Kevin O’Leary, in a social media video, claimed paid activists turned out this week to protest his massive Utah data center. Screenshot via Facebook.
This week in the Anthropocene.
Let’s start with the bad. Carbon dioxide levels just hit a new record of 431 parts per million. Some of you may remember that 350 was the safe upper limit for atmospheric carbon. Oh, how times have changed.
What does this mean for the planet? We’re already seeing the consequences of out-of-control fossil fuel consumption. Corpus Christi, Texas (population 317,000), may be the first major city in the country to run out of drinking water entirely, possibly before the end of the year. Climate-induced drought is the culprit.
Corpus Christi isn’t the only large US city facing a water shortage. Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and El Paso could one day be in the same predicament.
Making matters even worse? You guessed it! The data center boom. This week in New Mexico, we learned that a supercomputer expansion at Los Alamos National Laboratory will occupy 100,000 square feet and devour a 1.4 million gallons of water per day. It’s a preposterous amount. As Source NM notes, the average person in New Mexico consumes 81 gallons. On the Navajo Nation, about 40% of residents, many in New Mexico, don’t have running water. Over two-thirds of New Mexico is experiencing severe to exceptional drought conditions.
Los Alamos is expanding for the first time since the Manhattan Project and has already begun building plutonium bomb cores (pits) for a new fleet of nuclear warheads.
Up in Utah, another enormous data center was approved this week. A 40,000-acre campus called Stratos is backed by “Shark Tank” investor Kevin O’Leary. Like Los Alamos, Stratos needs water and has applied for rights to 13,000 acre-feet in the Hansel Valley area of Box Elder County. The application drew more than 2,500 protest comments. The permit hearing was even more contentious, as protesters filled the Box Elder County Commission meeting on May 4, but it did little to stop the project from being approved. If built, the Stratos data center would consume twice as much power as the entire state of Utah. 
If you’ve spent much time over in Salt Lake City, Utah, you’ve likely noticed how filthy the air is. Salt Lake consistently ranks among the worst in the country for air quality. This week, we learned the culprit behind Salt Lake and Phoenix’s nasty air, thanks to Trump’s science-adverse EPA – it’s all Asia’s fault! Scientists, of course, called the claim preposterous.
While we are on the topic, the Great Salt Lake itself is drying up as aquifers are depleted, development sprawls across the valley, and drought plagues the region. All of this makes O’Leary’s data center even more reckless. There is an ambitious plan to save the body of water, the largest in the Western Hemisphere. If the lake were to disappear, Salt Lake City could become unlivable, and a large sector of the country’s food supply would be in serious trouble. Many of the minerals used in organic fertilizers are harvested from the lake, not to mention half of the world’s supply of brine shrimp.
Water is a theme this week. In Georgia, a groundbreaking investigation by the AP and others revealed that officials knew carpet mills were polluting a river with PFAS but never alerted the community. The polluted waters also reached Alabama. Why didn’t they close the mill and go public with the information? PFAS aren’t regulated in Georgia. Last October, Trump’s EPA (what’s left of it) moved to allow more PFAS in drinking water, despite overwhelming evidence of their cancer risks. And Trump’s BLM also lifted the ban on “cyanide bombs” that kill wildlife.
Meanwhile, China’s big bet on wind energy is paying off as the Strait of Hormuz remains embroiled in Trump and Netanyahu’s disastrous war. Here in California, the last shipment of oil from the Middle East arrived in Long Beach a few days ago. The 2-million-gallon tanker departed the Strait before the war began. The Los Angeles Times reports that if local refineries lack a backup plan, such as buying oil from Brazil (which they would have had to do when the Strait was closed), the state could quickly face an oil shortage. California imports 75% of its oil from Alaska and foreign countries. Gas here is hovering well above $6 a gallon, but don’t shed tears for Big Oil. Shell’s profits for the first three months of the year were double those of the previous quarter, at $7 billion.
Trump, of course, is furious, not about Shell or California, but about his promise to open the Strait, which remains unfulfilled. In true Trump fashion, he’s blaming anyone but his own ego and incompetence. China is his latest scapegoat, saying it’s their responsibility to get the tankers moving. In late April, the US imposed sanctions on the Chinese Hengli Petrochemical Refinery, prohibiting it from refining Iranian oil. China told the independent refineries to ignore the threat, and so far, they’ve refused to get involved in the Iran disaster.
Back in the West, Trump wants bison removed from public lands in Montana, but supports more hunting, oil and gas drilling, and mining for critical minerals. Bison rancher, media mogul, and Montana land baron Ted Turner died this week. He’s been widely praised for his conservation efforts, but he wasn’t always as good as he seemed. I wrote in 2010 about how Turner scored Yellowstone’s bison herd.
Okay, let’s wrap up on a good note. North of Seattle, the Stillaguamish Tribe is acquiring land and flooding it. Last October, they dismantled an earthen dam to continue expanding a coastal marsh critical to Chinook salmon. Over the past fifteen years, the tribe, with its 400 citizens, has restored hundreds of acres and plans to bring back many more imperiled lands, hoping it will one day help remove Chinook from the endangered species list.
Chew on it, and I’ll see ya next week.
