Stop Dirty Data Centres

Impacts

The explosion of AI data centres across our towns and cities is taking a toll that we can no longer afford. Join us and act now to prevent the irreparable harms data centres pose to the wellbeing of people and planet. There are a range of reasons we are motivated to act:

Local communities.

Neighborhoods are losing green space, drinking water, clean air and nature. Previously protected sites are being earmarked for AI data centre development. Where data centres are built, neighbors suffer from painful noise pollution, increased respiratory disease, intensifying heat islands and worse.

Jobs and economy.

Data centres don’t generate enough jobs and contribute little to the local economy. Despite receiving huge amounts of public subsidies, data centres have a poor track record when it comes to creating jobs. On top of this, the AI services which many are being built to house are directly linked to rising job losses, deskilling of labour, and reduction in worker power.

Housing shortages and rising energy bills.

As energy bills climb for ordinary citizens, fuelled by data centre expansion, governments offer data centre developers discounted energy rates.New homes are delayed or left empty because data centres captured the available energy grid connections. Meanwhile, countless communities face housing shortages, rising rents and overcrowding.

Climate crisis, heatwaves and water shortages.

Europe is the fastest warming continent and experiencing record-breaking heatwaves. However increasingly fossil fuels are powering AI data centres, undermining our ability to reduce pollution, meet climate goals and locking us into dependency on dirty energy. Data centres’ huge thirst for fresh water for cooling, greater when the weather is hottest—deprives people and nature of water when they are needed most.

Big tech power is undermining our democracies.

Big tech companies lobby governments to fast-track construction and operate in secrecy, bypassing protections for our communities and ecosystems. Their extreme wealth distorts politics so that our democracies struggle to make independent and informed decisions about data centres in the public interest.

Mental health crisis.

Europe is experiencing a crisis of mental health especially among young people who suffer from social isolation, depression, and anxiety. Research links chatbot usage to self-harm. More AI data centres will fuel more digital services and platforms designed to addict and manipulate us.

Increased surveillance and erosion of privacy.

Data rights groups are signalling the alarm about what the AI-driven expansion of digital surveillance into every corner of our lives, including public services, will mean for our privacy, data rights and civil liberties.

Securitization and militarization.

Data centres are increasingly being used in warfare and surveillance. They provide compute and storage for battlefields abroad and house tools used against civilian populations. Lucrative contracts with the defense sector fill the pockets of foreign tech companies, and under the protection of national security rhetoric, they operate as black boxes without democratic scrutiny and oversight.

Toxic supply chain.

In Europe and around the world, mining for critical minerals and manufacturing hardware has intensified, displacing communities and polluting land and waterways. The specialized chips and hardware in data centres are replaced at a breakneck pace every few years and often discarded as harmful e-waste.

By coordinating our actions, we demonstrate the power we have to halt the unchecked expansion of AI data centres and prevent our democracy being taken hostage by big tech industry interests. Together we are calling on elected leaders to implement moratoria at local, national and European level that pause data centre construction until we, the people, have democratically decided what is needed to ensure AI and data centres serve people and the planet, not private greed.

Events

The information on this map is provided to us by third parties and is published for your information. StopDirtyDataCentres.EU assumes no responsibility for the events listed, any mistakes in the information, or for any action you may take based on it. StopDirtyDataCentres.EU is committed to non-violence and believes in people's democratic rights to speak out assemble, and protest.

01 November - 10:30

Photo shoot (protest)

Organisers: Hillingdon Friends of the Earth

Junction of Springfield Rd and Beaconsfield Rd

Anyone who can attend at 10.30am Sunday 1st November should gather at the free Minet Park car park adjacent to Guru Nanak Sikh Academy, UB4 0LT, at the junction of Springfield Rd and Beaconsfield Rd.

When we are all gathered we shall walk together to the entrance the Data Centre construction site (approximately 200 yards along Beaconsfield Road) for a group photo holding placards and banners with the data centre in the back ground. We expect the whole event will take less than an hour.

05 November - 16:00

Zwentendorf-Holiday

Organisers: s Committee of Gradual Incapacitation (CGI), Südwind Linz und atomstopp_atomkraftfrei Lebn

Room D of the University of Art and Design Linz (Hauptplatz 6, 5th floor).

Can climate awareness also evoke positive feelings such as joy, unity, and hope? On November 5 we want to create new, inclusive points of reference for a planet in crisis by proclaiming the “Zwentendorf Holiday”! This year, at the University of Art and Design Linz, the Church “Grüner Anker”, and along the route between them, we will celebrate for the second time this new holiday—which has yet to be officially recognized—for a livable future in Austria. Visitors and fellow celebrants can look forward to a diverse and top-notch program ranging from opera to discourse, performance to multimedia installations, and concerts to activist sharing circles and culinary installations. This year, the datecenter project in Kronstorf will be at the center of our commemoration of resistance and our celebration of the value of saying “no” in order to make a livable future possible — Kronstorf is a town not far from Linz where Google plans to build one of Europe’s largest data centers, with catastrophic consequences for water, the environment, the power grid, and society. This year, we’re shouting out loud to Kronstorf: “We’ll turn you into yet another Zwentendorf!”

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