The Outstater
The NIMBY of Data Centers
AS USUAL, the emotional argument is winning the day, this time against data centers. If you mingled with the crowd of anti-Google activists at a recent library town hall in Fort Wayne you would have met precious few engineers and zero economists. Rather, the one hundred or so in attendance can be characterized as informationally deprived NIMBY crackpots determined to “stick it to the man,” as we used to say.
Our NAACP leadership has even gotten into the act, having noticed that proponents of a proposed data center on the southeast side of town tend to be wealthy white men on the west side.
OK, that is not entirely fair. There are legitimate concerns mixed in with all this (water usage, smelly diesel backup generators, displaced wetland wildlife, jobs-to-subsidy ratios, etc.). Most of all, there was concern that data centers would hog electrical power and raise utility rates.
But one thing was sorely missing — someone to make the moral case for more and cheaper energy to power data centers or any future economic growth. And Indiana, with plentiful cheap coal, should think itself lucky that Google sees it as a likely site.
Nonetheless, our politicians and commentators are terrified of the issue, having watched the mob back down Google in Indianapolis and elsewhere. Into that breach, I reluctantly enter. At my side is Stephen Moore, a friend and economist whom my foundation brings to Indiana on occasion to discuss economic matters.
Focusing on the concern over power usage, Moore makes what you would think would be an obvious point: Economic growth and the prerequisite cheap energy are essential to human prospering. He recommends an ebook by Kathleen White of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a sister foundation of ours in the State Policy Network. It is provocatively titled, “Fossil Fuels: The Moral Case.”
“Her thesis is fairly logical when you think about it,” Moore says.” Affordable energy is the wellspring of life itself. We use it for food, shelter, clothing, (data centers) and everything that we need to live a productive life. She also notes that cheap energy is the great equalizer in terms of leveling living standards.”
Most simply, communities that come to grips with the need to supply cheap energy will prosper and those that don’t won’t. Packing the local library to complain about progress is not helpful.
The winter Indiana Policy Review will feature an article by Shashank Chandrakumara arguing that Indiana’s ample supply of cheap coal is a competitive advantage in the data-center game. Indeed, data centers can be located at Indiana coal plants, many of which have been unwisely shut down in recent years.
What about those folks on the southeast side that the NAACP is championing? Moore reminds us that the poor benefit most from cheap energy. Keeping energy production up and prices low is one of the best anti-poverty programs. “What Ms. White is telling us is that policies that drive up energy costs are immoral, because they deprive life and happiness from those at the bottom,” he says.
Moore summarizes the argument by posing a series of questions on relative morality:
- Is it moral to take money from taxpayers without their consent to support one industry (windmills, solar farms) over another (coal, natural gas, nuclear)?
- Is it moral to have an energy policy that intentionally keeps prices high?
- Is it moral to eliminate potentially jobs in the U.S. and ship them to China and India and Mexico when we have millions of unemployed Americans?
- Is it moral for donors to a political party who are invested in phony green energy plans to get a kickback on campaign dollars through tax breaks, tax carve-outs and other gifts?
I realize it sounds insane after these decades of false “climate change” prophesy, but why not try putting human welfare at the center of public policy? This would include encouraging economic growth with data centers and other developments even if that means a renewed reliance on fossil fuels to keep energy costs low for both industry and residences.
“The common-sense lesson,” Moore concludes, “is that a free-market policy is good economics and morally superior to any other policy anyone can think of.” And energy is the master resource, he reminds us. “To deny people reliable and affordable energy is to keep them poor and vulnerable — and this is inhumane.”
It was a lesson missed by the NIMBY crowd at their brightly lit and air-conditioned library. — tcl
Comments...