This is the real tragedy of the modern data center. In the rush to be number one, they’ve captured the government at the top and use their influence to bypass environmental regulation and pollute at a grand scale just to save a dollar and some construction time. We could have had datacenters running on solar+batteries that could easily make money powering the grid as well, but no, we need to feed the oil machine and we let them run burner turbines unregulated. We could have had datacenters running closed-loop cooling, but no, we let them draw water directly for their cooling systems and dump it unfiltered back into the environment, further polluting it with heavy metals.
As long as one man desires to have more riches than another, this will never be solveable, I’m afraid. The shame.
Fines do nothing. Blow up the data center.
Every bomb dropped on a data center is one less bomb for israel to drop on a Palestinian school.
Not “slapped with”, more like “charged for”. Just the cost of doing business, The business of poisoning your community
“One two thousand pound bamb could blow up this whole data center.”
One million is life changing for a petty human, but the cost of doing business for a data center.
Nothing says »AI will build a cleaner, smarter future« quite like powering it with 62 unpermitted gas generators next to homes and schools. Microsoft gets the compute, DataOne gets a $1.07 million fine, and the neighbors get the exhaust. 🤷
