Campaigners in Auchtertool are opposing plans for a data centre (Pic: MelanieWardMP on facebook)
Hundreds of data centres are being built across Britain as the Labour government fights to attract investment in artificial intelligence (AI).
But ordinary people are organising against the pollution and environmental destruction they cause.
Two proposed data centres in Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire will produce more carbon emissions than oil giant ExxonMobil’s entire operations in Britain, according to the Guardian newspaper.
There are now 477 of these data centres across Britain, with 100 more expected to follow.
These data centres are massive warehouses filled with computers, used to process data for AI and other purposes. Every AI query goes through one of these, from Google pop-ups to missile guidance systems.
The Labour government has classified data centres as “critical national infrastructure”. Companies can also apply for them to be classed as nationally significant infrastructure projects. These can be approved by the secretary of state, bypassing local councils.
These data centres have a massive environmental toll. A ChatGPT query uses about five times more electricity than a simple Google search. It takes one pint of water to cool the computers processing these queries.
Those pints add up. ChatGPT alone now gets some 2.5 billion daily queries.
In Ireland, the energy use from data centres is already driving up people’s electricity bills.
But people all over the world are mobilising in large numbers against the reckless expansion of data centres.
In Auchtertool—a village in Fife, Scotland, of only 600 people—a campaign against a proposed data centre has drawn national attention.
Andrew is part of the campaign in Auchtertool. He told Socialist Worker, “The destruction of the land in the surrounding area was just too much to take.
“People said ‘No, we don’t want this here. We never asked for this here and we will push back to ensure it doesn’t go through’.”
Andrew said, “A lot of people can see the bigger picture.
“We are not just worried about the local area, but we are networking with other communities. We need to come together in solidarity, bring people together to stop it.”
Residents in Auchtertool are linking the fight against the data centre to water. Andrew said, “There’s already diminished and depleted groundwater. So when residents within that area turn on the tap, nothing comes out, basic things like that.
“This is a wrecker in the midst of extreme climate breakdown. And they want to try to build these hyperscale data centres that will suck the last resources away.
“So I think there is scope that this could be the start of bringing together more people who otherwise didn’t know much about the environment and ecology.”
Andrew said Reform UK, a party full of climate change deniers, has tried to join in the campaign. So socialists need to oppose attempts by the far right to hijack the movement.
In the US, fights against data centres are winning. The New York state government has been forced to implement a moratorium on data centre construction.
And the rich are getting worried as local opposition is eating into their profits. In the US, local people and county councils blocked or stalled 48 new data centre proposals worth £115 billion last year.
The fight against data centres can win a moratorium. But it can go further and can become a bigger mobilisation against AI and against climate disaster.
The organised working class should be central to building and broadening the movement against the data centre roll-out.
Workers in the AI industry itself have the power to resist it—their actions show that the dominance of big tech is not inevitable.
Geraldine, who works in AI, told Socialist Worker, “We can switch off Google, we can switch off Microsoft.
“I mean, we can switch off Amazon.
“We have thousands of tech workers and the moment they really realise that they can switch off the machine, it’s going to be very impactful.”
Geraldine explained that last year dozens of people occupied the Microsoft headquarters in Washington state to protest against the ties between the tech giant and Israel.
Content moderators for TikTok in Germany have unionised and walked out on strike “because they are sick and tired of having redundancies after redundancies” said Geraldine.
“I spend a good part of my day training an agent,” she added.
“I can decide to boycott that. Or I could train the agent in a way that doesn’t work. Actually, some people do that.”
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