"A new report from UCLA and the Natural Resources Defense Council found nearly a quarter of Colorado River water is basically provided for free by the federal government."
"President Donald Trump and several administration officials were hit with a lawsuit Friday over the demolition of the White House’s East Wing to make way for a 90,000 square foot ballroom."
"States facing drought and dwindling groundwater supplies are seeking to pull back the curtain on water use at data centers, in a push for transparency that has scrambled traditional partisan alliances."
"A coalition of more than 230 environmental groups has demanded a national moratorium on new datacenters in the US, the latest salvo in a growing backlash to a booming artificial intelligence industry that has been blamed for escalating electricity bills and worsening the climate crisis."
"Advocates are working to ensure that world leaders don’t ignore people displaced by climate change."
"News deserts are widening. Newspaper closures continue unabated. Independent publishers are calling it quits at an alarming rate. Yet local digital-only news sites are multiplying. Many are even thriving."
"More than a dozen states where data centers are spreading fastest could face electric power emergencies under extreme conditions this winter, the grid’s security monitor warned Tuesday."
Thousands of energy-hungry, water-gulping data centers are helping fuel the artificial intelligence boom in the United States (and elsewhere). The latest TipSheet takes a closer look at this escalating phenomenon and encourages environmental journalists to look into how it may be playing out in their communities. Ten story ideas and reporting resources to cover data centers’ local impact.
"A new report finds that local opposition to data centers skyrocketed in the second quarter of this year."
"A new analysis tries to calculate the coming environmental footprint of AI in the US and finds that the ideal sites for data centers aren’t where they’re being built."
