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.

Featured Music…
Jules Taylor, “Working People” Theme Song

Studio Production: Maximillian Alvarez

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[alveolus]

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!

[alexanderheling]

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

[danbolton]

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

[mikee]

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

[VivaCatatumbo]

Nestles has been doing this for decades

[victorialeif]

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

[arlenethompson]

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

[cheryl]

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

[chakkakon]

Sustainable Development is code for : 15 minute cities

[helvetii]

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

[JennaFerrari]

Why aren’t we doing more salinization of ocean water?

[vistatrista]

Why don’t data centers build in cold, snowy climates like Alaska?

[TheViktorofgilead]

How have I not come across this channel before? This is top notch! Subbed.

dsaKnee dsaRose

[sassyd]

This completely off topic but… can you tell me how you setup the fundraiser/donation portion on YouTube?

[youtubetroll]

wasting water, just to keep a zillion photos of a 12 inch stocked trout....😐😐😐

[paradise]

Come build a data system on my land 119.18 acres of land. I'm near the ocean in the northern coast of CA, and I own the water patent rights to seven springs and artisan wells. Claimant is cool.

[SkipRawls]

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