A Canary in a Data Center

Because canaries are so sensitive to toxic gases, coal miners used to bring the tiny birds with them into underground mines to identify looming dangers. If the canaries dropped dead, workers knew they had a problem.

While more sophisticated warning systems have replaced the birds since then, the phrase “a canary in a coal mine” is still being used.

John Perkins is one of them.

Perkins is not a household name and neither will he ever be. Then again, nobody remembers the names of all those birds that probably saved a lot of lives by giving up their own.

That’s not to say that Perkins willingly sacrificed himself. Then again, canaries were also not given a choice.

And, yet, he serves as a warning signal to others like him.

As of Tuesday, Perkins was a member of the city council of Independence, Missouri. That is no longer the case because the voters of the city recalled him over a single vote he took earlier this year.

In March, he was one of five members of the city council to support giving $6 billion in tax incentives to a Dutch company that wanted to build a $150 billion data center in Independence. Two others who voted yes have lost elections in the meantime.

While Perkins may be one of the first to be recalled over his support for data centers, he won’t be the last.

The voters of Independence, or at least the 68 percent of them who voted to oust their city council member, sent a message to local politicians across the country: Support data centers at your own peril.

What Perkins has learned is that siding with these energy-draining, electricity price-increasing, water-guzzling, and environment-damaging behemoths is every bit as toxic as those noxious gases.

One politician who has not is Donald Trump.

Earlier this week, he took to social media to berate Americans who don’t want these data centers in their neighborhoods.

In doing so, he once again demonstrated that he has the finger on the pulse of the nation, just as when he keeps talking about his ballroom or renaming lakes, both of which are about as popular as… well, just about anything else Trump does these days.

“The only reason that communities throughout the U.S.A. should not want Data Centers is if they want to end up being backwards and poor,” the president, and noted 4-D chess grandmaster, wrote on Monday. “If they want to be successful and rich, with far lower taxes and jobs all over the place, let Data Reign.”

Trump added that there are “plenty of other places that want them.”

“If we kill the Golden Goose, you will only have yourselves to blame,” he stated. “China could not be happier with this anti Data Center movement. Actually, they can’t believe it is happening!”

As Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) noted, if all of that were the case, then the president would have no problem with data centers being built next to Mar-a-Lago.

A case can be made that data centers are not really at the heart of Americans’ discontent. What really bothers them is that artificial intelligence is being rammed down their throats by greedy tech bros and the politicians they fund with no say in the matter given to regular people.

The only way they can put a stop to this development is to starve AI of energy, which is why standing with Big Tech on this issue might fill the campaign coffers, and perhaps the personal bank accounts, of elected officials, but it will prove to be deadly at the ballot box.

Perkins learned that the hard way on Tuesday night… many others who ignore this canary in the coal mine will do so in November.