“I’ve always been committed,” said Schroeder, 62, of her allegiance to the GOP. That is, until she learned about a massive data center, part of OpenAI’s $500 billion Stargate project, going up south of her property.
The project has been championed by her party’s standard-bearers, President Donald Trump and Gov. Greg Abbott. But the more Schroeder learned about data centers popping up across the state, the more she became convinced her party was corrupted by industry lobbyists, seemingly brushing off what she saw as an existential threat to rural Texans like her.
So in late March, at a GOP precinct meeting in Falls County, Schroeder suggested they propose a data center ban at the upcoming state Republican convention, which sets the party’s priorities.
“They started screaming and yelling, and you would have thought I started World War III,” Schroeder said. “They said, ‘We won’t accept that, Rena. You’re gonna have to revise it to regulations.’”
9 Comments
violentfart@lemmy.world · 47 pts · 110d
Only a problem when it affects her directly.
aburrito@sh.itjust.works · 15 pts · 110d
Tale as old as time
zabadoh@ani.social · 31 pts · 110d
Wow, hordes of data centers sucking up vast amounts of electricity in a state that only went through a huge power crisis 5 years ago in 2021
Is it time to place Polymarket bets on another power crisis?
anomnom@sh.itjust.works · 4 pts · 109d
Only if you think they will actually finish and turn on the new ones before the jig is up.
magnetosphere@fedia.io · 14 pts · 110d
Texas Republicans have created problems for so many other people that I don’t have time to care. Sorry, folks. Enjoy your blackouts and water shortages.
badbytes@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 109d
And Texas has struggled to maintain its electrical grid a lot in recent years.
fartographer@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 109d
"Struggled" implies that we're trying. Our Republican politicians actively hate all of us, regardless of ideals.
subverted_per@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 8 pts · 109d
Their solution to this has been to announce that the data centers will be allowed to build their own generators. So instead of power outages and high energy costs they'll just suck up the water and spew shit in the air and probably dump shit in the water they dont use.
zabadoh@ani.social · 6 pts · 109d
Spewing heated water directly back into rivers is a problem too. The native fish can't deal with heated water, and heating the water itself changes the chemistry, such as dissolved gases and minerals.