No Data Centers in the Ozarks
Nationwide Big Tech and AI companies are making local contracts, often under pseudonyms, to develop data centers. At times the local public isn’t even aware until it’s too late. These data centers are not only initially non-consensual in relationship with local human populations, but they will also have a draining long term rippling impact with local ecosystems, water tables, constituent’s power bills and more. Because of this long term impact, we must preemptively educate ourselves and spread the word to our communities to make sure that data centers don’t take root. This page is dedicated as a community resource and consciousness raising effort for folks who desire to keep the Ozarks data center free! Luckily others have already started developing tool kits unto these efforts. I recommend the North Star Data Center Policy Toolkit if you would like to educate yourself further on these themes. The folks at honorearth.org have also compiled a list of resources tracking data center news and education. Please check out both resources.
North Star Data Center Policy Toolkit
Honor the Earth Sources and Articles on Data Centers
Stay Connected to MOworkers.org NO MO DIRTY DATA CENTERS: Monthly Statewide Call
Missouri Coalition for the Environment news on AI and Data Centers in Kansas City
Data Center Watch Report (including MO data centers)
As humans of the Ozark Bioregion, we know that our area is a unique and precious place, one worthy of our protection and care. Many of these praiseworthy elements also make it desirable land for data centers. Attributes like abundant water, low cost energy, no building codes in many rural spaces, relatively inexpensive land, the need for more jobs and low population density make the Ozarks vulnerable to data centers.
While these companies (and local governing bodies) may profess that the data centers will bring jobs to the area, after the initial building phase the number of people employed is startlingly low and does not add to the local economy. The energy frequencies emitted by these centers is also damaging and disruptive to life forms. We live on a finite planet with finite resources. It is increasingly coming to my attention that the proliferation of the silicone based life forms, the water they drink and energy the require, is in competition with human and other life on this planet. Whatever your beliefs and relationship with AI applications, it is my belief that it is in our best collective interest to slow the proliferation of data centers and AI development. Books like If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies, are far from hyperbolizing the extreme threat an AI superintelligence could pose, but rather present a sober approach to AI development.
As humans of our specific bioregions, it falls on us to take a stand and fend off the establishment of data centers in our locales.
Hundreds of billions of dollars have already been put into data centers in recent years and according to Jensen Huang of Nvidia, the industry goals are for trillions of dollars to be put toward the development. This is not in our best collective interest. People have successfully been fighting data center development in their neighborhoods already, including within the Ozarks and more generally within Missouri, and we must amp up and continue those efforts, remaining viligant.
While communities are effectively fighting off data centers in their neighborhood, I feel the risks and reality of data centers still aren’t understood at scale hence why we need to raise consciousness now. We cannot control the people behind the “race to grow a generative AI or superintelligence” and I recognize that the government has taken off the guardrails, yet their actions and resource depletion will affect all of us, so we must slow this down where we can. It is my hope that, if each bioregion’s humans can slow the development of data centers, we can 1. Force the companies to make wiser use of resources where the are developing data centers 2. Slow the roll of this development which needs to happen anyway for safety reasons but isn’t.
With plastic and a host of other rushed and mass produced inventions over the years which have had negative consequences for the Whole while padding shareholder profits, it is my hope that humanity will realize and stall the AI proliferation preemptively this time. We are all conscious creators of our collective future. Our future does not lay in the hands of a selection of billionaires or AI researchers.