My city is having a town hall to discuss how to handle AI data centers being built. Anyone have any good resources on talking points? In particular I’d love to know what the pro AI strawman arguments are and how to shut them down if they come up…
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I don’t have any direct links, but I’d reference some of the other data center town halls to see what discussion points they used.
I imagine a lot of people might not care about AI, but will care if there’s a possibility their property values go down, their bills go up, and what that means for attracting talent (teachers/doctors). There are lots of articles written about these causing increased noise or bills, so maybe print those out for your reference. They may also care about environment issues, but it will likely depend on the demographics of the area, and I’d keep it related to LOCAL water/noise/air pollution and not tie it into a bigger environmental thing. Even if this particular data center swears to be 100% green and not pollute at all, property values may still fall because of the negative stigma. It’s going to be hard to attract the best doctors or restauranteurs or (thing your community cares about) because public sentiment regarding data centers is so bad that even just having one in the area can turn people off to moving there (cite public data center opinion polls here). I’d probably only use that after already establishing how bad they are for prices and the environment and only as a retort if they pinky promise to be good this time and not use all your clean water and energy.
Also pointing out the fact that they don’t actually need staff. So there’s now a huge building that’s not employing many, if any, people. That space could be used for something that actually benefits your community like a business with lots of jobs or just a nice park or restaurants, obviously this depends on where they’re looking to build.
I’d probably keep the conversation related to the building rather than AI as a concept because that’s a great way for people to pivot into a completely different discussion you do not want to have. If people start singing the praises of AI I’d just request they stay on topic since you’re talking about a physical structure that impacts your community and not some nebulous concept of “AI”. A lot of positive AI projects are run completely independent from these data centers, and even if they’re not, there’s no need to have it in your community. This is probably one of the few times I’ll support using the NIMBY argument lol.
Good luck!
Excellent points. Thanks!
Pick a few strong arguments, don’t go with a sack.
Use news (yes, anecdotal) too. Some places have already been fucked over.
Water Behind the Watts: The Hidden Risk of Powering Data Centers https://www.ceres.org/resources/reports/water-behind-the-watts-the-hidden-risk-of-powering-data-centers
The carbon and water footprints of data centers and what this could mean for artificial intelligence - ScienceDirect https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666389925002788
Data Centers Are So Power Hungry That Cow Manure Fuel Is Now on the Table https://www.zmescience.com/ecology/animals-ecology/data-centers-are-so-power-hungry-that-cow-manure-fuel-is-now-on-the-table/
5 ways data centers endanger their local communities and the country as a whole https://theconversation.com/5-ways-data-centers-endanger-their-local-communities-and-the-country-as-a-whole-282348
Extracting Profits from the Public: How Utility Ratepayers Are Paying for Big Tech’s Power – Environmental and Energy Law Program https://www.eesi.org/articles/view/data-centers-and-water-consumption
https://pivot-to-ai.com/2025/11/07/the-futile-future-of-the-gigawatt-datacenter-by-nicholas-weaver/
https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/cooling/ai-cooling-demands-push-data-centers-into-deep-water
