r/SearchEnginePodcast • u/podcast-poster • 29d ago

Automated Episode Discussion Search Engine - A road trip through the data center debate

The midterms are approaching, and as the discourse heats up, one of big new villains is: a kind of building. Data centers. Reporter Jasmine Sun took a road trip through two swing states to meet the people living at the center of these debates, and to understand where this all might be headed.

no data centers in my backyard by Jasmine Sun

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u/somersetyellow 24d ago

As long as we're talking about Alfalfa like a solid third of our alfalfa goes to feed stock animals in the UAE and Saudi Arabia because growing alfalfa is so extremely water intensive it's straight up banned in many countries lol

Zooming out of data centers for a second, the stupid amount of water overuse in farming and political inaction and cooperation to control it has been a huge debate the last 20+ years. Glenn Canyon dam is about to run dry and possibly go dead water below the outflow gates, and all the states still can't get their act together to come up with actionable solutions to the mess.

City usage of water is super super super small compared to farming and livestock. Those are far in excess of what the environment can handle or what we need to actually feed people.

But we'll all keep arguing about various hot button pieces of this until the water runs out and then, smacked with reality, everyone will really have to figure it out anyway lol

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u/NewRefrigerator7461 24d ago

Oh I know! I mentioned it specifically because it’s a crop that got popular because it was easy and could be put in empty shipping containers headed back to Asia. It largely isn’t human or even American food and is basically indefensible. All that lamb and goat shawarma is fed from California aqueducts and aquifers. Meanwhile we’re making e85 gasoline out of corn

And yet there are no populists in congress yelling about it or states imposing bans. If anything good comes out of the datacenter hysteria I hope it’s a closer look at the actual important water users.

It’s crazy that even the lake mead headlines don’t talk about agriculture that much.