CVO TALK -- for a revolutionary workers movement!

Artificial intelligence data centers can consume enormous amounts of electricity and water, and also increase global warming when the electricity is generated by fossil fuel. As a Harvard researcher says:

“The public is concerned about rising electricity rates caused by data centers. They are concerned about the enormous water use that data centers require. They’re concerned about public handouts in the form of tax breaks that are going to data center developers, and they’re also aware that data centers don’t bring meaningful economic development, especially in the form of jobs”

Indeed, these things are being opposed all across the country (including by many Republicans), as they should be. These are just some articles I saw tonight:

https://www.wunc.org/environment/2026-0 ... EPUmxrxwcA

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/ ... e7p2zirBJA

https://www.calonews.com/arizona/amid-p ... Zz7t9EQ_Ww

https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/ ... 00516.html

https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/ ... 00531.html

https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/art ... 00124.html

https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/ ... 00292.html

https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/ ... 00077.html

https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/ ... 00191.html

Research on the heating issue: https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/30/climate/ ... derrported

While mass resistance to building more data centers is sweeping the country, the capitalists are determined to plunge ahead with more atrocities against the people and the environment they depend upon. Just a couple of articles from tonight:

Building data centers in areas already prone to drought -

“Bloomberg estimates that at least 59 more data centers will be built in US water-stressed regions by 2028, with additional expansion planned globally.”
https://www.techrepublic.com/article/ne ... s-drought/

Texas -

“A recent analysis found that Texas has at least 248 planned data centers. Almost half would be in unincorporated areas whose leaders said they have almost no power to stop them, the Texas Tribune reported.”
…..
"'They were trying to take advantage of country bumpkins,' said Hood County Commissioner Dave Eagle in an interview, as reported by the Texas Tribune.

“In May, the state's main grid operator, ERCOT, reported that large projects requesting to connect to the grid totaled 439 gigawatts of power capacity. That is five times larger than the all-time peak demand on the state's grid.”
https://www.yahoo.com/fp/news/us/articl ... 00016.html

A few days ago I posted this article saying that data centers created heat islands despite their cooling systems, https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/30/climate/ ... derrported. Now although the study the article is based on seemed to be scientifically conducted, it had not been peer reviewed, nor have the masses of opponents of data centers been raising this issue. So I was a little hesitant about sharing it. But after reading
this
https://tucson.com/news/state-regional/ ... fc616.html this
https://fortune.com/2026/04/01/ai-data- ... erscalers/ and this
https://grist.org/business/utah-data-ce ... box-elder/, I'm no longer hesitant.

“About two-thirds of upcoming datacenters, which typically require a large amount of water to operate, are set to be built in places that have been among the driest in the country over the past year.

“Of 809 planned datacenters, 517 are in locations that have been in drought conditions throughout the past year, according to data from Cleanview and the federal government, which grades drought across four levels of severity. A similar proportion of existing datacenters are already situated in drought-affected areas.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/ ... 23880.html

From Yahoo News - Working-Class Neighborhoods Are Resisting Data Centers at 5 Times More Than Wealthy Ones

https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/ ... 20120.html

A quotation:
“Holtzman concludes that 'the odds of cancellation [of planned data centers] are six times higher in neighborhoods that fight than in neighborhoods that don't.' Poor communities aren't just more likely to resist—they're more likely to win.”

Good news -

California City Becomes First in the Nation To Ban Data Centers Outright

Tristan Navera
Tue, June 9, 2026 at 5:02 AM PDT

The Southern California community of Monterey Park just became the first in the nation to permanently ban data centers.

Residents of Monterey Park voted overwhelmingly on June 2 to prohibit data center development outright, with about 88% supporting a ballot measure, according to information from Los Angeles County.

It's another example of locals strongly coming out against data center development, and the measure might be the strongest such restriction yet. While some regions like Durham, NC, are placing moratoriums on new development, and Ohio is pausing tax breaks while it assesses the impacts, Monterey Park's measure is permanent—another ballot measure will be required to undo it.

"Landslide win!!" Mayor Elizabeth Yang posted to Facebook shortly after the vote. "Congratulations to our city Monterey Park on making history!!!"
Saturn Street uprising

A proposed data center project in the city kicked off the resistance.

In 2024, a group of developers pitched building a 218,400-square-foot center with an electrical substation on the site of an old office building that has been empty for nearly a decade. The developers behind the project, known by its address at 1977 Saturn Street, proposed a spate of community benefits.

They'd promised a pocket park, landscaping, and millions in annual tax revenue to the city in exchange for their 16-acre development. According to the Los Angeles Times, the project was 500 feet from the closest home and would have used three times the electricity of the entire city.

But in public comment sessions that followed, residents spoke loudly against the proposal with worries about environmental quality and other concerns. Yang and several members of the City Council came out against the project.
City officials had previously welcomed its plans to build a sprawling, new data center and the jobs and tax revenue that would follow, but suddenly city opposition to the plan spurred up. Signs of protest pepper front yards in a nearby residential neighborhood in Monterey Park, CA
Monterey Park—a San Gabriel Valley community of 58,000 east of Los Angeles—is majority-minority, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau. The median home value there is about $863,000. (Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

Monterey Park—a San Gabriel Valley community of 58,000 east of Los Angeles—is majority-minority, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau. The median home value there is about $863,000.

"Data centers bring no long-term benefits to local communities, and they come with serious risks," one resident said in a comment session reposted by Yang.

After widespread public feedback resulted in a citywide moratorium on data centers, the developer backed out of the project in March.
National conversation

The number of data centers has ballooned across the nation in recent years. Public pushback has followed. Frequent neighbor complaints about them include noise and impact on home values, water, and local utilities.

California hosts the nation's second-largest concentration of data centers behind Virginia. About 287 are under construction or planned in the state—including 71 in Los Angeles, according to information from Data Center Map, which tracks the business.

Lawmakers have responded in different ways. In his February State of the Union address, President Donald Trump called on data center developers to cover their energy costs, acknowledging worries from ratepayers.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) proposed a national moratorium on data center development in March. That bill never advanced out of committee.

Also, several Republican leaders, including House Committee on Energy and Commerce Chairman Brett Guthrie (R-Kentucky), have called for investigations of campaigns to oppose data centers. They claim China and other foreign adversaries are funding the opposition.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/ ... p_catchall

Frank: That bit about the head island is startling. They say the nearby data center adds four degrees to the nearby residential neighborhoods in Phoenix. Just what Phoenix needs -- more heat!

Protests Have Blocked $130 Billion in Data Center Projects This Year

* 188 organized opposition groups across 40 states are using environmental reviews and public hearings to delay approvals for AI server farms, costing the industry significant money.

* Community organizing against data centers is becoming increasingly coordinated, with tactics focused on public hearings, disclosure demands, environmental review, and community consent.

* Data center opposition is influencing midterm campaigns, with activists arguing that corporate AI ambitions shouldn't override local democratic control, leading to a David versus Goliath scenario where environmental law is used as a slingshot.

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/sectors/t ... 38917.html

A very bad situation, and the writers can't get away from putting a money-price on climate damages: i.e.: “Without steps to decarbonize power grids, data center emissions would more than double by 2030, leading to an estimated $154 billion in annual climate damages -- up from $68 billion today.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/science/arti ... 17923.html

This is being shared on Facebook by an Argentine friend -

Scientific article on hydrogeology, environmental management and global water security:
GLOBAL ALERT: A monumental study confirms groundwater depletion is accelerating worldwide
Published by the University of California Santa Barbara in the scientific journal Nature, USA.

What exactly is happening?

An unprecedented global research has revealed that Earth’s groundwater reserves — the largest source of liquid freshwater on the planet — are depleted at an accelerated rate due to agricultural over-exploitation and climate change. An international team of scientists analyzed millions of water level measurements in nearly 170,000 control wells distributed in more than 40 countries. Results show that the level of underground aquiphers is dropping drastically in 82% of the monitored regions, and in one-third of them the decline has accelerated sharply over the 21st century.

This invisible drainage threatens to dry surface rivers, cause global food production to collapse and cause the physical sinking of entire cities, the report warns. This critical environmental milestone forces civil engineering and international policies to intervene immediately in water pumping before humanity’s strategic reserves reach a point of no return.

The emptying of aquiphers: Massive analysis of real wells showed that the water hidden beneath our feet is dropping at alarming rates of up to several meters per year in key agricultural regions of Asia, Europe and America.
Soil is sinking: When aquiphers lose their deep water, the upper layers of soil lose physical support, causing subsidence (the actual surface sinking), which destroys roads, pipes, and buildings.
The Intensive Irrigation Trap: The vast majority of groundwater is not used for drinking, but to sustain massive irrigation of industrial crops in arid areas, spending reserves accumulated by nature for thousands of years in a few decades.

There is hope (if we act already): The study also revealed a positive fact: in places where strict aquifer artificial refilling laws were implemented or surface water was diverted to curb pumping, underground reserves managed to recover.

Article review:

The technical report published in Nature magazine details the largest compilation of hydrogeological data in human history, mapping the structural health of aquifer systems at a global high-resolution scale. By directly analyzing temporary series of physical monitoring wells instead of relying solely on approximate satellite estimates, the interdisciplinary team managed to quantify the descent velocity of underground fractic layers. The alarming results topple the long-standing perception that freshwater depletion was a localized and independent problem, demonstrating that it is a global systemic phenomenon that is directly correlated to increasing prolonged weather droughts.

The research team's technical feat was about processing millions of historical data points to connect rainfall behavior with the recharge dynamics of deep micropores in the earth's crust. The study mathematically found that in regions where the weather has become drier and warmer, the depletion rate of aquifer doubles, as farmers pump more intensity to save their crops while the natural filtration of rainwater is reduced to a minimum of critics. This dynamic breaks the natural hydrological balance, causing surface rivers connected to the freatic layer to begin to lose flow underground, drying entire wetlands from below.

A crucial aspect highlighted by the text is the long-term economic and humanitarian impact arising from the loss of these strategic deposits, which historically act as the life insurance of civilization during climate crises. When a deep aquifer is depleted or contaminated by intrusion of saline sea water due to internal pressure loss, its ecological restoration may take centuries or be physically impossible for today's technology. For water resources engineering, this finding proves the obsolescence of current management systems, which continue to grant unlimited pumping concessions under the false premise that underground reserves are infinite.

Ultimately, the authors of the research warn that these findings should mark a turning point in global environmental legislation, forcing governments to treat groundwater as a finite and strictly protected resource. The discovery underscores the urgency of transitioning to precision farming technologies that dramatically reduce crop water footprint and to massize the construction of capture infrastructure that injects winter flood waters directly into the ground. Optimization of water extraction rates and automated digital monitoring of private wells are consolidated as ultimate scientific priorities to safeguard the vital resource that sustains geopolitical and food stability for generations to come.

Source: Global study on accelerating global aquifer depletion, led by the University of California at Santa Barbara and published in the scientific journal Nature.