This doesn't make sense. The reason Congress is difficult is because of those same powerful people. A world in which you can actually stop the buildout is a world in which lobbying Congress is much easier.
You have control over who you vote for. Congress is not elected nationally. Sorry I just don't see how your points make sense. You might have better success of pushing the data centers off to your neighbor. But this doesn't stop the buildout, it only gives certain neighborhoods temporary protection while economic conditions for most continue to deteriorate. Aka a false sense of security and therefore a bad idea.
I'm not sure why this is relevant:
> This doesn't make sense. The reason Congress is difficult is because of those same powerful people.
Its much easier to put someone who is aligned with your values into a local political position than congress. And its much more likely that your neighbors will vote in a way that aligns with your interests. And you won't get overridden by a congressman from several states away that has different incentives.
Yes, people building data centers can just shop for a new location. But resistance to data centers appears to be pretty correlated with living in communities that are good places to data center, at least anecdotally.
The world I'm looking in is one where citizens pushing back locally has seemed to get at least some measure of success, albeit spotty, whereas attempts to lobby Congress about AI has been screaming into the void. Frankly, I think your position here is completely divorced from what is actually happening in reality.
No. When congress creates pro-average-person lawe right wing captures supreme court rewrites them into recognisable.
And then the same court creates the "conservatives win you loose" set of made up bogus rules.
Your position pretty much sounds like "you can't stop it so why try" thus making it a "bad idea" which is really doesn't make any sense. Right now, they are attempting to build data centers in the worst possible places with issues such as not enough water supply, not enough energy and forcing the everyone in those communities to suffer. Clearly "forcing buildout to another area" is not a bad idea.