I think he's perfectly fine with you (and everyone else with a functioning brain) to take the very simple logical leap to infer that if they can't meet the list of requirements for building, then they should not build.

But you want him to come out and say something that he doesn't believe (and has personally contradicted): that he's opposed to data centers as a point of principle, because you're ideologically convinced that that is his viewpoint, because to you that's the only reason someone would put up any type of roadblock to data center build-outs.

Maybe the people building the datacentres should come out and say they can't build them without screwing over local communities, see how that goes down.

> that would on average benefit the local community.

The AI boosters appear to have badly failed in convincing local communities of this.

Perhaps they should have started off with an informative AI positive PR campaign rather than ... whatever it was that put local communities off the notion.

What is the benefit of a data center to the local community? This is the real problem. Best case, it’s eh, whatever. It doesn’t provide jobs, but if planned and built properly it is largely inoffensive (provided that it does not cause electricity rates to rise; this is pretty locally specific as different electricity markets work different ways). Worst case, you have Elon Musk putting old jet engines next to your house, or that Bitcoin miner in Texas where neighbours report 90db noise.

At the very least, laws need to prevent the second case.

I just voted in favor of California proposition 45, which weakens a huge amount of California environmental review law, specifically in order to prevent it from being weaponized by NIMBYs to block or delay housing developments. Unfortunately it looks like the measure is losing, because housing NIMBYs have a great deal of political power in California. Anyway, I would support similar legislation aimed at allowing data centers to be built for exactly the same reasons.