Comment by testerteert000a
15 hours ago
Because "the water thing" is make or break for for the southwest, which includes LA, and LA's water system includes NorCal consequences, and California water issues include all-country impacts due to the farming there.
If you haven't been paying attention to the "water thing," that doesn't mean it's not serious af.
California and Arizona use literally orders of magnitude more water for alfalfa farming than they do for data centers.
> Because "the water thing" is make or break for for the southwest
no, it's a thing because you can put water in terms that even a hair dresser can be convinced to get scared and angry about. No technical knowledge required.
Millions of acre-feet of water, far more than all of the data centers use in the United States combined for evaporative cooling, are used to flood irrigate alfalfa crops in California and Arizona to feed cows. 5% of this is exported. It’s orders of magnitude more water.
All of the irrigated golf courses combined use more water than all of the US data centers combined.
if we were seeing a big increase in building new golf courses in those areas, we'd have the same protests
same if increasing alfalfa farming was increasing significantly
it's harder to stop something that already exists (shutting down existing golf courses or alfalfa farms has consequences for the local communities) than to stop something from coming into existence in the first place