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by dylan604 44 days ago
The farming water usage already exists. The data centers do not. Adding more on top of what farming is using is not going to help. We can prevent the data centers, so that's where the push back is.

I'd be on board if for every data center a farm gave up the amount of water to use in that data center. Instead of carbon offsets, we'll let them purchase water offsets. Of course that's not a serious answer.
3 comments
Matticus_Rex 44 days ago
If our water rights system required farmers to actually pay anything approaching market rates for the water they used, it actually would be a serious answer!

Farmers grow alfalfa in the desert and drain the western US's aquifers and rivers because we have insane water rights doctrines that entitle them to trillions and trillions of gallons of free or almost-free water far in excess of what the watershed regions can bear.

If we don't change that system, data center water usage is a rounding error that is barely noticeable at the scale of the problem. If we do change that system, data center water usage isn't a problem at all.

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yongjik 44 days ago
> The farming water usage already exists. The data centers do not. Adding more on top of what farming is using is not going to help. We can prevent the data centers, so that's where the push back is.

Well, to me, this sounds basically like "Jeff Bezos already exists, this school does not. Increasing the government budget to build a school here is not going to help our finance, so that's where we will push back."

(I don't think Jeff Bezos should lose all his money, but he could definitely pay more tax.)

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xigoi 43 days ago
How does building a data center, which benefits a single company, compare to building a school, which benefits the general public?
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deaux 43 days ago
Private jets already exists. Your new EV still doesn't. Adding more emissions on top of what private jets are using is not going to help. We can prevent the new EVs.

Scale matters, and you're completely ignoring it. A single hamburger takes about 2,500 liters of water to produce. The US eats a lot of them and produces a lot of them.

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