7 ms·
Amazon Is Creating the Biggest Pollution Source in the Country
- MarkWayneNewton 2mo agoAt least these sites (its more than Amazon) are being built near the energy source they will consume. Straight out of the ground into a turbine and then into the electron spinners. Also there's not a lot of anything where these sites are located (Near El Paso). The 4-5 Road Runners who live around there will probably appreciate the change. West Texas is basically Mad Max 2.
- mrpopo 2mo agoNo one cares about West Texas, it's about the 33 million tons of carbon dioxide going into the atmosphere and warming the world. Reminder that the USA are the country that historically burned the most fossil fuels, the world's largest extractor of oil, the only country trying to do a 180 on coal power. Half of the world has experienced unprecedented heatwaves that will become the norm in 2050. Stop burning fossil fuels.
- measurablefunc 2mo ago[flagged]
- mrpopo 2mo agoAt the very least stop burning 3x more fossil fuels than the world average. Or stop your president from buying out renewable energy projects in order to prop up coal and gas. Or stop blocking public transportation developments. Why does it look like no one is trying?
- measurablefunc 2mo ago[flagged]
- calgoo 2mo agoPlease, yea it can, it just takes a full investment and outlawing of the fossil fuel industry that bribe everyone to say that its impossible.
- measurablefunc 2mo agoThe average grocery store food item travels more than 3k miles to reach its destination from the source. Let me know how you're going to make that work w/o diesel.
- worik 2mo ago1. My food does not, why does yours 2. There are many alternatives to fossil diesel 3. The alternatives involved decentralised technology, so is actively opposed by entrenched interests who would burn the world for a dollar
- measurablefunc 2mo agoBecause I live in a city w/ an unsustainable ecological footprint & so does basically the rest of the industrialized world.
- ponector 2mo agoIt does not explain why your food is travelling 3k miles. For sure you can buy food grown within 500 miles, not delivered from other hemisphere.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- WillAdams 2mo agoThe solution to that would be "locavore": https://www.thespruceeats.com/what-is-a-locavore-5118259 https://www.thespruceeats.com/what-is-a-locavore-5118259
- Qwertious 2mo ago
- worik 2mo agoThe system will not survive another decade burning fossil fuels.
- measurablefunc 2mo agoThe consequences are already baked in, the only question is how badly it will play out & who will get the short end of the stick.
- Mistletoe 2mo agoStop the system, everyone is miserable in it anyway.
- api 2mo agoStop the system and miserable people will blame that for why they’re miserable. “Remember the good old days?” Hate urban modern life? Leave then. Lots of places to go live more simply.
- api 2mo agoOh nonsense. Energy is energy. It would be hard to decarbonize long haul trucking and aviation, which together account for less than ten percent of global oil use. Almost everything else can be powered by other things. Might have been true thirty or forty years ago, but even back then France had almost completely decarbonized the grid. My guess would be a giant gas plant for a data center in Texas is part of the deal for letting them build it. Oil and gas owns that state.
- acdha 2mo agoEven long-haul trucking can shrink rapidly between electric trucks (Australia is using those successfully - they’re cheaper and faster on hilly routes) on the shorter routes and electric trains (mature technology for a century) for many longer routes. Businesses would adjust but I think it’s really only aviation which is completely without a path until synthetic fuels arrive.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- bethekidyouwant 2mo ago[flagged]
- cebert 2mo agoYes
- ussearyus 2mo ago[dead]
- sieabahlpark 2mo ago[dead]
- goatlover 2mo agoIt's the main greenhouse gas contributing to climate change. Where have you been?
- mirzap 2mo agoOn an industrial scale, yes, of course.
- BurningFrog 2mo agoSure, but it's only damaging globally. It's no more damaging to the local environment than to anywhere else on the planet.
- BurningFrog 2mo agoThis is indisputably true, but downvoted without comment...
- esseph 2mo agoYes, by burning fuels we release carbon from the thing being burned, it gets mixed with oxygen, and released into the atmosphere as co2. As the suns energy warms the earth, the earth radiates heat back out and away from the surface and normally back out into space. co2 also acts like a blanket for that radiant heat, and traps it inside. More co2 in the atmosphere traps more energy around the planet like an insulated wrap. To reduce this, we have to extract the carbon out of the atmosphere and store it.
- synack 2mo agoDon't these things get more efficient as they scale up? One big plant is probably better than 30 small ones.
- NooneAtAll3 2mo agoefficient in money, nothing is said about other metrics it's quite possible to have more product made, thus more pollution (or less materials consumed, thus less) but concentration definitely will rise
- khimaros 2mo agosometime in the energy sector once told me "the solution to pollution is dilution"
- wat10000 2mo agoWhich is nonsense. There's plenty of pollution that's been diluted as much as it possibly can be and is still problematic. CO2 is an obvious example. Or consider leaded gasoline or mercury. You have to be careful not to eat too much fish or you'll have trouble with the mercury in it. That's been diluted by the entire ocean and that didn't solve it.
- lazide 2mo agouh, that’s nonsense. co2 is problematic because of concentration - the sheer volume. leaded gas and mercury are a problem because of bio-concentration. dilution still helps!
- forestrywat 2mo agoOf course it helps, but where are you going to dilute more co2 these days?
- lazide 2mo ago
- casey2 2mo ago[flagged]
- _ink_ 2mo agoAmazon is not capturing carbon in any meaningful scale and planting trees is great, until they capture fire.
- brianaker 2mo agoTrees are wonderful for a number of reasons, and the need for them for local climate, which includes shading and their contribution to local humidity, is important as well. They are not, though, a significant sequestration for CO₂. A helpful way to think about this is to consider coal. To produce coal the energy input comes from time, pressure, etc over tens to thousands of millions of years. The significance of trees is for the local climate, or global if you are considering one of handful of rainforests.
- forestrywat 2mo agoAmazon is not capturing this amount of carbon. And the offsets are all smoke and mirrors.
- culi 2mo agoevery time I see someone take seriously carbon credits/offsets I lose some hope. Possibly the most successful greenwashing campaign yet. Study after study have shown their uselessness. It doesn't even feel fair to call their problems as "loopholes" when, i.e., 90% of credits are completely worthless https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/18/revealed-forest-carbon-offsets-biggest-provider-worthless-verra-aoe https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/18/revealed... The system isn't broken. It's working exactly as intended.
- defrost 2mo agoI'd love to hear how this will actually, really, pragmatically work. Currently the largest Carbon capture and sequestration project on the planet is operated by Chevron as part of it's Gorgon Basin Natural Gas extraction project. It's not working properly yet, when it is up and working as designed CO2 will be captured from the extracted natural gas and pumped back into the gas basin. The total amount of CO2 captured and stashed will be a tiny tiny portion of the amount extracted and released. That is very much not "Net Zero" no matter how much PR spin is applied.
- burnt-resistor 2mo agoThese jet engine gas turbines create air pollution in the forms of formaldehyde and NOx and noise pollution.
- fhdkweig 2mo agoDupe of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49220350 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49220350 256 comments, 8 hours ago
- ares623 2mo agoFinally, a structure worthy of its namesake.
- chinathrow 2mo ago> 7.65 gigawatt gas power plant This is another level of insanity, right there.
- selectodude 2mo agoSecond largest hydrocarbon power generator in the world. Unreal.
- zepearl 2mo agoLet's add as well "SpaceX’s Terafab will rely on natural gas power plants, not Tesla solar panels" to the mix :o( https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/07/spacexs-terafab-will-rely-on-natural-gas-power-plants-not-tesla-solar-panels/ https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/07/spacexs-terafab-will-rely-...
- deepsun 2mo agoDon't understand why. AI training can be run during the sunny days. Could be a good PR opportunity for Musk, I'm surprised he doesn't take it. Especially if he buys from his own company.
- nielsbot 2mo agoand would be cheaper in the long run? or maybe they could even do solar + storage. i guess even at this stage “gas is easier” is still winning…
- dgellow 2mo agoYou’re talking about one of the most hated person on hearth with one of the worst reputation. The literal Nazi salute guy. I don’t think he cares much about positive PR like that
- legulere 2mo agoThe problem is that the grid can’t get built out fast enough. You’ll probably see most AI data centers switch to grid power in the coming years using mostly wind and solar because it’s simply cheaper as well
- sylos 2mo agoRemember when they said they couldnzt electrify the grid for ev's so they opted to just not do anything with ev's. Now datacenters are getting rushed in so fast and breaking the grids so hard they can illegally running generators
- 2mo ago
- vladmk 2mo agoSomeone’s gotta stop this who idk - that’s the problem
- senderista 2mo ago"Shareholder Value Pledge Arena"
- raincole 2mo agoIt sounds... pretty good? It's not going to put pressure to the existing grid. Nor it will use freshwater. Near to the data centers themselves so the waste from power transmission is minimalized.
- conception 2mo agoExcept for that largest polluter in the country part. Our children and their children’s children and so on will curse our generation for what we did to them.
- beebmam 2mo agoNot if the benefits of automating basically all forms of labor reach them.
- frotaur 2mo agoMight be benefits, might be downsides.
- calgoo 2mo agoSo they can have cancer and not work... I guess that's better then working and having cancer. Or the people just starve instead so we don't have to worry about the pollution.
- hilariously 2mo agoReach them? You mean reach Elon Musk.
- Gigachad 2mo agoWe have fully automated AI slop TikTok feeds and it only cost the earth.
- wlesieutre 2mo agoYes, the planet got destroyed, but for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for sharebolders
- coralreef 2mo agoCarbon tax would shift the economics in favor of renewables.
- chaos_emergent 2mo agoI don’t think it would - tokens are so profitable and the race dynamics make the deployment timelines for most renewables untenable. Throughput for solar projects is very high and increasing, latency is unfortunately also very high.
- javierluraschi 2mo agoCarbon tax is the only way, you need to pay for picking up the garbage from the road or the air, the cost to clean op pollution and trash needs to be accounted for.
- worik 2mo agoA carbon tax would have been a fantastic solution in the 1990s It is too late now. There are no pare to optimal solutions left
- LogicFailsMe 2mo agoAlternatives exist but they aren't free... https://www.aga.org/decarbonizing-through-carbon-capture/ https://www.aga.org/decarbonizing-through-carbon-capture/ https://www.energyindepth.org/study-finds-carbon-capture-and-natural-gas-can-power-data-center-growth-while-cutting-emissions/ https://www.energyindepth.org/study-finds-carbon-capture-and... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2772656824000502 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S277265682... TIL mentioning a viable technology that would reduce emissions here but delay a forced transition to renewables is an instant downvote.
- acdha 2mo agoCarbon capture gets downvotes because it’s not working anywhere at scale. The fossil fuel industry loves it because it’s saying they get paid now and maybe someone else gets paid later, and their industry doesn’t have profits cut, but anyone planning to continue living on earth would prefer we stop polluting now because that is proven to actually work at scale.
- LogicFailsMe 2mo agoPolitics is the art of the possible, not the ideal. Vote that down too I guess. Also, I call BS on your claim it's not working anywhere at scale. https://www.catf.us/resource/carbon-capture-storage-what-can-learn-from-project-track-record/ https://www.catf.us/resource/carbon-capture-storage-what-can... What do you want? To keep chasing the perfect or to embrace digging ourselves out of this mess by whatever means? I think I know the answer and I'll bet we disagree. But I too would prefer we pivoted to renewables and nuclear, increasingly renewables over nuclear with time, but I'd have to move to China for that (yet they ended up firing up the coal plants because of the Iran War). It's not happening here even when the free market indicates it's the best play because it undercuts oil and gas and they own the politicians as the masses mostly don't bother to vote. What is your plan that works in reality as opposed to the Aldous Huxley semi-dystopia the west has become? I know, I know, getting the job done by any means is wrong think, demanding perfection is right think.
- 2mo ago
- ChrisArchitect 2mo ago[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49220350 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49220350
- fhdkweig 2mo agoAt this point, there are enough commenters in both threads to justify a merger.
- worik 2mo ago> That’s in sharp contrast to Amazon’s commitment to reach net-zero emissions by 2040... Liars
- paulkrush 2mo agoPermitted maximum of 10 grams(2 nickels) of CO2 per hour for every person in the US. 33 million tons * 2000 ton/pound * 454 g/pound / 365 days in a year / 24 hours in a day / 342.6M people in us = 9.984 grams
- ourmandave 2mo agoI like this for the clarity. No more wishy-washy Is Amazon Evil? It's just Amazon ~ Fuck Yeah We're Evil
- rgmerk 2mo agoSome thoughts: * you can run data centres on grid electricity, which can come from mostly-renewable sources (in short, you need gas mainly as as an occasional backup). * running things off-grid is dumb, and they’re only doing it because they’re desperate to get their data centres up and running yesterday so that they’re the ones who get to the singularity first (or some approximation thereof). * the US electricity grid is f**d, mostly for the same reasons you can’t build any linear infrastructure in the United States - too many bodies hold veto powers and use any such infrastructure as an extortion opportunity. * The spike in gas-powered generation for data centres is essentially a US phenomenon. Globally, the vast majority of new electricity supply is coming from renewables. * in a sane world, Amazon and new large-scale data centre providers would face punitive carbon charges to incentivise them to switch to mostly renewables as soon as possible.
- throwaway473825 2mo agoGas is ridiculously cheap in the US while it's often the most expensive source of electricity in the rest of the world. We're currently seeing a bifurcation where Asia bets on anything but oil and gas while the US goes in the opposite direction. Note that anything but oil and gas includes coal, so this isn't about the environment.
- kristianp 2mo ago> you can run data centres on grid electricity The reason they're not doing that is because grid providers can't grow their supply fast enough to support new AI data centres.
- skywhopper 2mo agoYes, they said that.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- thatsit 2mo agohttps://terraformindustries.wordpress.com/2026/01/30/direct-current-data-centers/ https://terraformindustries.wordpress.com/2026/01/30/direct-... Solar dc data centers are marginally cheaper. However right now the incentives are on buliding data centers (including power sources) the fastest. Despite this i would bet that you could build solar and batteries as fast as (or even faster) as building gas power plants, but the current governmend really likes to see fossils and setting the planet on fire.
- redwood 2mo agoIt's important to distinguish the toxic SOX/NOX emissions from CO2 which is not toxic but is a greenhouse gas. These two categories and materially different and conflating them is very risky. For example if this were to replace an equivalently sized coal plant it would be a net improvement