AI data centers are STEALING this town's water: Google, Microsoft, Amazon raid Mexico

As the climate crisis intensifies, billions of poor and working people around the world are suffering from lack of regular (or any) access to clean water, but the dawn of “AI” is about to make the problem much worse. In their recent report for Context, “Forget jobs-AI is coming for your water,” Diana Baptista and Fintan McDonnell write, “Artificial intelligence lives on power and water, fed to it in vast quantities by data centres around the world. And those centres are increasingly located in the global south.” In Colón, a municipality in Central Mexico that is home to Microsoft’s first hyperscale data center campus in the country, working people are already bearing the environmental costs of man-made climate change, and they will be the ones to bear the costs of AI and Big Tech. “The town of 67,000 is suffering extreme drought. Its two dams have nearly dried up, farmers are struggling with dead crops, and families are relying on trucked and bottled water to fulfill their daily needs.” In the latest installment of our ongoing series, Sacrificed, Max speaks with Diana Baptista, a data journalist at the Thomson Reuters Foundation based in Mexico City, about Mexico’s ongoing water crisis and about the human and environmental costs of AI and cloud computing.
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[@alveolus2854]

Ireland: same story. Plus, data centres get state supports for energy supply while farmers must cut back on food production to avoid breaking carbon emissions targets!

[@danbolton3180]

The war began, and we're arranging deck chairs..

[@Cookie-sf6fs]

Colonialism has struck again

[@cheryl2387]

How can these private companies take over federal property? How much are taxpayers paying for these companies to exist? The fate of thousands of U.S. dams hangs in the balance ... 5 days ago · Maple Dale is one of thousands of dams that were constructed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources

[@mikee4639]

Maybe the data centres could start using the excessive rain water from cloud seeding, rather than taking population drinking water. AI does not deserve our drinking water resources. IMO

[@alexanderheling2057]

They're buying up all the farmland near bigger lakes especially the great lakes and doing the same thing.

[@helvetii42]

Put those stupid data centers in the ocean and leave peoples land alone. Also the solar panels and wind mills.

[@acommunistdwarf]

Not that tech is right, but isn't important to understand and distinguish how the water is used? As far as I know, DCs will use water to cool down servers, so wouldn't the water still be available after usage? It's not like it's chemically polluted or bottled. Really curious

[@TheEraLad]

Valid point. I’m curious as well

[@victorialeif9266]

Don’t forget the moves that are being made to prevent the EPA from making any environmental laws.

[@SkipRawls]

Might have been helpful to explained why they need water

[@Jasmin.M-hz5ty]

Good question,why dose Bill Gates needs farmland,and the water?I think that economy as we know will fail,and computers won't be in hot demand.But assets like water and land will increase in value,since their is not enough of land and water for everyone.And when that happens,people like Bill Gates will be new royalty and nobility.This crisis that lasts since Covid19,has created manny opportunities,for manipulators,who knows how to take advantage of situation,and the holes in law.And by the time people understand what is happening,it will be to late.And from this point,the only light in feudal dark,will be marxism.

[@arlenethompson4795]

The least You Be able to Get in Life is Water!

[@SkipRawls]

Any and everything in Mexico has a price including the shutting of complainers mouths