Happy Hour 284 - Data Centers in Texas: the AI Boom’s Boogeyman, w/ the Austin Chronicle, Public Citizen, & TEJAS

Texas is projected to become the leading data center hub and market by 2030. Whatever your concerns—whether it’s about growing AI demand, the power grid being overburdened, you don't want hundreds of diesel generators in your backyard, you don’t want to subsidize the richest companies in the world, or you don’t want communities waning water supplies to be wasted—it’s top of mind for most Texans. To break down the big tech boom, we are joined in this two-part pod by Public Citizen Clean Energy Advocate DeeDee Belmares, Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Series (TEJAS) Staff Member Cain Trevino, and Austin Chronicle Staff Writer Sammie Seamon.Learn more about Public Citizen at https://www.citizen.org/tags/texas/.Learn more about TEJAS at https://www.tejasbarrios.org/.See Sammie Seamon's article on data centers in the Austin Chronicle at https://www.austinchronicle.com/news/how-data-centers-are-eating-up-rural-texas/.See a map of proposed and current data centers in Texas at https://ft.maps.arcgis.com/apps/instant/sidebar/index.html?appid=fdb7678fb2e345eb8b0a3a49971240c4General resources on data centers: https://docs.google.com/document/d/143tA8XVh7de9MD2GBiKQ3BcMFqeonlqx7EsoIy_olfQ/edit?tab=t.kiqp4d9nyakbGrab your very own “Fuck social media, marry free press, kill AI” merch here: https://austin-chronicle.mybigcommerce.com/f-ck-marry-kill-shirt/ Thanks for listening! Learn more about Progress Texas and how you can support our ongoing work at https://progresstexas.org/.