No meteor showers visible today, with the morning clouds blocking the view. Not a perfect start to my day with realizing one bag of groceries was left in the car last night unrefrigerated. Only a few items were in there, so maybe a $15 mistake, but it certainly made last minute breakfast more difficult. Sometimes the ball is intercepted on the first play of the game and you’re down a touchdown 30 seconds in. But you have the ball again and are making your way down the field. Today is one of those days.

Maybe it’s a fitting metaphor for environmental progress. Huge setbacks by Trump 2.0, but some progress is being made. Today is Earth Day. Happy 56th birthday! So much history surrounding it, starting before 1970, an era when Congress actually acted responsibly on occasion (i.e. Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, Endangered Species Act, were all passed around this time. Notably the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts as well!)

One noteworthy and local environmental current event getting very insufficient media attention is the issue of the City of The Dalles attempting to buy 150 acres of Mt. Hood National Forest Land from the federal government, at the local community’s economic and environmental expense. Here’s a good article about it: waterwatch.org/trust-iss… Don’t be fooled by the proposed legislations' specious title “The Dalles Watershed Redevelopment Act.” And guess who introduced it? Representative Cliff Bentz, the lone wolf Congressional Republican in Oregon. Fuck that shithead. Check out the primary source text for yourself, straight from the source: www.congress.gov/committee…

That title makes it sound so much more harmless than it really is. To reference yesterday’s post: doesn’t a food processing facility sound so much better than a slaughterhouse? Doesn’t enhanced interrogation sound so much better than torture? It’s the same idea here.

The Dalles genuinely needs all of this extra water for its (nonexistent) explosive population growth, right? No… just kidding! They aren’t in the Portland metro area. This legislation is just a pretext to pave the way for the enormous water needs—almost exclusively—for the greedy, extractive, and exploitative data center companies. If that’s not bad enough, they want to use resources for less money per unit of utilities than the local community’s utility costs. Their local politicians are totally conning them. I’m no conspiracy theorist normally, but certainly I wouldn’t be quick to rule out the unproven possibility of data center lobbying, and secretly paying off all these leaders behind the scenes. After all, it is expressly signing away protected federal land. No one who is sincerely and thoughtfully looking out for the community, in their right mind would ever support this legislation as written—at least without serious strings attached to the data centers, which aren’t there.

Also, and not unimportantly, this new legislation arguably violates existing federal laws, like the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), Public Lands Act, among others. One perspective on recent Trump admin actions: westernlaw.org/73-wester…

Sometimes the devil is in the details. It’s the seemingly boring bullshit that often ACTUALLY matters. People need to FUCKING READ legislative texts, contracts, deeds and the like. As an MPA graduate, I can tell you it sounds far more intimidating to do so than it actually is. If you are literate, speak English fluently, and have a high school diploma, you can do so. If you don’t speak English fluently, ironically AI chatbots are cutting edge translators for this kind of thing!

I’m not an anti-AI person, and I think we can have it both ways. Data centers are part of the future. If said data center wanted to develop near the Columbia River, use and treat the river water for their operations (which these companies could easily afford to do), subject to monitoring and huge fines for violations, as well as increased metering rates going forward per violation, incentives would be in place. If they were on unprotected land, where trees weren’t being cut down, that’s one thing. But of course, that’s not what’s really going on, and the community is either being conned, unaware, or not paying attention.

Like any big corporation, they aren’t inherently bad, but they are inherently exploitative if not held to account. Capitalism does great harm if unchecked like it usually is. Corporations must pay their fair share. They must be regulated, with stringent environmental standards, pay for at least their per unit cost of utilities, plus capital expenditures associated with their required infrastructure improvement costs so residents and small businesses aren’t holding their bag. That should not be a partisan or controversial statement like abortion, guns, and immigrations inevitably will be. Across the political spectrum, that should be as universal as it gets. Plus the proposed job growth and economic benefits are so fleeting with data center construction, relative to long term costs forced on the locals.

Could you blame those who don’t like data centers and AI? This is the case in point why the left hates capitalism. If Walmart or Amazon wants to move to your small community, then great! Let them. They will provide an economic benefit, unlike an ICE facility, which costs the local economy and taxing jurisdictions.

I’ve literally heard both companies try to bully Washington County and Multnomah County on property tax assessment, as though they should be valued on “dark store” theory, which is not a statutory or industry standard. It’s why a small municipality, with possible rare and unusual exceptions, should never give tax incentives or set up enterprise zone property tax abatements or deferrals for big corporations that would be building there anyways.

When people talk about both Democrats and Republicans being the same, and being in the pockets of corporate interests—this is what they’re talking about, because it’s been total fucking crickets from Jeff Merkley, Ron Wyden, Tina Kotek, and all other prominent Democrats from what I’ve found. And probably for a reason! Democrats suck less than Republicans, but are still uninspirational as fuck. Of course I’ll vote for Democrats over fascists every time. But every election—for me at least—has always been voting between two or more bad choices, and determining the least bad. Who can I vote for that will harm us the least? It’s still important to do so, but this is why so many young people are disillusioned.