullshit, I'll just use the loophole." I truly cannot comprehend any other reaction because I would rather have my fingernails ripped out than deal with years of government bureaucracy.
Government beauracracy, which provides things like democratic oversight, environmental protection, enforcing power grid standards and interoperability, construction regulations, etc? Would you rather we just didn't have those things?
It should be mind numbingly trivial to stand up a solar farm and ram through some transmission lines in the desert, and mind numbingly hard to set up a temporary gas generator. We needed regulatory exemptions yesterday for clean energy, public transit, and EV charging.
Oh it would be if AI actually made money. Turns out all those companies cheap out and don't actually want to put down the 20 billion for a nuclear reactor- which should be trivial if they were really the future!
All of them are good except for democratic oversight. Those other things are beneficial and cheap and easy to comply with. It's the democratic oversight of what gets built and where that is nothing more than a giveaway to worthless bureaucrats, lawyers, activists, and NIMBYs.
You're not thinking like a techbro. My startup shouldn't have to adhere to those regulations, but everyone else should. In fact, once my startup gets established we should make even more regulations
> I would rather have my fingernails ripped out than deal with years of government bureaucracy.
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.
Who is causing what here? If there is no demand for those services then the data center will sit there idle and cause no pollution. You can't consume services that cause pollution without accepting your share of the responsibility.
Do you get upset when staff have to wash their hands at your local eatery?
What you label "government bureaucracy" is very often environmental protections working as intended.
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.
I would rather take /them/ going through fingernail ripping government bureaucracy for 10 years over /me/ having acid raid, but hey, I'm just a egoistical and don't see the Big Picture or something.
>Big picture
Well, if you juuust let the rich get richer, something (intentionally left unspecified) will trickle down on you.
Yeah, username checks out
Employees at the companies that do this stuff know exactly what these regulations are for and are violating them quite deliberately. They don't actually think it's "government bureaucracy" whatever they tell the public.
Why am I still surprised to see such braindead takes on this site
Most generators not connected to the grid are for emergency backup purposes. Granted, this carve out is now clearly being abused, but the original intent is quite rational.
If we enforced strict regulations on all generators without any exceptions at all, your sewage lift station might not have a backup source anymore.
If that is the original intent, why did that not get added into the law? Explicitly specififying that the exception only applies to emergency backup situations would have solved this, right?
"Emergency" is a spectrum.
Would you be OK with one specific generation station temporarily emitting 3x more than legal limit (e.g., from the hours of 2pm to 6pm) if the alternative is a 5% increase in absolute probability of a multi-day regional blackout? What about a 10% increase? Where is your red line?
Isn't the US in a perpetual state of emergency?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_emergencies_i...
My reasonable guess is that they did not want to make those case that need off-grid generation too hard to build. And never considered that anyone would build any actually significant amount of off-grid capacity. At certain threshold grid just makes economic sense. So rational actors would never do that.
Sadly AI companies are entirely irrational actors so this really was rather hard to foresee...
Yep. The loophole is not hard to close, they could restrict the exemption to standby generators which only operate (1) in the event of a grid outage, and (2) for testing purposes.
For a genuine off-grid use case (eg: very rural locations), they could add a new exemption which allows installations up to X kW capacity per site where local grid connections do not exist. Set X large enough that it won't negatively impact applications like cabins or nature retreats, but small enough that it's not useful to a large operator like a datacentre.
Of course, this all requires a functional Congress... so good luck.
Because congress passed the law in 1970 and did not expect we'd lose the ability to pass legislation that fixes minor problems with the original laws.
Since congress can't do that anymore, to maintain a functional civilization we have to turn minor loopholes in the original law into load-bearing aspects of an industrial society.
Clearly codifying intent in a string of bytes is hard, especially if an alternative makes a nice sound folding into a pocket.
The law is not a set of hard coded rules. It is an agreement between humans, tied up in unspoken conventions. The principle one being, don't be a dick. The law always breaks down when it is treated as a hard and fast set of instructions that can be "hacked" by slavish adherence to precise language.
It isn't just emergency generators.
Many non-emergency generators are used because there is no grid to connect to and/or the power requirements are not anticipated to be permanent. The cost of a grid connection can greatly exceed anything justified by the use case.
There are entire industries that live off of large portable generators for non-emergency purposes because it is the only way to get power where you need it.
> If we enforced strict regulations on all generators without any exceptions at all, your sewage lift station might not have a backup source anymore.
No need for the FUD.
It would just mean the backup generator connected to the sewage lift station must meet emissions regulations, like in every developed country on earth.
If you’re trying to say there are simply some generators that can’t meet emissions standards, I’m going to say you just aren’t trying.
Yes, that's what we're saying. A small generator cannot meet the emissions standards of a large generator.
Some of the most effective emissions control equipment scales down very poorly. The bigger you can make the plant, the more viable these technologies become.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet_scrubber
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_catalytic_reduction
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_emissions_monitorin...
(et. al.)
CAA regulations are all based on cost-benefit analysis and also seek to exclude sources that are basically too small to be worth regulating. In this case, the governing regulations have a complex set of criteria before the permitting requirements apply: https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-40/chapter-I/subchapter-C...
These criteria were last amended in 2001, so the EPA is just applying a 25 year old regulation here.
I think its so that like people don't need to do an EPA assessment for their home backup generator right? They are very common where I live due to the instability of the power grid.
It seems pretty much how law (specifically common law) has always worked though. If Congress thinks the law should apply to them, then Congress's job is to write a law that applies to them. The president and judicial branches are not supposed to make new laws, but rather to enforce the laws as written.
My reading of the EPA's statement here is they also wanted to mildly warn the companies that if they ever in the future want to contemplate connecting to the grid (eg. to bring down costs), they should be aware that bypassing compliance now could have expensive consequences for them later. Of course, Congress (local or federal) could also change the law in the much shorter term, so there's risk to them either way if they design without any forward thought for how to comply. On the other hand, if this inquiry to the EPA was merely requesting clarity on whether they are exempt from the reporting paperwork, but are using otherwise standard and compliant designs, then maybe the law is already working generally as intended.
Giving the benefit of the doubt to this President and his EPA that they are simply enforcing the laws as intended is foolish, irrational, and against all known evidence and their own words and policies and actions.
It makes sense when you consider that the CAA is legal under the interstate commerce clause.
We have state regulations that could solve this if they wanted to.
The effects of this will be reduced by the realization that these regulations can be changed in the future. No one will make a large capital investment if it could be shut down in a few years.
> No one will make a large capital investment if it could be shut down in a few years.
They will if they think they can bribe government to give them exemptions to the new rules or they think they can cash out and leave someone else holding the bag before that happens.
Most regulations provide a grandfather clause that exempt existing players in the game.
There is no need in law for that. And if previous regulations were enacted in bad faith, it suck to be you if you depended on them.
This program targets acid rain. It only applies to coal and diesel. No one is building off-grid coal power plants.
Diesel generators are the standard for power generation where a grid connection is not readily available and/or the power needs are temporary (e.g. emergency backups). Cheap, easy logistics, and durable. This use case has always been allowed in practice because there is no practical alternative. Many industries rely on diesel generators for reliable site power.
It doesn't apply to natural gas power plants such as those used in data center builds at all because they don't produce this type of pollution.
I fail to see the big deal. This guidance appears to clarify the language so that it matches actual practice and intent.
It does make some sense. There are some semi-reasonable scenarios where not that much power is needed and you use electricity.
Still they make no sense with data centres and there should be reasonably sensible name plate capacity on it.
But it does have to do with whether it's interstate commerce!
At this point, they can just disband the EPA, what a bunch of crooks.
No, no, no you don't understand it's beyond the environment, it's not in an environment, it's been towed beyond the environment.
You are being confused by the names. A general name doesn't mean it is a general law that applies to everyone.
Pretty insane, expect data center to be data center + coal power plant soon, why bother with generators or the pesky local grid.
Somebody mentioned that a solar panel field to power a data center requires a lot of impact assessment paper work and approvals.
Whereas natural gas generators do not.
Hence the runs on gas turbines, while solar panels are plentiful. ( Although I'd guess the consistency of power is a bigger issue. )
Running existing coal is now supposedly more expensive then putting in new wind or solar ... all else being equal.
That might be a reason, but probably more relevant is the fact that when you want solar to provide all power for a data center, you need a lot of buffering capacity (batteries). And then you also need a back up for when the sun doesn't shine... Which is probably a gas generator.
Easier to just install a gas generator then
AI training, not inference, seems like it would actually be a good application for a solar powered DC because you could just checkpoint and pause when it gets cloudy. It might end up worth it for the free electricity.
If you think you are building God, and every second counts, interruptions cost you way more than measly electricity.
It doesn’t make sense to do that, hardware deprecates in 5years (it used to be 3) and is currently very expensive. So by using this approach you double the average cost of hardware per unit of compute completed.
If there wasn’t such a hardware squeeze and electricity was a higher percentage of the cost, yes, it would have made sense.
If we didn’t have stupid regulatory bullshit and protectionism, it would be cheaper to run a data center on solar and batteries in bumfuck Nevada
They should definitely use wind power, since you could use the fans to cool the computers at the same time!
I for one would love a nice HTTP status in the form of "due to the weather being nice and calm outside, AI services are down, go outside and enjoy the day"
Imposing rules like that is what we are supposed to use religion for.
If coal doesn't pencil out economically for the grid it still likely won't pencil out economically for data centers even if you remove some of the compliance stuff.
Fair enough, I don't know if it matters short term for massive buildouts, but I'm sure whatever comes out of this is not a benefit for anyone except the owners.
> expect data center to be data center + coal power plant soon
Why do you think that’s likely?
Because coal is the cheapest source of electricity that isn't banned in the USA.
Are you looking at a textbook from the 1990s or something? I'm sure that was true at some point, but it hasn't been true for a long time.
It seems likely to happen again. Many US utility coal fired power plants are scheduled for retirement and will not be replaced with new coal facilities. [1]
China is building lots of new coal generation, but also lots of new solar so coal use will be reduced during daylight (not the way a coal plant wants to run, but they'll adapt)
Give it a few more years and data centers with onsite coal will look like a genius cost cutting idea. Never mind all the pollution.
[1] https://ieefa.org/resources/nowhere-go-down-us-coal-capacity...
The hope is in a few more years, we'll not have a cult hell bent on accelerating the apocalypse in charge of the largest economy in the world, or are you guys planning something different?
A number of data centres have been proposed in Alberta, including a giant Meta one. Alberta has a derelict, obsolete power grid that can't even serve the current population, so you might wonder how that is possible.
They're coupling them with dedicated natural gas power plants. Meta finally stopped the green charade and simply dropped out of RE100, as they're all just going full speed ahead on destroying the planet.
Hmm... rules for thee but not for me. Sounds like the beginning of the end for the EPA. Two tiered rules breed resentment. There are already plenty of people that don't like the EPA. Making exceptions just makes it easier to argue the EPA is useless or just a tool for oppressing the little guy.
> There are already plenty of people that don't like the EPA.
Rich assholes who are upset they can't throw their trash on the ground. Anyone else is parroting propaganda generated by said rich assholes.
I don't think that's true. There's probably a valid critique that they're doing their job badly.
That's because the EPA is being run/bribed by rich assholes who are upset they can't throw their trash on the ground. Intentionally breaking something so that they can complain about how broken it is and push to eliminate it or replace it with something more favorable to them is a very old trick but it remains popular because there are gullible people who still fall for it.
>Rich assholes who are upset they can't throw their trash on the ground. Anyone else is parroting propaganda generated by said rich assholes.
Yeah, that guy who owns a liquor store on 7-mil and can't make the $100k underground stormwater treatment it would take to pave his dirt parking lot pencil out and that city in the rust belt who saw a major manufacturer pack up and leave for a desert state because environmental compliance precluded expanding their site, all their grievances are illegitimate, they're just simping for billionares and BigCos who wanna dump crap in the river.
People looking down their nose and categorically denying that there is collateral damage when you wave the wand of legislation is a large part of how the current populist got elected.
> that city in the rust belt who saw a major manufacturer pack up and leave for a desert state because environmental compliance precluded expanding their site
The one that's about to whine and demand Federal assistance when their water gets cut off because it ran out?
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/21/climate/colorado-river-wa...
No this was a plastic molding company ~10yr ago.
Edit:
They had a facility with a rail siding. Cheaper to relocate to a new site with expansion potential in another state than pay the state a million bucks an acre to let them fill in wetland (a ~100yo mill pond). The city did what they could to facilitate things but it basically just came down to the discretion of the state officials who live a few hundred miles away amongst all sort of moneyed tech and medical and finance industry and don't really see any upside to economic development in the poor end of the state, especially manufacturing. We're just a line item on the welfare bill as far are they care.
The real cherry on top is that the wetland went away "naturally" as the result of a low head dam removal a few years ago, at the behest of the same agency that said you can't fill in any of the mill pond.
The site is still vacant. It got sold to a REIT that's headquartered a couple blocks from the statehouse and environmental agency. Supposedly Waste Management or Republic Services wants to buy the old site now for it's rail siding and development potential.
Do their employees not need water?
Did that happen?
The former sounds like a guy being told his trash needs to be picked up and not being able to afford it so not being allowed to generate trash, and the latter was provided with no details at all so I can't evaluate it.
>Did that happen?
I chose 7-mile for my hypothetical example because the road is an absolute goldmine for "you can't do that these days it's too dense" site plans and there's at least one liquor store with a dirt lot on it but I don't recall where. The "we want to make it nicer but it's not worth the stormwater treatment cost" example is from a business down the street from me. These things get stopped at the engineer/lawyer phase when the true costs become known to the owner.
Basically all the stormwater rules BS come at the expense of incentivizing sprawl. Doesn't really matter if you're walking past 1000ft of strip mall or 500ft of fancy multi level retail with a parking garage in back with 250ft of empty grass on either side, you're still 1000ft from the bus stop.
Why is it any different from "we want an asphalt parking lot but it's not worth the asphalt cost" or "we want a giant sign but the pole to hang it on is too expensive" or "we want an asphalt parking lot but renting the machine to paint the lines is too expensive" or "we want to be open 24/7 but we can't afford to cover third shift"?
Because this is a constraint we've imposed upon ourselves to the detriment of the public. It's like how you have all sorts of workplaces with absolutely moronic rats nests of extension cords and power strips and whatnot because you don't need a permit to plug stuff in. They're following the rule and arriving at a stupider worse solution and we're all poorer for it. We could literally be richer at the stroke of a pen. Whereas to make paving cheaper we'd need to make technological progress.
Nobody's interests, except some spreadsheet pusher who's missing the big picture, and some idiot ideologues, are effectively served by putting a ton of "built to the bare minimum" green space that the users don't actually want anywhere the economic potential of the land supports more density of actual use. And if you have that density there's more than enough money kicking around to manage your stormwater more cheaply than piecemeal private solutions (basically all the same pro/con as septic vs sewer but with less digits in front of the decimal).
Yeah it's nice to have parks and recreational green space, but those are planned to be fit for that purpose. The catchment basin behind the shopping center's parking garage is only fit for making the parties that got to construct and maintain it a little richer.
Framing Trump/MAGA as some kind of divine retribution against the sins of liberals great! All bad things are caused by liberals, because MAGA is mere reaction to their actions. MAGA have no mind of their own, and thus no responsibility for their own actions.
These same types of evil people exist in droves on the right too. They just circle jerk about different topics and peddle different forms of progressivism (lowercase P!!). Right now the establishment is somewhat catering to them, much to the chagrin of the useful idiots who are all in on the other team. They were the ones screeching all throughout the last administration.
At the end of the day has very little to do with MAGA(TM) or Liberals(TM). They're just the current characters in a script that's been played a bunch of times. Kinda like how you can set the basic plot of Romeo and Juliet in any century. From the Tea Party to the Ron Paul thing to the Bernie bros to MAGA the populist movements will keep arising so long as the "we know what's best we're so smart" crowd continues to do things at the expense of the average person. Whether that's back handed environmentalism or facilitating monopolistic big business (or both, for these two examples often go hand in hand) doesn't really matter. The average person doesn't like it even if they can't quite articulate why. And so the populists will keep coming, until one day one shows up that the system can't de-fang. Who knows what'll happen then but I'd bet a lot of money we won't get a stronger EPA or a more favorable environment for big business out of it.
The so-called "Tea Party" was not a "populist movement". It was a billionaire-funded (notably by the Koch brothers, but also by fossil fuel and tobacco companies) astroturf operation.
>There are already plenty of people that don't like the EPA
And those people are the ones making these bifurcated rules undermining the EPA. The destruction is the purpose, it's not incidental
Correct. The people that don’t like the EPA appointed their friends who also don’t like the EPA to run the EPA.
This is the playbook generally - PE vulturism, but for government agencies. And to their credit it kinda works. Just… not for citizens of the country they have sworn to protect.
Currently in progress at GSA, OPM, CFPB (for a decade+), Interior, EPA, labor, education… Nevermind I should’ve started with an exclusion list instead.
It’s literally the playbook from project 2025. FWIW it’s not the beginning, that has been a process at play since day 1 of the 2nd trump admin
Edit: actually since the 1st term as mentioned below
Right? This isnt the first chapter in a long story to come. This is the middle of the book where the villain has all but the final stone of the gauntlet but rather than put up a strong resistance we appear to have elected sycophants who are just watching and saying “dont let him get that stone”
Clarification: During his first term, Donald Trump appointed former Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt as the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). In his role as state attorney general, Pruitt had sued the EPA multiple times to challenge federal environmental regulations, including the Clean Power Plan and the Waters of the United States rule.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_policy_of_the_fi...
> Sounds like the beginning of the end for the EPA
The beginning of the end of the EPA started the day Trump was sworn in. In the last few years several cases have been decided by this Supreme Court that have effectively reduced the EPA to an advisory board, like a group of consultants that have no real authority over anything.
And this same behavior is how Republicans prove their own theory that the Government is useless and evil and bad. Because they do everything in their power to actually make it useless and evil and bad. Do not blame this on the "EPA" as an agency. Put the blame where it goes: conservatives actively sabotaging government programs.
You're neithersidesing an issue where clearly one partisan group is doing evil things to actively make the situation worse and then "see, told you!"
What a disgrace. Abysmal leadership in this country.
This seems pretty inline with our leadership tho. This country has always put profits above people.
Go research the green house gas emission projections for the end of Biden's term and the projections for Trump's administration.
Hand-waving dismissiveness doesn't serve when there were, in fact, significant (and yet not sufficient) efforts written into law.
We can have better things, but we as a people certainly need to do better. There are Mamdanis and there are Trumps. There's a difference.
The difference being the target audience of the respective showman? Seems like a bit of a difference by degrees.
Okay? That has nothing to do with what I said, what about the Biden admin helping run cover for the Gaza genocide? Was that not a case of putting profits, the military industrial complex, above people?
What about when Clinton signed NAFTA and condemned swaths of the US to poverty (rustbelt is not a term of endearment)?
I mean this country's founding document had carveouts for slavers and some of the first laws signed into Congress was the fugitive slave act.
Sorry but it's not US leadership that cares about Americans, it has always been Americans themselves fighting for justice + a better a life.
I am not hand waving anything, this is the reality of neoliberalism and has been a core American trait since our founding: some Americans are more equal than others, elites deserve more money.
There was only a small period of time in our country's history, 1940s to late 1960s, where workers had a true say at the table:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Compression
We have yet to return to the only period of history that not only improved the lives of workers materially, but also spiritually by increasing civil rights and making it so that the first time in our nation's history that every American had the legal right to vote.
I mean FFS our leaders are literally allowed to engage in insider trading and legalized bribes, you're trying to tell me with a straight face that these same ghouls somehow have a soul and want to save the planet?
Whataboutism works a lot better if you don't literally start sentences with "what about..."
Allowing more carbon dioxide sources is going to be distinctly harmful to profits in the mid-term. As with racial bias, strict gender roles, anti-vaxxing, and being anti-science, being pro-carbon burn is ultimately a foolish anti-truth stance as silly and ill-outcomed as any three year old insisting that they can stay up all night.
Do the octogenarians in power not remember when they couldn’t breathe because of the lead in the gas in the 60s and the lack of emissions controls on everything? Do they yearn for the mines and coal dust of early industrial England?
Everybody loves clean air and water but apparently forget why they have it in the first place.
> Do the octogenarians in power not remember when they couldn’t breathe because of the lead in the gas in the 60s and the lack of emissions controls on everything
No because they were extremely rich and lived in massive houses set far back from the city streets filled with polluting cars and well away from factories spewing poison into the air. They've lived perfectly comfortable lives in climate controlled and filtered spaces and traveled around to beautiful remote areas where poor people can never go and the pollution had barely touched. They know that they and their families can buy a comfortable and safe life no matter how miserable and sick they make the rest of us. They will always have healthy food and clean water no matter how many of us don't.
Our government works best when it's "of the people" but instead the octogenarians in power have almost nothing in common with us (even most of us here, in a forum filled with very wealthy people) and so their interests are not our interests and our concerns are not shared by them.
> Do the octogenarians in power not remember when they couldn’t breathe because of the lead in the gas
Lead causes brain damage and memory impairment...
...and lead was standardized only because it was patentable. Otherwise ethanol was enough to achieve the same thing.
Brought you proudly by Thomas Midgley, Jr., who solved science problems by making bigger ones.
- https://www.chemistryworld.com/features/thomas-midgley-and-t...
- https://www.ehn.org/thomas-midgley-jr-lead-poisoning
They’ll be dead by the time it gets worse again
Most of those octogenarians weren't responsible for any of that. Their parents did it for them. If you're 80 you came of age in the 60's, and you wouldn't have been eligible for the Senate or the Presidency until 1970 or 1975. The decline of the US started pretty much when the baby boomers came to power and the people who fought WWII were all retiring.
That’s not even what the post you’re replying to said
> Do the octogenarians in power not remember when they couldn’t breathe because of the lead in the gas in the 60s
No, lead poisoning makes you a brain damaged retard. They can probably hardly remember shit.
Just wait for the new generation of grifters to get their chance to be at the wheel. Current timid bullshit will be billed under nostalgia then.
no, they don't
> This country has always put profits above people.
Please, the correct word is "value". Using the word p-word makes people understand and get irritated.
The easiest way to radicalize workers is to simply tell them what profit is.
You are not radicalized enough.
It's consistent leadership. Malevolent and stupid, but consistent.
Are you sure you're aiming your ire in the right direction in this case?
The EPA provided guidance that the CAA (Clean Air Act) itself was written to not apply in these cases.
Shouldn't you be angry at the authors of the law?
The EPA is currently run by MAGA people.
Well the one thing I know about lawyers:
Utterly impossible to get them to write a dishonest guidance document interpreting the law in a way that benefits them somehow.
You got me. Check mate. No counterarguments here.
The law was specifically written to exclude things like independent power sources and backup generators etc...
From 42 U.S.C. § 7651a(17)(A) [1] which defines the power generation units that are covered by the law:
"(17) (A)The term “utility unit” means— (i)a unit that serves a generator in any State that produces electricity for sale, or (ii)a unit that, during 1985, served a generator in any State that produced electricity for sale."
The key phrasing there is "for sale". The clarification from the EPA simply restated that these units don't fall under the regulatory authority because under a plain reading of the law, they are not generating power for sale. [2]
The EPA certainly cites Trump's power agenda several times, but that doesn't make the plain text interpretation of the law wrong.
[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/7411
[2] https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/epa-issues-permitting-guida...
You think the guidance was written as a good faith interpretation of the law? Cmon.
This is exactly what the leadership wanted. And as they won the election. Not like in 2016 (where more people voted for the other guy but they won due to the difference in power of votes), or in 2020 (where they lost), they won a clear outright victory, it's exactly what the USA wanted.
I'm not sure it's fair to characterize 49.8% of the vote as a "clear outright victory". Harris got 48.3%; that's a pretty close to even split. The majority of voters didn't vote for this.
It is nonsensical to consider popular vote numbers in an election not decided on the popular vote. How many Democrats stayed home in red states because they knew their vote wouldn't matter? And how many Republicans stayed home in blue states for the same reason? It's unknowable. I'm all for the presidency being decided by popular vote, but until it is there is no point using those statistically-flawed numbers in any debate.
> How many Democrats stayed home in red states because they knew their vote wouldn't matter? And how many Republicans stayed home in blue states for the same reason? It's unknowable.
Just to add on, not voting in decided states is appealing for the winning party as well as the losing party.
Personally, I think a nationwide popular vote would be a logistical disaster, especially in the modern era of alternative facts.
The majority of voters who voted for president got the president they wanted. With a president comes admin of all these agencies. So yeah they voted for this.
> The majority of voters who voted for president got the president they wanted.
Again, no. 49.8% is not a majority. It is a plurality.
In theory the US has checks and balances. Ask 10 years ago if you could have a president selling national secrets via an api and you'd be laughed out of the room.
Carter had to sell his peanut farm. Trump makes billions each year.
Is there a word for this behavior where a politician wins by the slimmest of margins in a first past the post election and then spins it as a mandate from The People instead of an incredibly tight split?
FPP voting
If you are talking about the billionaires and trillionaire who spent as much as they could to get this elected then you are correct it is what THEY wanted.
They got what they wanted by making half the country's idiots want it too
EPA guidance source document https://www.epa.gov/system/files/documents/2026-07/epa-issue...
Thank you. This seems like a pretty straight-forward clarification of current law. The current thread title (OP said taken from Reuters) saying this side-steps the law seems misleading.
Are they clarifying? It reads to me like they are making up an exception for data centers out of thin air.
In what way do you think the guidance is in contradiction to the law?
For sure, an argument can be made that the text of the law could be tightened up. In my opinion, there's nothing in that text that would exclude these generators. In addition the rationale provide for excluding these generators seems... disingenuous at best.
The entire argument rests on a 36-year-old survey form: "DOE Form 860 (1990) defines electric utility to mean 'a corporation, person, agency, authority, or other legal entity or instrumentality that owns and/or operates facilities within the United States for the generation, transmission, distribution, or sale of electric energy primarily for use by the public.'"
So the leap is: an old survey form says "sale of electric energy primarily for use by the public," therefore anything not grid-connected isn't a sale to the public.
No assessment of prior practice, history, the plain meaning of the statute, or other statutory exemptions. And there are grid-connected plants serving a single customer so why the distinction?
Why the 1990 form? Congress froze it into the statute so a survey agency couldn't rewrite Clean Air Act coverage by editing a questionnaire. EPA is now exploiting that freeze by treating the form's obsolete boilerplate as substantive law; a taxonomy EIA itself abandoned, since modern EIA-860 covers essentially all generators above 1 MW, grid or not.
It's as if Congress defined citizenship by reference to a 1990 Census form, and the agency decided who's a citizen by parsing the instruction booklet.
100% complete BS. The silver lining is that without Chevron deference, this "interpretation" won't survive litigation, though the memo's "not final agency action" disclaimer means challengers may have to wait for an actual permitting decision to sue.
It’s an “or”. Generation, transmission, or sale. Not exclusively sale.
of electric energy to the public
its very much using the letter to violate the spirit - since the pollution is emitted regardless of whether the plant is grid-connected. these datacenter plants don't run as clean or as efficient as proper power plants, but the primary acid rain contributor is no2. how much are we really talking about?
> its very much using the letter
That’s how law works.
No it isn't. Otherwise the entire concept of Original Intent would be dead in the water rather than a cornerstone of how multiple federal judges all the way to the Supreme court rule on cases.
apparently you're very excited about this partisan victory. at some point we do need to actually think about how to effectively manage the country. there should be a back and forth about the appropriate degree of environmental regulation since it is a tradeoff between economic constraint and qualify of life.
I grew up in the 70s, and my father was a Nixon supporting environmental engineer. At the time the amount of nitrogen and sulfur being emitted into the air in the northeast was turning surface water into acid. a ph of 6 was getting quite common, 4 wasn't unusual, and if you were in a bad spot it was approaching 1. Not only would that water not support life, or be unsafe to drink, but it was actually unsafe to touch.
So if we were reasonable people we would look at the economic activity and the upside of burning these gasses, and add up the numbers and based on past experience make a very reasonable estimate of the impact, and make a decision.
but we fired all those people, and we're very much not interested in having this discussion. I fail to see how that's a win for anyone except the polluter.
What are you basing your they are not as clean assertion on? It's more likely that data center generation can be run continuously instead of turning on and off according to market prices. Can see the swing in amount of natural gas production during a day, https://www.gridstatus.io/live/ercot
just type 'single cycle gas plant efficiency and emissions vs combined cycle' into google
This is so amateurish. This document misquotes its own authorities, with grade-school grammar mistakes:
> "In particular, while a “utility” under ARP regulations includes any person that sells electricity, the 1990 edition of DOE Form 860 only covers those electricity generators who sell “electric energy primary [sic] for use by the public.”
Said "1990 edition of DOE Form 860" is included on page 8 of the pdf, and it very clearly reads "primarily"; not "primary". As is proper English.
What about the substance?
I think it's plausible and I don't disagree with you on that.
But: legal drafts failing at basic correctness issues, like quoting laws accurately, is an anti-signal.
There are big benefits to having power generation grid connected.
It is more reliable (due to many possible generation sources). It is more eco-friendly (solar in daytime, wind when the wind blows). It is more cost efficient (no need to overbuild for peak usage, generators don't sit idle when computers are off for maintenance).
Yet our electricity grid has such a mass of regulations attached that people are choosing to lose these benefits - and with it we lose the benefit of them connecting to our grid.
That's partly a result of having 50 states writing laws for themselves instead having all statues living under federal laws for everything. The line between what is acceptable to be regulated by federal laws and what is not is something I, not being a lawyer, have never studied. Power and water type utilities does feel like it might be something that could benefit from same rules/regulations every where, but basing regulations on feelings is probably not the best bit of logic
Exactly. Think how much more efficient our government could be if we had one centrally planned government instead of 50 sovereign states. Sometimes I wish I could move to the USSR.
For the most part power grids are federally regulated. The exception is Texas because they are self-contained and don't cross state lines
States rights is not why there are issues with the power grid
EDIT: I should add, states DO also regulate electric utilities but generally that is around local issues like charging rates to customers. the bulk electric system (transmission and generation) is largely the domain of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
> It is more cost efficient
Depends. Getting a grid connection, and all the equipment to connect and step down with negotiating prices is not always fun. Especially as there is a limited amount of power on the grid. its not a free lunch and takes time.
Its far easier to just slap shitty local generators on and live off the crappy noisy electricity they provide.
It's ironic when data center operators, who I'd expect to be experts on calculating complex cost/benefit scenarios, check for & arrange what's needed, sidestep better solutions because there's a bunch of requirements attached.
Reads to me as going for a quick & dirty fix.
From what I've read, it's mostly about time.
Attaching to the grid, at the powers desired, in the locations desired involves years of waiting beyond construction. Onsite genetation can be built within the overall construction timeline.
Maybe poor site selection, but I'm sure there's a cost optimization there. And my understanding is that there's not a whole lot of excess grid capacity around the country at the moment. Utilities are spending a lot of resources on changing the mix of generation and wildfire mitigation and don't have a lot of resources for adding generation capacity beyond what is immediately needed or increasing interconnection capacity.
This is different than the data center boom in the .com era; site selection was different, the grid situation was different, and the data centers being built were smaller loads.
Those regulations are there for a reason though. I’ll never understand this logic. We have regulations so things are clean and safe. Yes, it would be easier to not have those regulations and just have dirty and unsafe electricity. But that’s the cost of having a business and also having a clean and safe society. Corporations love to externalize costs and that’s what’s happening here again.
The exemption for non-public generators is there for a reason too.
There are lots of businesses and homes with onsite generation for various reasons, and most of them run for less than 100 hours per year. Not a lot of reason to add a reporting requirement and a strong emissions requirement.
Focusing on large scale generation was a good choice (that has worked for decades).
In an ideal world, congress would see this and adapt the rules to apply here as well. Probably an hour limit or a capacity limit or some combination would be a better discriminator than for public use.
Becoming and staying a leader in innovation sometimes requires shortcuts. You can also frame a law to make that exception specific for an industry, a field or a group so it doesn't become the norm (or time box it, if you want). You need innovation, there is no other way USA can lead in AI if you don't build these damn data centers.
Come to live in Europe and you will see how nice it is to stagnate because rule A depends on rule B, but there is an exception C that requires D....
Death by a thousand cuts.
It is in fact very nice to live in Europe and stagnate. Can recommend.
Title is taken from the reuters coverage[1], but I used the link to the original epa.gov press release.
[1]: https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/epa-says-power-data...
Surely this is going to cement the reputation of datacenters as a blight.
Right, I can only imagine the most foolish DC operators are excited about this. Just more gas on the political fire, when DCs should be boring and out of public politics, even if they rank 15th for water consumption and 8th for energy consumption.
The bipartisan opinion shift towards absolute hate for data centers was extremely fast.
Just adding more fuel to one of the brightest fires out there in politics right now. Expect it to continue and grow as people feel even less heard, and any negative media towards data centers gets lots of clicks.
The AI companies and Trump seem to be doing everything they can to encourage this.
I think it's time for a name change.
There's definitely something more fitting out there than "Environmental Protection Agency".
About that P in your acronym...
> About that P in your acronym...
For the next couple of years (at least) it stands for "Pollution" or "Poisoning".
"Profit" or "Plunder" would seem to fit.
"privatization"
The EPA as overseen by Donald J. Thatcher.
What's frustrating is that the title in this thread is very misleading. This is the way the laws have been: Separate laws for generators feeding into the grid.
Why this is, I don't know. I suspect it's because the vast, vast, majority of non-connected generators were, (until now,) backup generators that only ran occasionally. I even have a "fancy" portable generator in my garage that probably emits way more pollution per kwh than a typical fossil fuel plant, but I probably only run it ~10 hours a year at most.
What's more disappointing is that this loophole is being promoted instead of closed; but everyone here seems to think that laws were weakened.
I suspected that this was the case as the president can't just invent new laws on a whim. They have a fair amount of leeway on their interpretation of laws re: directions to the administration on how/when to do things but they can't just invent a law from thin air.
Also I mean what constitutes a generator if it isn't something connected to the grid? If my car has an engine and it also has a small inverter and an AC outlet is that now a generator and subject to generator laws in addition to car laws?
They can, however, just refuse to enforce a law, or start enforcing the opposite of a law. While they may not be able to change the words on the page, the effect is identical.
Good thing that Chevron is no longer the law of the land right? So courts can review the law without regard to what the EPA says.
Beyond stupid. Why there are any "power generation" mechanisms that could produce air pollutantion in this decade is already incomprehensible. Making rules to allow for them on purpose is even dumber.
First they say data centers should pay their own way on power infrastructure, then when they start springing up entirely off-grid and fully self-funded power infrastructure, suddenly there's a new problem.
The problem was never power or water (water being a known Chinese spy op after Karen Hao was caught exaggerating water usage by 1,000x in her book).
>The problem was never power or water
Correct. The problem isn't just data centers or power or water, it's that left unchecked these greedy people will risk the power grid, drain rivers/reservoirs/aquifers, and destroy our natural environment (and cities) with pollution because it's more profitable than doing things the right way. I think more than anything we want responsible, friendly neighbors who are mindful of the impact they have in the areas where they operate.
They're callous, reckless, have no concern for anything but their money. And "self-funded" isn't even true, the tax breaks and negative externalities of these data centers will be paid by the people (see: xAI and Memphis.)
inb4 i'm a chinese operative because I mentioned water. Get bent, I think grass farmers in the desert should be forced to get real jobs instead of exporting our water to China/Saudi Arabia as cattle feed. And people who farm real crops should be forced to convert to less water-intensive methods or shut down.
I'm trying to build a torment nexus and these negative ninnies complained that it used up all the electricity, so I made a machine that turns breathable air into toxic smoke to power the nexus and they don't like that ether!
Aluminum smelters have run their own power generation for ages and don’t get to skip epa regulations.
It is not a new problem. Look at Musk's Tennessee data centers to see the problems with off-grid data centers that don't have good pollution controls.
Second, in many places power is a problem with AI data centers that do want grid power. I don't think you realize just how many new AI data center projects there are and how much more power they use than a normal data center. Combined with the short timeline these projects want they need grid expansion far beyond what anyone had in their long term grid planning.
The environmental impacts of how that power is generated is not a sudden or new concern, it was a concern even if the power was delivered via the grid or not and the fact that the power is generated on site or whatever does not alleviate that concern
You're saying multiple wrong ways to do a thing is evidence that the thing is undesirable?
Why don't you want an auto repair shop in the house next door, and why won't you let them pour old engine oil on your lawn? Are you anti-car-repair? All your "noise and pollution" complaints sound like psy ops to me, paid for by the Chinese EV industry.
^ that's what you sound like.
The US as currently composed is a climate supervillain, there's no other way to describe it.
We're in an existential crisis and instead of stepping up to a leadership role, they are actively sabotaging efforts to avert disaster.
Shameful.
This is completely unforgivably wrong. Pollution is pollution regardless of the source. We need clean air and water to live.
The most ironic part of this is that data center pollution will impact Trump supporters the most. In 5-to-10 years, after swimming in the same river their parents and grandparents swam in, kids will start develop breathing complications or their teeth will fall out, and there won't be anything anyone can do about it. Congratulations, MAGA, you played yourself.
How the fuck does anyone still support these world destroying assholes.
70 years of very successful propaganda techniques. Republicans are the GOATs of propaganda and manipulation of public opinion.
They really accel at making people their supporters don't like, angry. To gleefully rub your hands together while your enemies cry is a dream for some.
$$$ Hangers on looking to scoop up some of the loose change overflowing the rich asshole's pockets
Everyone is doing it all around you. We can mostly blame the people who make AI but we also have to blame everyone who’s using it. We can boycott AI until they make it safe and clean to use. Until then, everyone’s to blame that uses it or builds it.
Boycotts basically don't work unless you get a big percentage of the company's customers to simultaneously agree to boycott that company because they are really angry. Nobody's really angry at chatgpt.
The administration and Republicans get paid off, right wing billionaires produce propaganda news, voters consume said news.
right on cue for my meme of the three boxes this administration reaches into daily
fine then, make mar-a-lardo and the ballroom into datacentersNovember and the "AI" collapse cannot come soon enough
but if the Dems don't get the Senate nothing will change even in the slightest
I expect nothing and am still disappointed
then whats the fucking point of the EPA
According to this administration, there isn't one. They have told us this for years, but I guess nobody believed them??? It just took someone willing to not give a damn about working with others and just forcing their will upon others. After all, the people elected them and they are just carrying through with their well advertised plans.
Let this sink in. Nobody cares about you and your children. They don’t care about the planet. These people are sociopaths. A lot of you work for these people. And a lot of you should stop working for these people. And if you’re using AI, you should stop using AI and you should make your boycott vocal.
This is not about Trump. This is not about Republicans or Democrats. This is about people who have the money who control all of those people. The AI play is nothing but pure greed. They don’t want to make your life better. They’re actively making your life. worse while they’re getting rich.
I don't really care about 'future & children', but even I find this absurd.
Its for the greater good. Net benefit would still be in data centers favour, as AI replaces useless office workers, it will lower carbon footprint of all those people commuting by car / needing to work in cities. More people living in nature in the country side, doing something productive in the new economy, growing their food. Just invest in banks, to ride out the transition.
None of what you say is true to real life
AI is making working from home much easier than ever before. You don't really need to live in a city to have a tech career now, and it will accelerate. We don't really need so many office workers going forward in cities. Almost anything they decide to do instead, will more productive in the economy than being a useless cubicle monkey thats no longer needed because AI can do it better.
ok, but if AI is doing it better, then they won't be working remote, they'd be just unemployed.
Sure, they'll be unemployed until they chose to do something else that people will pay for. Like I was reading some guy is making downloads for Minecraft and making great living in it (science fiction a few decades ago). Worse case scenerio, move to the country side, and homestead. Thats how people survived wars and famines. Surely they can survive a tech transition.
How much money is your homestead making?
Probably not much. But even if it's zero, it's still better than falling behind in a City. The profit margins of being a wagie living in a city, is just a few hundred dollars left over a month, if that. Statistics back this up. Almost all of the money goes to rent and basic necessities now. Most people are broke! In a relatively wealthy country like Canada, something like 10 million / 40 million have food insecurity. 2 million regularly go to food banks. They're trapped by the system, and failing city life and rising inflation. If anything homesteading would be preferable as it would give some independence (own their land) and better shot at food security.
So how much money is your homestead making?
Thirty healthy laying hens will produce about 21 to 24 eggs a day, which can gross you roughly $262 to $300 a month if sold at $5 per dozen. 10 bee hives, making 8,000-10,000 dollars a year profit. Supplement that with even a part time manual labor job, or a remote tech job.
I'm noticing a lack of actual numbers, only guesses. What were your homestead's total income and total expenses in 2025?
I thought we were in a end of times global climate crisis? So confusing...