Global Petition to Halt the Implementation and Expansion of Data Centers

Poison is not Progress

Petition to governments, utilities, regulators, and technology companies worldwide

I’m writing to citizens everywhere with an urgent request to sign a petition to stop the propagation of large-scale data centers.

This is not a call for “more transparency,” nicer public relations, or slightly better mitigation. The goal is simple and non-negotiable. We must stop new hyperscale data center construction and end the unchecked expansion of industrial compute facilities that externalize their harms onto communities.

Across the United States and around the world, the rapid spread of data centers is being sold as inevitable “progress.” But the costs are not being carried by the companies that profit. They are being shifted to the public through increased fossil fuel combustion, diesel pollution, water stress, chronic noise, grid strain, higher electricity costs, and long-term environmental liabilities. The profits flow upward; the burdens stay local.

This petition is motivated by reporting such as the case in the Sioux Falls, South Dakota area involving the proposed Gemini data center, and by a broader pattern repeating across regions. Communities are repeatedly told these facilities are clean, quiet, and economically beneficial. In practice, residents are left dealing with degraded air quality, rising health risks, stressed infrastructure, and irreversible land and water impacts.

The core reality we must stop ignoring

Hyperscale power demand is enormous

A single facility drawing 500 megawatts continuously consumes:

500 MW × 24 hours/day × 365 days/year = 4,380,000 MWh/year (4.38 TWh/year).

That is an extraordinary amount of electricity. On an annual-energy basis, 4.38 TWh/year is roughly comparable to the annual electricity use of about 400,000 average U.S. homes, depending on household electricity-use assumptions. This is not just “a big business customer.” It is a grid-defining load that reshapes regional planning decisions, generation portfolios, and transmission buildouts.

Succinctly, one 500MW data center consumes the equivalent annual energy to power more than 400,000 homes.

When one industrial project’s expected load begins to look comparable to the residential electricity use of an entire state, the public deserves to ask a basic question.

Who is the grid for?

What the “AI data center boom” means in the real world

It locks in fossil fuel combustion even while we claim to be going green

When a new load arrives that is massive, constant, and urgent, utilities often meet it with what can be built or dispatched fastest. That frequently means new natural gas, delayed retirement of coal and gas units, or importing electricity from neighboring regions that may be fossil-heavy. Corporate claims of being “renewably powered” too often rely on accounting mechanisms rather than demonstrating that the facility is supplied hour-by-hour by additional clean generation.

The result is straightforward. Even when wrapped in green messaging, hyperscale data centers can increase net emissions and slow the transition to truly clean, reliable power for everyone.

It increases air pollution and public health risks through diesel generator use

Large data centers frequently include fleets of diesel generators, described as “backup” systems. Yet the real-world consequence is the siting of significant combustion capability near communities. Diesel exhaust contains pollutants associated with respiratory and cardiovascular harm, and the burden falls on nearby residents who did not consent to the risk and cannot opt out of breathing the air.

This is not an abstract concern. It is a predictable outcome when industrial-scale facilities are fast-tracked while enforcement capacity is weak and public-health safeguards are treated as negotiable.

It strains and contaminates scarce water resources

Many data centers depend on water-intensive cooling or water-dependent power generation upstream. In regions already facing drought, aquifer stress, or competition among agricultural, residential, and industrial users, large new water demands are not “manageable.” They are destabilizing. Water withdrawals and thermal impacts can degrade local ecosystems and reduce resiliency during heat events—exactly when communities need water security most.

It imposes chronic noise and quality-of-life harms

Industrial cooling infrastructure and backup power systems can create constant, low-frequency noise that disrupts sleep, concentration, and overall wellbeing. These impacts are routinely minimized during planning and then felt for years by residents living nearby. A community should not have to trade quiet, livable neighborhoods for private infrastructure designed to run continuously.

The economic story is often upside-down

Data centers are frequently promoted with language about innovation, jobs, and revitalization. But communities should demand full life-cycle accounting, because the benefits are often overstated while the costs are hidden or shifted.

A facility can generate substantial revenue while contributing relatively modest permanent employment compared to its land use, grid demands, and public concessions. Communities may provide tax abatements, discounted electricity arrangements, expedited permitting, and publicly subsidized infrastructure upgrades—only to discover the net return is small while the long-term burdens are real and growing.

If public officials are making decisions based on claims of “jobs,” “local benefit,” or “economic development,” then the minimum requirement is honest accounting: jobs per megawatt, jobs per acre, local tax receipts net of abatements, and all public infrastructure and health-related costs borne by residents and the state.

Our message

Communities are not disposable. Children’s lungs are not collateral. “Technology” does not excuse poisoning the air, stressing water systems, and locking in fossil fuel dependence. If a business model requires industrial-scale electricity demand, diesel combustion risk, and weak oversight to remain profitable, then it is not progress. It is extraction.

We can pursue computing, innovation, and even AI in ways that do not sacrifice public health, grid stability, water security, and democratic oversight. Data centers as currently proposed and permitted are industrial facilities with industrial consequences—often sited near communities and pushed through processes that are not designed to protect the public.

What we demand

We call for a global moratorium on new data center approvals and construction.

We call on governments, utilities, and regulators to stop treating hyperscale compute as inevitable and start treating it as what it is: an industrial land-use and energy decision with serious, long-lasting consequences.

We also reject the false choice being presented to the public: that the only path to AI and technological advancement is building ever-larger data centers that strain grids, consume water, and increase pollution. AI can be achieved in other ways. Data centers are not “the solution” if the cost of the solution is community health and environmental stability.

We need a path forward that does not kill us before we arrive.

We ask all citizens of the world to sign this petition and demand an end to the proliferation of data centers.

Again, Poison is not Progress.

Signed,

Citizens of the World