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Such a law illustrates the beauty of federalism. Texas and other states can have them if they want them! Maine has not nearly as much space and much more natura
by piker 7mo ago
Such a law illustrates the beauty of federalism. Texas and other states can have them if they want them! Maine has not nearly as much space and much more natural beauty to protect [per square mile], so it can and maybe should have a different set of rules. That's cool.
- seniorThrowaway 7mo agoDon't know why people think Texas doesn't have natural beauty. It's a huge state.
- piker 7mo agoYeah, sorry that wasn't intended as a slight to Texas. Texas just does have a lot of barren landscape where datacenters wouldn't offend as much. I modified it to make that clear. Also, energy is playing a role here.
- bastardoperator 7mo agoI've been watching a series on YT that is specifically about rural towns in Texas that are being abandoned or on the brink of total collapse. Much of it has to do with highways and routing around these communities decades ago. I don't know if a datacenter is the answer, but it has to be better then what looks like a post apocalyptic America.
- bombcar 7mo agoReviving Radiator Springs with a datacenter! The plot of Cars 4. Those small towns are often positioned such that even if you plopped a billion dollar datacenter on top of them, it wouldn't change much, as even with second and third order effects it's adding 100-200 total population.
- ryandrake 7mo agoIs that really the primary concern about datacenters? Their aesthetics? I thought the major problem with them was that they muscle in on valuable resources like water and electricity, consuming what would otherwise be used by people, and driving the prices up.
- nemomarx 7mo agoTaking up land is one of the resources they use - consider cutting down trees to clear space for a large one, or the habitats that might have been in that space. That's not really an aesthetic thing.
- jandrewrogers 7mo agoData centers use a lot of electricity but negligible water.
- ericd 7mo agoGuessing some used swamp coolers to save electricity on chillers, and some motivated people decided to make a big stink about it? Now everyone seems to think that DCs inherently use up tons of fresh water. They are definitely driving up electric costs for residential customers, though (along with EVs and heat pumps) which is a major problem.
- TitaRusell 7mo agoWould you build one on Pennsylvania Avenue?
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- AshleyGrant 7mo agoFolks have been conditioned to consider the deserts of West Texas, especially the Permian Basin, to be wastelands with no redeeming value. Personally, while it isn't my favorite landscape or even my favorite desert landscape, I still think it is a landscape with intrinsic value and beauty.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- ZeWaka 7mo agoSame with swamps and wetlands.
- asadm 7mo agoyes but they likely won't build datacenters by destroying national parks would they?
- _2d30 7mo agoBecause it's Republican, obviously.
- bsimpson 7mo agoI'm from Nevada, another state that people presume is all desert. (Really, it's all mountains.) The only part of Texas I've driven is between Austin and S Antonio. It was perhaps the least-beautiful wilderness I've driven through. It really did just feel like desert and billboards - like if Walmart was a highway. But I also presume Texas marketing itself as a less-regulated alternative (e.g. to California) is why it's easy to imagine Texas wanting infrastructure that Maine might not.
- taormina 7mo agoBetween Austin and San Antonio is so developed that it's considered by many to be a single "metro" area, DFW-style. There's very little not developed directly between the two.
- JuniperMesos 7mo agoI drove that way in 2024 for the solar eclipse. Some parts of that route struck me as a bit exurb-ish and spread-out, I wouldn't call it a single metro area, but there were definitely people living there. And it was way too green to be called a desert; I've driven through actual deserts in southern CA and nowhere that I saw in that part of Texas was anywhere near that dry (I guess you have to go further west to get to actual Texas desert, which we didn't do on that trip).
- CuriouslyC 7mo agoThe deserts around El Paso are still quite a bit more alive than the ugliest desert I've ever seen (the stretch between Phoenix and San Diego gets that dubious honor).
- bsimpson 7mo agoThis was 15 years ago. Maybe it was less developed then, or maybe my memory conflated that drive with another part of that trip.
- lizknope 7mo agoMost people never bother to look at a map. It takes 2 seconds to look at google satellite view of the area and see lots of desert with strips of green https://maps.app.goo.gl/R8HuWBi66548Jq5BA https://maps.app.goo.gl/R8HuWBi66548Jq5BA Of course you already know this but for everyone else it is called the Basin and Range province. You have desert areas and then a mountain range with much higher elevation with cooler temperatures and more precipitation which means trees and forests and green in color https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basin_and_Range_Province https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basin_and_Range_Province
- CuriouslyC 7mo agoI've driven through all of Texas twice, and had to spend time in Austin and Houston for work, but never had to live there, so I'd like to think I'm informed without being biased. Besides the heavily oak covered hill country west of Austin it's pretty much the ugliest landscape in the country. I will admit the west Texas desert is less ugly than the desert of southern Arizona/eastern California, but north/east Texas is the flattest, least interesting part of the Mississippi basin (Nebraska/Kansas/Oklahoma are similarly meh but you don't have the insane humidity).
- PaulDavisThe1st 7mo agoDriving across Texas is relatively easy, driving "through all of Texas" is an almost possible task.
- DANmode 7mo agoWhat beautiful part do you live in? or…have you never been?
- mapotofu 7mo agoBy size there should be more. That’s why they feel that way. Maine is significantly more beautiful than Texas. The ugliest part of Maine probably still looks better than most of Texas. I can’t even think of an example of “ugly Maine”.
- alex43578 7mo ago[flagged]
- culi 7mo agoAnd abolishing ICE! Why should states be forced to host armies they don't agree with?
- tt24 7mo agoStrange that suddenly they don’t seem to like this concept so much anymore :) “I support the right of $state to ban $thing” Wait, not like that!
- culi 7mo agoStates don't have "rights", people do. I don't support any state's power to take away any human's rights. And bootlickers who do shouldn't have the chance to act out their fascistic fantasies
- alex43578 7mo agoIt's reasonable to believe that a blanket ban on data centers constitutes a regulatory taking, and therefore run afoul of people's property rights. A data center doesn't pose some unreasonable risk to the public interest to justify this degree of action.
- culi 7mo agoThis is far from a blanket ban.
- alex43578 7mo agoIt’s a ban on any DC over 20 megawatts, regardless of site or situation - that’s a blanket ban because there’s no exceptions or justifications for the ban to apply to every large DC, regardless of location. From what I can tell, case law on takings via this kind of regulation is “case by case”, without a clear test for when it crosses over the line into an unreasonable imposition on property rights.
- Acrobatic_Road 7mo agoThey sure have a right to enact policies that keep them economically & demographically irrelevant. https://cdn.xcancel.com/pic/orig/638FA4CD35438/media%2FF5jNtheXMAAJl7s.jpg https://cdn.xcancel.com/pic/orig/638FA4CD35438/media%2FF5jNt...
- bdangubic 7mo agoData Centers would have made them sooooooo rich, very silly policies indeed, they’d be swimming in money
- harimau777 7mo agoI can't tell if this is sarcasm? On the chance that it isn't, how would that make them rich? The profit from the data centers goes to the owner not to the people in the community or rest of the state.
- Acrobatic_Road 7mo agoThere's this thing called taxes...
- alphager 7mo agoThat are paid (if not avoided) at the location of the owner, not the location of the dc. Datacenters really aren't that good for the locals. Low property tax, just tens of jobs but very high infrastructure needs.
- bdangubic 7mo agoI live in Northern VA, the world capital of data centers and can co-sign this. they bring absolutely nothing other than our electric bills have literally doubled in the last 24 or so months
- 7mo ago
- pj_mukh 7mo agoThis is a recipe for creating dead retiree states. Just NIMBY everything, NIMBY the power sources[1] [2], then complain about a lack of power so NIMBY any type of new industrial <anything>. Now do this for housing, new sources of water anything a person younger than 40 would need and you basically get a state full of retirees..and oh would you look at that! [3]. Now the question is, why wouldn't all states eventually do this with the way our population pyramid is looking? It's basically rabid conservation and tragedy of the commons writ large. [1]: https://www.mainepublic.org/politics/2025-04-08/bill-removing-referendum-requirement-for-nuclear-plants-fails-early-test-in-maine-house https://www.mainepublic.org/politics/2025-04-08/bill-removin... [2]: https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/maine-voters-reject-quebec-hydropower-transmission-line-2021-11-03/ https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/maine-voters-reject-q... [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_median_age https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...
- culi 7mo agoIt's the opposite of NIMBY. It's smart thoughtful policy and it is NOT a simple ban. Nobody bothers to read passed the title but the main piece of this legislation is the creation of the Maine Data Center Coordination Council. Alongside it is a temporary (until Nov 2027) moratorium on data centers over 20 megawatts. This seems to be in place so they could establish a proper legal and environmental framework for building out data centers in the future. This is exactly the kind of approach to legislation we should all hope our local representatives are competent enough to do.
- pj_mukh 7mo agoAppointing a council of elders who will think through every imagined horror before approving a project (or a “framework”) is basically the textbook definition of NIMBY-ism. Every NIMBY thinks they’re being optimally thoughtful (tm), except the answer is always the same, two years of environment studies, followed by a loud resounding “No”. Why would they approve anything? They have no incentive to.
- 7mo ago
- mancerayder 7mo agoIsn't it cheaper to cool a datacenter in a more temperate/cool region than one that has a 9-month-long summer? Why would anyone want to go to Texas to build a datacenter and worry about the cooling, when they could pick any other state?
- stogot 7mo agoLong summers = tx actually has lots more Solar, but also biz friendly laws, biz friendly taxes, lots of corp HQ, cheap land, own power grid (for better or worse), cost of labor, etc.
- OkayPhysicist 7mo agoBecause the other big expense in a datacenter: electricity. Texas has really cheap electricity compared to the rest of the country, sitting at second cheapest after North Dakota.
- adamsb6 7mo agoMaine banning datacenter construction is is a bit like Texas banning lobster fishing.
- hammock 7mo agoNo because they have a big interconnect being built from Canada right now that people want to tap into
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]