OPINION: Fredericksburg Can Find Another Way on Data Centers

Council should weigh the potential tax revenue with the environmental impacts.

By Eric Bonds
CONTRIBUTOR

Photo by Taylor Vick on Unsplash

Sociologists study climate denialism. One variety of climate denialism has historically been promoted by the fossil fuels industry, arguing that the science is muddled and that global warming either isn’t real, or that contemporary rates of warming aren’t being caused by human activity.

Fortunately, surveys show that this variety of climate denialism is becoming much less common as more people understand the truth that increasing carbon emissions from our economy are warming average temperatures with alarming consequences. 

The other variety of climate denialism is more subtle and one that we all experience. It involves a heavy dose of cognitive dissonance as we, on one hand, acknowledge the frightening reality of climate change but, on the other hand, go on about our busy lives as though it isn’t happening.

The second variety of climate denialism is on full display as members of the Fredericksburg City Council, whom I know as very good people who deeply care about the environment, entertain a proposal to use $200,000 of city funds to conduct a preliminary study in order to attract climate-harming data centers to our community.

This proposal comes at a time when we are witnessing unprecedented weather phenomena linked with climate change, recently seeing the hottest global temperature average on record for a single day, the hottest year on record, record warm ocean temperatures, harsh regional heat waves, the earliest-forming category-five hurricane on record, and the list goes on.

I urge members of the City Council to vote “no” on the proposal to use city funds to attract data centers, and hope that you will contact your councilors to urge them to do the same. Data centers use an astonishing amount of energy, roughly 10-50 times as much energy per square foot as conventional office space, according to the Department of Energy.

Given their large size, this means that a single data center campus might use more energy than all of the individual homes in Fredericksburg put together. Because we can’t install solar panels fast enough, nearly all of this energy will come from burning fossil fuels. This is happening at a time when the world’s climate scientists are telling us we need to dramatically cut, not increase, our shared carbon footprint.

I understand the appeal of the significant tax revenue that data centers can bring. I have children in public school, enjoy Fredericksburg’s parks, and want to see all of it well-funded. But the new reality of climate change means that we have to find another way. This is the question of our time: How can we live well without destroying the planet we want our children and grandchildren to enjoy? 

I also understand the logic that if Fredericksburg doesn’t welcome data centers, they will just go someplace else and take their potential tax revenue with them. The idea here is that if no state or federal law is stopping the extensive climate impacts of data centers, we might as well cash in too.

But if we all shared this line of thinking, it would mean “game over” for the climate. On an individual level, this line of thinking says that, if I see many people driving, why should I opt to ride my bike or commute by train when I can? Or, if my neighbors don’t recycle, why should I bother? Scaled up to a national level, this logic says that if China or India doesn’t significantly cut their carbon emissions, why should we in the United States? If we let it, this line of thinking will push us all past the brink of climate catastrophe.

We in Fredericksburg can’t control what happens in our neighboring counties. But we can control what happens here. We can ask a different set of questions: How can we become a regional leader on climate change? How can we work together to both protect the environment and have high-quality schools? We have to trust that people in other communities are increasingly wrestling with these same questions, and that more and more people will say no to data centers and their unsustainable carbon footprint.

Maybe it starts with us here in Fredericksburg? Maybe it starts with the City Council voting “no.”

Eric Bonds is a resident of Fredericksburg, where he also works as a Professor of Sociology at the University of Mary Washington.

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