It… doesn’t look that bad. Electricity use is sizable. Water which usually gets all this screaming is, well, look up how much a golf course or a large hotel uses.
There are DCs that use grey water, are built by bodies of water to use them as direct heat sinks, etc. which is better.
The reason they use water at all is ironically to save energy. Evaporative cooling uses a lot less power. It’s a slider: all evaporative is little power and a lot of water, all closed cycles is lots of power and no water, and you can adjust between the extremes when designing the cooling system.
Using DC heat for urban heat in winter is the best idea. Put them in city centers. I think this is done in Europe to some extent.
There will be protests and cases related to water usage of AI, but none of them would hold any ground. And winning the water case would just make the argument in their favour.
> Just few months back
Just a few months more, and the public was still often making Epstein references.