This is totally effete. If anti-data center activists had any real conviction, they'd try to ban AI applications outright--actually attack the demand, not the infrastructure. But they won't, because they know they'd lose immediately. These are the fastest adopted consumer products in history. People love their AIs, use them daily, and aren't giving them up for environmental bullshit. So instead we get symbolic vetocracy: block a permit here, delay a data center there, all while continuing to use ChatGPT for free. It's performative opposition from people who lack the courage to make their actual case to their fellow citizens. The same playbook failed against ridesharing--how much did we hear about how evil the gig economy was, and all this endless halfhearted regulatory harassment. But every time Uber or Lyft or Doordash actually ended up on the ballot, the gig economy won because people actually just love these products and demand the laws adapt. At least the original Luddites had the courage of their convictions. Those motherfuckers burned down factories. These people file NIMBY complaints drafted by Claude. Movements built on bad-faith environmentalism and populist convenience don't scale into serious policy. They just result in virtue signaling and pointless fighting. If you're serious about AI safety, the case deserves better advocates than people whose real objection is that a building got built near them. (Or worse, environmental misinformation: if you want to know what I'm referring to, ask ChatGPT/Grok about "Controversy over water usage in AI models, analyzing the best sourced arguments levied by proponents like Karen Hao and Jonathan Koomey, versus detractors like Andy Masley.")