alt Hacker NewsDo you have evidence that they are the problem. The research suggests otherwise. From some of the regional grids I have looked at the bigger problem has been lack of continued investment in transmission and generation. Even now I see so much push back for solar farms. People are their own worst enemy.
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Nobody Here Wants the Data Center: An Oral History - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48662607 - June 2026
Europe must choose between AI and climate goals, data center lobby says - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48637512 - June 2026
Datacenter boom keeps dirty coal plants alive in the US - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48465092 - June 2026
Majority of US’s new AI datacenters to be built on drought-hit land - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48447122 - June 2026
A Farmer Donated Land to Turn into a Park. The City Is Building a Massive Data Center Instead - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48446439 - June 2026
Data Center Operators Are Trying to Fix Their Water Use Problems - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48401477 - June 2026
The US is now spending more on data center construction than on public transportation infrastructure - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48366144 - June 2026
Ohio hits pause on datacenter tax breaks draining its coffers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48361555 - June 2026
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In the past couple decades, the vast majority of electricity demands have gone down due to modern substitutions for things people want being way more efficient. People use LED / CFL bulbs instead of incandescent bulbs, heat pumps instead of resistive heating for water heaters and house heaters, etc.
People have also deployed lots of solar to their houses.
So by every normal measure, just by looking around outside and evaluating how I live my life, even with an electric car, my power demands have gone way down.
So the fact that there's some gooner class stroking AI and crypto coins out their network ports and making my electricity more expensive, well, yeah, I'd say that nonsense is lots of externalities that should be better managed.