URGENT: If you're Irish read this. Please spread the word "The government now wants to make it super expensive (>€100,000) for ordinary people to go to court to protect the environment. The Government is currently engaged in an extremely short consultation on proposed rules to cap legal costs when you go to court and hold the state to account for breaking environmental law. If you think this is wrong, make your views known by emailing aarhus@dcee.gov.ie by 15 January.
Communities are rising up against data centers Allen Park planning commission postpones data center approval after resident concerns
WXYZ 7 News Detroit
Allen Park planning commission postpones data center approval after resident concerns
The Allen Park Planning Commission voted to postpone approval of a proposed data center site plan after a roughly four-hour meeting where dozens of...
We’re suing to protect one of the most important conservation areas in the South from data centers New data center development in ACE Basin could include one of the largest in the U.S.
Southern Environmental Law Center
We're suing to protect one of the most important conservation areas in the South from data centers
In the Lowcountry of South Carolina lies the ACE Basin, one of the Atlantic Coast’s largest areas of undeveloped wetlands and uplands ecosystems ...
So Big Tech has started undressing our children so as to make even more profit off them. Where are the Irish, UK and USA governments? An Irish Minister blames users. While the EU is complaining about Twitter on Twitter. Big Tech own our governments. They own our politicians. It's all about innovation and progress. Here we are having our children stripped of their rights and clothes to be sold for Big Tech profit. Here we are, with women facing an onslaught of Big Tech misogyny. Toxic men.
"More than 3,000 people from U.S. territories have signed a petition opposing proposed deep seabed mining in waters near the Mariana Islands and American Samoa, warning of irreversible environmental damage and the exclusion of Indigenous communities from decision-making." https://www.rnz.co.nz/international/pacific-news/583276/petition-against-deep-sea-mining-near-mariana-trench-gaining-support
"A comprehensive study published in Nature Sustainability projects that AI server deployment across the United States could generate between 24 to 44 million metric tons of carbon dioxide annually by 2030. To put this in perspective, that's the same as adding 5 to 10 million cars to U.S. roads."
VegOut
AI's carbon footprint could equal 10 million cars on the road by 2030, study warns
If you're excited about AI’s potential, brace yourself: the climate cost could wipe out years of progress on emissions reductions.
But as more people hear about a data center coming to their community, once-sleepy municipal board meetings in farming towns and growing suburbs now feature crowded rooms of angry residents pressuring local officials to reject the requests. “Would you want this built in your backyard?” Larry Shank asked supervisors last month in Pennsylvania’s East Vincent Township. “Because that’s where it’s literally going, is in my backyard.”
Fortune
Angry town halls nationwide find a new villain: the data center driving up your electricity bill while fueling job-killing AI | Fortune
In many cases, municipal boards are trying to figure out whether energy- and water-hungry data centers fit into their zoning framework.
"Microsoft and Google keep the energy consumption of their Dutch data centers secret, despite European reporting obligations. The Netherlands Enterprise Agency (Rijksdienst voor Ondernemend Nederland, RVO) received blank forms or no data at all. The Dutch newspaper NRC reports that the government has no legal means to request the actual figures."
Techzine Global
How much energy do Microsoft and Google consume? The Dutch don't know
Microsoft and Google keep the energy consumption of their Dutch data centers secret, despite European reporting obligations. The Netherlands Enterp...
"Human-in-the-loop (HITL) safeguards that AI agents rely on can be subverted, allowing attackers to weaponize them to run malicious code, new research from CheckMarx shows. HITL dialogs are a safety backstop (a final “are you sure?”) that the agents run before executing sensitive actions like running code, modifying files, or touching system resources."
Human-in-the-loop isn’t enough: New attack turns AI safeguards into exploits | CSO Online
"Company-wide metrics from the environmental disclosure of data center operators suggest that AI systems may have a carbon footprint equivalent to that of New York City in 2025, while their water footprint could be in the range of the global annual consumption of bottled water. Further disclosures from data center operators are urgently required to improve the accuracy of these estimates." https://www.cell.com/patterns/fulltext/S2666-3899(25)00278-8?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS2666389925002788%3Fshowall%3Dtrue